Geographic Visualization in Archaeology

Archaeologists are often considered frontrunners in employing spatial approaches within the social sciences and humanities, including geospatial technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) that are now routinely used in archaeology. Since the late 1980s, GIS has mainly been used to support data collection and management as well as spatial analysis and modeling. While fruitful, these efforts have arguably neglected the potential contribution of advanced visualization methods to the generation of broader archaeological knowledge. This paper reviews the use of GIS in archaeology from a geographic visualization (geovisual) perspective and examines how these methods can broaden the scope of archaeological research in an era of more user-friendly cyber-infrastructures. Like most computational databases, GIS do not easily support temporal data. This limitation is particularly problematic in archaeology because processes and events are best understood in space and time. To deal with such shortcomings in existing tools, archaeologists often end up having to reduce the diversity and complexity of archaeological phenomena. Recent developments in geographic visualization begin to address some of these issues, and are pertinent in the globalized world as archaeologists amass vast new bodies of geo-referenced information and work towards integrating them with traditional archaeological data. Greater effort in developing geovisualization and geovisual analytics appropriate for archaeological data can create opportunities to visualize, navigate and assess different sources of information within the larger archaeological community, thus enhancing possibilities for collaborative research and new forms of critical inquiry

Addressing Uncertainties in Complex Manufacturing Environments: A Multidisciplinary Approach

With the introduction of intelligent and autonomous systems into factory environments, workplaces where human employees work alongside digital counterparts will become increasingly informational. We develop a generic framework for hypothetical workplaces to investigate how complexities create to uncertainties. Complexity may be explained through the Level of Abstractions used to model a system, and it is encountered in its dynamic form as an alteration of information flow between agents in a phenomenological relationship. Analyzing these systems as ‘information flows’ brings to light the uncertainity(ies) the workers of the future will have to cope with. We develop first concepts that can be used to develop heuristics to manage these uncertainties in complex manufacturing environments. These heuristics may also be useful in creating optimized workplaces that combine the individual abilities of both humans and machines. The framework proposed in this paper may be subject for an empirical validation of these heuristics in the future

Addressing Uncertainties in Complex Manufacturing Environments: A Multidisciplinary Approach

With the introduction of intelligent and autonomous systems into factory environments, workplaces where human employees work alongside digital counterparts will become increasingly informational. We develop a generic framework for hypothetical workplaces to investigate how complexities create to uncertainties. Complexity may be explained through the Level of Abstractions used to model a system, and it is encountered in its dynamic form as an alteration of information flow between agents in a phenomenological relationship. Analyzing these systems as ‘information flows’ brings to light the uncertainity(ies) the workers of the future will have to cope with. We develop first concepts that can be used to develop heuristics to manage these uncertainties in complex manufacturing environments. These heuristics may also be useful in creating optimized workplaces that combine the individual abilities of both humans and machines. The framework proposed in this paper may be subject for an empirical validation of these heuristics in the future

Addressing Uncertainties in Complex Manufacturing Environments: A Multidisciplinary Approach

With the introduction of intelligent and autonomous systems into factory environments, workplaces where human employees work alongside digital counterparts will become increasingly informational. We develop a generic framework for hypothetical workplaces to investigate how complexities create to uncertainties. Complexity may be explained through the Level of Abstractions used to model a system, and it is encountered in its dynamic form as an alteration of information flow between agents in a phenomenological relationship. Analyzing these systems as ‘information flows’ brings to light the uncertainity(ies) the workers of the future will have to cope with. We develop first concepts that can be used to develop heuristics to manage these uncertainties in complex manufacturing environments. These heuristics may also be useful in creating optimized workplaces that combine the individual abilities of both humans and machines. The framework proposed in this paper may be subject for an empirical validation of these heuristics in the future

Connecting Remote Teams: Cross-Media Integration to Support Remote Informal Encounters

