39 research outputs found
Pluralising critical technical practice
In this special issue, we turn to ideas of and approaches to critical technical practices (CTPs) as entry points to doing critique and doing things critically in digitally mediated cultures and societies. We explore the pluralisation of âcritical technical practiceâ, starting from its early formulations in the context of AI research and development (Agre, 1997a, 1997b) to the many ways in which it has resonated and been taken up by different publications, projects, groups, and communities of practice, and what is has come to mean. Agre defined CTP as a situational, practical, and constructive way of working: âa technical practice for which critical reflection upon the practice is part of the practice itselfâ (1997a: XII). Communities of practice in which the notion has been adopted, adapted, and put to use range from humanâcomputer interaction (HCI) to media art and pedagogy, from science and technology studies (STS) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) to digital humanities, media studies and data studies. This special issue affirms the pluralisation of CTP, and serves as an invitation to (re)consider what it means to use this notion drawing on a wider body of work, including beyond Agre. In this introduction, we review and discuss CTPs according to (1) Agre, (2) indexed research, and (3) contributors to this special issue. We conclude with some questions and considerations for those interested in working with this notion
The Prehistoric rock art of Morocco.
This study aims to examine all aspects of Moroccan rock art and place it in an archaeological and environmental context. Almost 300 sites are now known but few have been studied fully. This work is the first overall analysis to be attempted. Data on climatic changes during the Holocene period, together with archaeological and faunal reports, provided the necessary background to the rock art. The distribution of engraved and painted sites in Morocco is very uneven. Animals were the most frequent themes, but a review of all the sites revealed great site and subject diversity. Four main types of engravings were Identified, their Characteristics described and their distribution plotted. Climatic fluctuations, new animal species, the introduction of meth weapons, the chariot and writing established a chronological framework. A critical appraisal of these events led to a tentative chronology for Moroccan rock art, thought here to have started around 2500 be.
The situation of rock art sites showed that they were chosen for very specific reasons, some of them by nomadic pastoralists. Viewing rock art as a medium of communication, it was proposed that the images were messages defining territories, proclaiming ownership or commemorating heroes or battles. The images may have two levels of meaning: one easily understood by members of the group and by outsiders, the second, symbolic, less obviously comprehensible. Moroccan rock art was not an isolated phenomenon in north Africa. The rock art of Algeria, Libya and Mauritania showed both similarities and differences, IrnpMng a cultural link, albeit tenuous, between these countries. Available archaeological, environmental and rock art data revealed striking differences In information-availability between north and south Morocco. Archaeological research has established a chronologicaal nd cultural framework, in northern Morocco,to which rock art adds nothing. On the other hand, rock engravings of metal weapons are almost the only evidence of a Moroccan Bronze Age. In southern Morocco, the distribution of rock art sites reveals intensive
human activity in an area little known from excavation. Rock art, archaeology and environment are thus related in this study to producea comprehensive picture of the past
Interfaces with the Ineffable
In recent years, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) designers and researchers have shifted focus from a primary concern with procedural, generic, and task based applications to applications that address messy, personal, and aesthetic experiences. These difficult to formalize experiences, such as feelings of intimacy, spirituality, or a sense of place, are conceptualized as experiences of the ineffable. In this work, I use a reflective design practice to look at two primary approaches to designing interfaces with the ineffable, one emphasizes reduction and the other openness to interpretation. I discuss issues of control and reification that result from the reduction approach and develop the interpretation approach as a viable alternative requiring a re-thinking design and evaluation strategies and criteria. These issues and approaches are explored in detail through the development of two case studies. Case study one addresses the ineffable experience of art and presents a series of applications for interfacing with the ineffable in the art museum. Case study two details the ineffable experience of affect and presents a system designed for augmenting affective presence in an office environment. To further this work, I examine new thinking in both HCI and Communication for understanding every day interpretive acts and the implications for design. In addition, I advance reflective design as a new process based practice for the field of Communication
Exploring the Affective Loop
Research in psychology and neurology shows that both body and mind are
involved when experiencing emotions (Damasio 1994, Davidson et al.
2003). People are also very physical when they try to communicate their
emotions. Somewhere in between beings consciously and unconsciously
aware of it ourselves, we produce both verbal and physical signs to make
other people understand how we feel. Simultaneously, this production of
signs involves us in a stronger personal experience of the emotions we
express.
Emotions are also communicated in the digital world, but there is little
focus on users' personal as well as physical experience of emotions in
the available digital media. In order to explore whether and how we can
expand existing media, we have designed, implemented and evaluated
/eMoto/, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others. With
eMoto, we explicitly aim to address both cognitive and physical
experiences of human emotions. Through combining affective gestures for
input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and
animations for the background of messages, the interaction "pulls" the
user into an /affective loop/. In this thesis we define what we mean by
affective loop and present a user-centered design approach expressed
through four design principles inspired by previous work within Human
Computer Interaction (HCI) but adjusted to our purposes; /embodiment/
(Dourish 2001) as a means to address how people communicate emotions in
real life, /flow/ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) to reach a state of
involvement that goes further than the current context, /ambiguity/ of
the designed expressions (Gaver et al. 2003) to allow for open-ended
interpretation by the end-users instead of simplistic, one-emotion
one-expression pairs and /natural but designed expressions/ to address
people's natural couplings between cognitively and physically
experienced emotions. We also present results from an end-user study of
eMoto that indicates that subjects got both physically and emotionally
involved in the interaction and that the designed "openness" and
ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and understood by our
subjects. Through the user study, we identified four potential design
problems that have to be tackled in order to achieve an affective loop
effect; the extent to which users' /feel in control/ of the interaction,
/harmony and coherence/ between cognitive and physical expressions/,/
/timing/ of expressions and feedback in a communicational setting, and
effects of users' /personality/ on their emotional expressions and
experiences of the interaction