Towards virtual communities on the Web: Actors and audience

We report about ongoing research in a virtual reality environment where visitors can interact with agents that help them to obtain information, to perform certain transactions and to collaborate with them in order to get some tasks done. Our environment models a theatre in our hometown. We discuss attempts to let this environment evolve into a theatre community where we do not only have goal-directed visitors, but also visitors that that are not sure whether they want to buy or just want information or visitors who just want to look around. It is shown that we need a multi-user and multiagent environment to realize our goals. Since our environment models a theatre it is also interesting to investigate the roles of performers and audience in this environment. For that reason we discuss capabilities and personalities of agents. Some notes on the historical development of networked communities are included

What would learning in an open world look like? A vision for the future

The pace of current technological advancement is phenomenal. In the last few years we have seen the emergence of ever more sophisticated gaming technologies, rich, immersive virtual worlds and new social networking services that enable learners and teachers to connect and communicate in new ways. The pace of change looks set to continue as annual Horizon reports testify (http://www.nmc.org/horizon). Clearly new technologies offer much in an educational context, with the promise of flexible, personalised and student-centred learning. Indeed research over the past few years, looking at learners' use of technologies, has given us a rich picture of how learners of all ages are appropriating new tools within their own context, mixing different applications for finding/managing information and for communicating with others (Sharpe and Beetham, forthcoming)

DIVERSE: a Software Toolkit to Integrate Distributed Simulations with Heterogeneous Virtual Environments

We present DIVERSE (Device Independent Virtual Environments- Reconfigurable, Scalable, Extensible), which is a modular collection of complimentary software packages that we have developed to facilitate the creation of distributed operator-in-the-loop simulations. In DIVERSE we introduce a novel implementation of remote shared memory (distributed shared memory) that uses Internet Protocol (IP) networks. We also introduce a new method that automatically extends hardware drivers (not in the operating system kernel driver sense) into inter-process and Internet hardware services. Using DIVERSE, a program can display in a CAVE™, ImmersaDesk™, head mounted display (HMD), desktop or laptop without modification. We have developed a method of configuring user programs at run-time by loading dynamic shared objects (DSOs), in contrast to the more common practice of creating interpreted configuration languages. We find that by loading DSOs the development time, complexity and size of DIVERSE and DIVERSE user applications is significantly reduced. Configurations to support different I/O devices, device emulators, visual displays, and any component of a user application including interaction techniques, can be changed at run-time by loading different sets of DIVERSE DSOs. In addition, interpreted run-time configuration parsers have been implemented using DIVERSE DSOs; new ones can be created as needed. DIVERSE is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) licenses. We describe the DIVERSE architecture and demonstrate how DIVERSE was used in the development of a specific application, an operator-in-the-loop Navy ship-board crane simulator, which runs unmodified on a desktop computer and/or in a CAVE with motion base motion queuing

The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025

This report is the latest research report in a sustained effort throughout 2014 by the Pew Research Center Internet Project to mark the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-LeeThis current report is an analysis of opinions about the likely expansion of the Internet of Things (sometimes called the Cloud of Things), a catchall phrase for the array of devices, appliances, vehicles, wearable material, and sensor-laden parts of the environment that connect to each other and feed data back and forth. It covers the over 1,600 responses that were offered specifically about our question about where the Internet of Things would stand by the year 2025. The report is the next in a series of eight Pew Research and Elon University analyses to be issued this year in which experts will share their expectations about the future of such things as privacy, cybersecurity, and net neutrality. It includes some of the best and most provocative of the predictions survey respondents made when specifically asked to share their views about the evolution of embedded and wearable computing and the Internet of Things

Rethinking affordance

n/a – Critical survey essay retheorising the concept of 'affordance' in digital media context. Lead article in a special issue on the topic, co-edited by the authors for the journal Media Theory

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

The Emergent City (2007- 2017): Artistic explorations of the control and the ethics of data

The PhD by Published Works examines selected practice-based artworks made by the author - the artist Stanza - over a ten-year period. This thesis represents an opportunity to reflect back on a body of digital artworks after they have been made and to re-examine the artworks that were conducted through artistic practice-based research and to contextualise them in an academic framework. This PhD focuses on selected art projects made in the period 2007 to 2017 but are grounded in work under the title The Emergent City developed from the author's AHRC research fellowship at Goldsmiths College, University of London from 2006 to 2009. The research became an investigation into the ubiquity of real-time data within the city to create new media artworks. The practice resulted from technical investigations via sensor-based inquiry into real-time global observations currently employed via data harvesting technologies which cannot be separated from the artworks made and presented. This thesis discloses how, through practice-based research, these artworks contribute to the field of new media art by investigating real-time data flows, that simultaneously allow the meaning to be shifted, altered, parsed, and represented back to us, the audience, as art. Furthermore, and in context, the work incorporates inquiry into dataveillance , the smart city and the Internet of Things (IoT). The body of work The Emergent City incorporates research based digital artworks which are all in turn investigations into archives of these data that are controlled via bespoke online interfaces, which have been reformed and recounted into real-time experiences, as emergent artworks made by the author. The artworks are not only expressions of ideas that create a rich understanding of complex concepts of the contemporary issues of surveillance and privacy. They could also be described as technological demonstrators that cross multi-disciplinary boundaries, including art, computing and urban studies. Through numerous commissions, and research grants, these artworks have in common that they scrutinised the real-time city as a panoptic control system. Over twenty art projects (2007 - 2017) have been made using live real-time environmental data, surveillance and security data that have been presented and exhibited in various galleries worldwide from the Bruges Museum to the V&A and supported by numerous curators, which will be discussed. Finally, conclusions drawn at the end relate to the possibilities offered to artists by representing city environments with data and how artworks can enable us to critically reflect upon issues concerning surveillance through data-oriented new media artworks. The projects are all viewable online at www.stanza.co.uk where all these art projects are archived as online interfaces and online visualizations, as well as data-driven dynamic artworks in the form of large scale installations, or sculptural objects