twelve

All the clarity and confidence we had after last week disappeared today. I believe we failed to present our idea so that our teachers could understand. With our long discussions behind us our concept was clear and simple, but it was obvious only for us. We needed to simplify it, focus more around an object rather than an idea. Our old ideas still have contributed to our scenario and the world our new concept belongs in.

This is the last week of the blog and last weeks of uni for this semester. The subject has been good in the way that I have really opened my eyes for new ideas, products and how they might look in the future. The scenario assignment with the interviews was for me the most interesting one since you realised how different everyone thinks about the past present and creative future.

Eleven

Our group gathered around one common subject. We had all focused on social interaction in a future society. So this is where the discussions started off. It’s a broad subject but one of the members in my group had a great poster where one of the characters in his scenario was sick from a lack of direct socialising. I thought it was a great idea that we could work a lot around. Our discussion was quite intense since there is many directions we can choose and a lot of the readings are connected to this subject.

We decided to work from an idea of how people get to much information and how that gets tiring. Imagine if there was a stop button to make everything quiet and relaxed. We thought it was a great idea and the prototype will be easy to make. Good group – great ideas.

Where is the future?

Both the reading and lecture this week was discussing the phenomenon of artificial intelligence. Marie O’Mahony was our guest lecturer and spoke about what she thinks about the future of fabrics. She had a lot of interesting ideas and projects one that was already finished, Nikes heated surf Jacket – Hbomb.

For me fabric often means clothing products. So why are clothes an important part of the future? I believe that clothes are one of those few necessities that will stay with us for a long future. Not only does it keeps us warm but it is also (like it or not) an important part of defining who you are and what group you belong to, especially for young people.

A few of the ideas that Dr O’Mahony presented tried to replicate natural processes on an industrial level.
One of these was the Canadian biotechnology company Nexia who used the spider silk gene and implanted it in goats. The goats milk later contained spider silk protein, which could be used to create spider silk. The material is extremely strong and has in some small regions in Eastern Europe been used to cover wounds. The story tells that it even have connected with the skin. The future band-aid?

So in what way will the future combine artificial intelligence and fabric/clothing?

One interesting technology-based project was an idea of a fabric that could respond to your thoughts. Different thoughts and feelings would result in different colours or even patterns. Almost like an advanced mood ring. I thought this was an interesting idea and would be another step in identifying yourself to others but also as a social interaction.
But what if you made it work the other way around so that your dress responds to what other people think of you? It would make a direct social interaction even more direct. Your clothes could communicate thoughts and feelings even before you realised what you felt.

One thing that all the projects had in common where that the future fabric will not only be pretty, it will have a practical technology based function that makes it interact and communicate more with its surroundings.

Bubelle sensitive emotion dress, prototype made for Phillips.

Sci-fi scenario

In this weeks lecture and tutorial we discussed scenarios and the positive sides of using them. I’ve used scenarios once before but never to this extent. Helping us to understand how useful it can be we looked closer at the illustrator, industrial designer and set designer Syd Meads work.
Every painting he creates represents a new world the ethical, social and cultural values are all there. A small wall that borders a lake on a picture shows an over developed futuristic world and a piece of swim wear represents socialising and people still taking holidays and weekends. The social values are the most important and significant feature in a futuristic scenario. Therefore it’s easier creating scenarios of people’s weekends, and to see how they interact.
Scenarios must generate as many questions as they answer wich sometimes also can be easier to do through a picture rather then a text.

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So why are scenarios important for product development? For me there is no better answer than to try to create a scenario by yourself. Soon enough new inventions and ideas pop up everywhere. Revolutionary new solutions to old problems and combinations of old products to new ideas are born everywhere a scenario is built. But what is just sci-fi and what is a good idea? Maybe Mary- Anne Williams can answer that from last weeks lecture. She believed that no ideas are stupid and always worth trying and she quoted Einstein by saying “If an idea does not sound absurd, then there is no hope for it.”
Lets get to work.

Se more of Syd Meads work at:
http://www.sydmead.com/v/10/splash/

Eight

This week was reading week and the text was Down and out in the magic kingdom by Cory Doctrow. It was in a way a really teenage boy type of text but after reading it ideas from the book keeps on popping up in my head. What ifs and what nots and how my everyday would be different? Is the future moving in this direction? Will my great grand kids have it like this? The whole revolutionary idea of the society reminded me sometimes of George Orwells book 1984 although that idea is less technology and more politically based.
It’s a society where the memories are shaping the characters. In 1984 it is big brother who has “deleted” the history, in Down and out in the magic kingdom it’s the never ending life and time that have made people forget of times that’s been.
It was fun reading but in the end I see it more as a philosophical text rather than a technological idea based text. But then again – maybe this subject is more philosophical than technology based?

You need to believe in your idea!