This video presents the Hello.Wall artefact in a mixedmedia set-up to support spontaneous, informal encounters in two remote lounge spaces of a distributed team. The Hello.Walls are used as awareness tools to know more about the remote team’s state and at the same time as a tool to smoothen transitions to place-based video communication among the remote teams ’ members. This connecting-remote-teams scenario was tested in a livinglab evaluation for several weeks and proved to foster remote informal encounters and thereby contributed to smooth and fluent project work in our Ambient-Agoras project. Keywords Ambient display, informative art, social architecture, awareness, cross-media integration, place-based video conferencing, distributed teams, interaction zone

Connecting Remote Teams: Cross-Media Integration to Support Remote Informal Encounters

This video presents the Hello.Wall artefact in a mixedmedia set-up to support spontaneous, informal encounters in two remote lounge spaces of a distributed team. The Hello.Walls are used as awareness tools to know more about the remote team’s state and at the same time as a tool to smoothen transitions to place-based video communication among the remote teams ’ members. This connecting-remote-teams scenario was tested in a livinglab evaluation for several weeks and proved to foster remote informal encounters and thereby contributed to smooth and fluent project work in our Ambient-Agoras project. Keywords Ambient display, informative art, social architecture, awareness, cross-media integration, place-based video conferencing, distributed teams, interaction zone

When Design Meets Intelligence: Incorporating Aesthetic Intelligence in Smart Spaces

This paper illustrates the motivation and objectives of the third international workshop on Aesthetic Intelligence. The workshop aims at bringing together researchers as well as industry practitioners from the fields of computer science, engineering, architecture, industrial and interface design to discuss ongoing research activities and emerging trends in the area of smart environments. A special focus of the workshop is on the role of aesthetic design for the acceptance and adoption of services in smart environments

When Design Meets Intelligence: Incorporating Aesthetic Intelligence in Smart Spaces

This paper illustrates the motivation and objectives of the third international workshop on Aesthetic Intelligence. The workshop aims at bringing together researchers as well as industry practitioners from the fields of computer science, engineering, architecture, industrial and interface design to discuss ongoing research activities and emerging trends in the area of smart environments. A special focus of the workshop is on the role of aesthetic design for the acceptance and adoption of services in smart environments

Hello.Wall – Beyond Ambient Displays

We present a ubiquitous computing environment that consists of the Hello.Wall in combination with ViewPorts. Hello.Wall is a new wall-sized ambient display [4,2] that emits information via light patterns and is considered informative art. As an integral part of the physical environment, Hello.Wall constitutes a seeding element of a social architectural space conveying awareness information and atmospheres in organizations or at specific places. The display is context-dependent by reflecting identity and distance of people passing by. Hello.Wall can "borrow" other artefacts in order to communicate more detailed information. These mobile devices are called ViewPorts. People can also further interact with the Hello.Wall using ViewPorts via integrated WaveLAN and RFID technology

Ambient Displays and Mobile Devices for the Creation of Social Architectural Spaces: Supporting Informal Communication and Social Awareness in Organizations

In this paper, we address three major issues, look at their interaction and combination and present our results on how to arrive at solutions for these issues. The issues are: 1) supporting informal communication and atmosphere in organisations, 2) the role and potential of ambient displays in future work environments, and 3) the combination of mostly static artefacts that are integrated in the architectural environment with mobile devices carried by people. Our results can be considered as steps towards the design and realization of what we call “social architectural spaces” in the context of future work environments. These environments will be populated with a range of different smart artefacts that are designed to facilitate awareness and notification as well as informal communication. We address a range of spaces in office buildings including public spaces, e.g., in the hallway, the foyer, and the cafeteria that have not been the focus of research so far. In particular, we present two artefacts: the Hello.Wall, a wall-size large ambient display, and the ViewPort, a mobile handheld device. They are interacting with each other via wireless networks and different types of sensing technology. The artefacts and the software were developed in the EU-funded “Disappearing Computer”- project “Ambient Agoras: Dynamic Information Clouds in a Hybrid Worlds”