The lecture today was interesting and inspiring. Dr Mary- Anne Williams and co. had ideas about everything and an attitude that no ideas are absurd and always worth trying.
The magic lab as they call themselves use programmed robots to make them run after an orange ball. It worked a little bit, but I’m sure it works better while in the right environment. They where competing in Robot Soccer World Cup which was played for the first time in 1997.

Vision: Beat the Human World Champions by 2050.
“By mid-21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win the soccer game, comply with the official rule of the FIFA, against the winner of the most recent
World Cup.”
(from Dr Mary-Anne Williams lecture)

The thought that we have discussed before in lectures about emotions and technology came straight to my mind. Do we want robots that can be better than us in sports and can they then be better than us in life?

The attitude that no idea is absurd is important while looking at future technology. I wish that I had it, but for me – robots beating humans in soccer by 2050? No. 2090? Maybe.
But the positive attitude is so important in order to keep a strong vision of future creative technology.

The Star Wars Clone troopers.

Things we know and don’t know – Learning from the old

Not many of us know much about building techniques, standards and architecture. But in the text Design futuring: sustainability ethics and new practice, the author Tony Fry tells us about the Yingzao Fashi. It’s a nearly one thousand year old book about building standards and architecture originally from China.

Tony fry looks closer on knowledge humans already have although a few of us don’t know about it. A lot of the knowledge in the book was lost and forgotten until the text was translated into a modern language. The book itself only contained a little bit of text but a lot of drawings and explanatory pictures. It is today seen as one of the most important architectural books ever put together.

Fry’s text looks at architectural examples, old and new and realises that in some cases the techniques have not changed a lot. In other examples we have used parts of an old technique to create new technologies.
I wonder how much hidden knowledge there is?

Detailed drawing from the Yingzao Fashi.

Five

Over the last few weeks our lectures have mainly been focusing on interaction. And it belongs with each other, technology is they’re to assist humans, and with allot of the everyday technology we need to be able to let them know what we want from them.

But there is also the emotional interaction, the one that works trough sound, light and movement. I really think that it could be used more in our everyday environment, especially in public environments. In public transport there’s often an enormous need for comfort improvement also schools, retirement homes, office buildings, – every place where people spent allot of time and where the environment rarely changes. Those are the true places that need some color movement and variety.

http://technabob.com/blog/2008/01/01/aperture-light-reactive-interactive-display/

This is a interactive wall was just a prototype but is such a good idea it was developed by Gunnar Green and Frederic Eyl. See the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWUEPBXyj2E&feature=player_embedded#

Re- Action Interaction!

Continuing on a little bit of the theme from week 3 – to feel technology, this week we where discussing technology interaction. Guest lecturer Dr Bongers showed various examples of different ideas and examples of what he calls interactivation. Since interactivation is such a broad subject the possibilities is only limited by your own creativity.
A lot of the reading this week was also focusing on these thoughts of how you best communicate, and sometimes provoke with the help of technology and its communication.
The author of the text David Rokeby explains himself as an interactive artist. He combines sounds, language, gestures, symbols and much more to interact with his audience. He is aiming to create “- a visual experience, a more immediate experience to make the audience feel more there”. (p27)

David Rokeby during very nervous system. http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/vns.html

-“The line between entertainment and everything else is getting very vague”
David Rokeby

In his text (chapter 2 The Construction of Experience: Interface as Content, in the book Digital Illusion: Entertaining the Future with High Technology by Clark Dodsworth, ACM Press 1998,p 27- 47) he is, amongst other questions, discussing how technological interaction shapes our “social fabric”.
He means that entertainment is a sort of illusion and when that mixes with the commercial world it results in a deception. In our today ongoing interaction with communication systems this will slowly weave it’s way in to our social fabric and redesign the way that we experience the world and each other.
So are we, the social fabric, from now on just a powerless small tool in a huge communication system? Where is the re- action in this interaction world?
Offcourse the “social fabric” has a great deal to say in how the commercial world acts, it’s we who respond to their communication. But it can be a fine line, and very hard to be objective when the final question remains – who controls who?

Fantastic.

– “Isn’t it fantastic? Here I sit in my kitchen and speak to you on the other side of the world”. This is what I hear every time I speak to my dear mother Ingrid in Sweden. Me, who pretty much belongs to the digital native generation see Skype more as a practical communication tool rather than a sci-fi invention.

This weeks guest lecturer Dr Greg Turner spoke about how Internet has changed the way we act and think etc. But also how we could, and should, bring Internet to a new level.

We had a look at a video clip from a lecture by Tim Berners-Lee the inventor of the World Wide Web. He wants everyone to use open data. Everything, even what’s not useful for you should be available for others to download. What’s useless for you could be just what someone else needs.

Today we think of Internet as an everyday communication tool, what we need to start doing is to use it to it’s full potential. Could open data be the next step? Maybe an open data native generation?