metabolo.org - emergence

Wii Max Granu Boids gestural interface demo (featuring Howard Rheingold on Cooperation Theory)

gva — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:46:55 -0500

This performance demonstrates my evolving Wii-Max/MSP gestural interface prototype.

Beginning with Howard Rheingold's brilliant interview on cooperation theory, I used the Wii controller to manipulate audio with a granular synthesis patch, and filled the video track with flocking pixels based on Craig Reynold's famous Boids algorithm in an OpenGL Jitter implementation.

In performance I insert realtime video feeds of myself operating the wireless controller, grabbed from the onboard laptop cam. The purpose is to integrate my physical presence and gestures. This material may also be understood as a reference to Narcissus, whose reflected extension of himself was described by McLuhan as one of the first accounts of the narcotic effect of technology.

The demo was completed as part of my coursework for Master of Science degree with the Integrated Digital Media Institute, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn.

My approach to this project was roughly as follows:

The problem: prepare and present a five-min. audio/video performance using an external controller with a dataflow flow programming environment, namely Max/MSP/Jitter
Start with my previous WiiGrano_6 demo and extend it to include new functionality
Add Nunchuck controller to Wii remote setup for additional input control
Select jit.boids family of patches to modify and control for visuals (http://www.maxobjects.com/?v=objects&id_objet=3980)
Patch Nunchuck joystick, triggers and accelerometer data into boids patch
Select new audio sample material (Howard Rheingold on Cooperation Theory)
Optimize gestural control around interesting & sensitive feedback params.
Practice, record, and present integrated a/v performance

Are Designers the Enemy of Design?

gva — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:02:31 -0400

Patrick Keenan from The Movement sent me this provocative link, which underscores the arguments Bob Logan and I are making in the Designing for Emergence papers:

From Businessweek.com's
Nussbaum on Design column

March 18, 2007
Are Designers The Enemy Of Design?
Bruce Nussbaum

Here's the speech I gave at Parson's on Thursday that deals with the backlash against design. I've edited it just a bit. It's designed to provoke design management students and show how I've redesigned my job at Business Week from the Voice Of Authority to the Curator of the Conversation on Innovation. We all live life in beta now.
Are Designers The Enemy of Design?

In the name of provocation, let me start by saying that DESIGNERS SUCK. I’m sorry. It’s true. DESIGNERS SUCK. There’s a big backlash against design going on today and it’s because designers suck.

So let me tell you why. Designers suck because they are arrogant. The blogs and websites are full of designers shouting how awful it is that now, thanks to Macs, Web 2.0, even YouTube, EVERYONE is a designer. Core 77 recently ran an article on this backlash and so did we on our Innovation & Design site. Designers are saying that Design is everywhere, done by everyone. So Design is debased, eroded, insulted. The subtext, of course, is that Real design can only be done by great star designers.

This is simply not true. Design Democracy is the wave of the future. Exceptional design may only be done by great star designers. But the design of our music experiences, the design of our MySpace pages, the design of our blogs, the design of our clothes, the design of our online community chats, the design of our Class of ’95 brochures, the design of our screens, the design of the designs on our bodies?"We are all designing more of our lives. And with more and more tools, we, the masses, want to design anything that touches us on the journey, the big journey through life. People want to participate in the design of their lives. They insist on being part of the conversation about their lives....

Article continues... choose URL above for the full piece

“Theoretical Primer for Emergent Media” presented at Enterprise 2.0 event

gva — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 10:30:15 -0500

I'll be giving my Hyperpolis presentation and leading a discussion on the idea of "emergent media" as part of a Toronto event beginning 6:30 tonight at the Gladstone Hotel.

Hosted by Tom Purves, the gathering will feature speakers and general discussion on the idea of "Enterprise 2.0" The idea is to look beyond today's mostly consumer-oriented applications of "Web2.0" and "social media" and ask, What do these same technologies portend once they infiltrate the business world? How will these new media forms change everyday work, the structure of firms, and the way companies innovate?

The event has attracted a lot of interest from the Toronto area tech community who are plugged into these ideas, and has been scaled up from a smaller venue to the stately Gladstone.

For more information or to sign up for (free) attendance, visit this wiki: http://barcamp.org/Enterprise20Camp

Designing Systems with Emergent Behavior at BayCHI

gva — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 22:10:18 -0400

A recent Bay Area ACM SigCHI panel on "Designing Systems with Emergent Behavior" featured Tim Brown (IDEO), Peter Merholz (Adaptive Path), Larry Cornett (Yahoo), and Joy Mountford (Yahoo), and was moderated by Rashmi Sinha.

Peter Merholtz blogged his thoughts here: www.peterme.com/archives/000793.html

Core77 offers a rundown of the event here: http://www.core77.com/blog/events/design_for_emergent_systems_4821.asp#more

And the organization's event page is here: http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20061010/

“Designing for Emergence and Innovation: Redesigning Design” Accepted for Publication

gva — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:38:53 -0400

Along with my co-author, Robert K. Logan, I'm pleased to report our theoretical research paper "Designing for Emergence and Innovation: Redesigning Design" has been accepted for publication by the journal Artifact.

The reviewers said the paper makes a significant contribution and found it "challenging and thought provoking... I really enjoyed the acedemic style -- it got my brain cells working."

With editors from Copenhagen, Illinois and Indiana, Artifact is an international peer-reviewed academic journal targeted to researchers, practising designers, and manufacturers. It is focused on the vast changes that computers have brought to design.

"Artifact does not draw an artificial line between the virtual and the physical. It strives to illuminate the problems and possibilities of their interaction. The journal does not frame digital design as a design discipline such as industrial design or graphic communication, but assumes an open position. The aim of the journal is to promote transdisciplinary design research, encourage cross-fertilization, interconnections, and crossbreeding among different scientific disciplines, the design industry, and the arts."

Artifact's policy permits us to post our original paper online in advance of their official edit. Look for the original paper soon on the web site of the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity. (Or by request from gvanalstyne at faculty dot ocad dot ca).

Viewpoints Research Institute

gva — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 16:57:19 -0400

"Nonprofit organization dedicated to improving both general education and understanding of complex systems, especially through the use of new inventions in interactive constructive computing." Founders include Alan Kay.

Metabolism: The sum of all biochemical processes involved in life

gva — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:54:10 -0400

Definitions of "metabolism" from Answers.com

me·tab·o·lism
n.

1. The chemical processes occurring within a living cell or organism that are necessary for the maintenance of life. In metabolism some substances are broken down to yield energy for vital processes while other substances, necessary for life, are synthesized.

2. The processing of a specific substance within the living body: water metabolism; iodine metabolism.

[From Greek metabole, change, from metaballein, to change : meta-, meta- + ballein, to throw.]

Selected translations for: Metabolism

Dansk (Danish)
n. - metabolisme, stofskifte

Nederlands (Dutch)
metabolisme, stofwisseling

Français (French)
n. - métabolisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Metabolismus, Stoffwechsel

Italiano (Italian)
metabolismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - metabolismo (m)

Español (Spanish)
n. - metabolismo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - ämnesomsättning

Designing for Emergence at Harvard U

gva — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:30:37 -0400

Here's a Harvard University engineering and applied science graduate class that asks, "How do we engineer robust behavior from the cooperation of vast numbers of unreliable parts? Biology hints that there may be significant power to be achieved from building things out of cheap, imprecise parts with limited life."

CS 266: Biologically-inspired Distributed and Multi-agent Systems

Research topics include: swarm behaviors and robotics, amorphous computing and smart materials, reconfigurable robotics, immune-inspired systems, synthetic biology.

technorati tags:engineeringBlogged with Flock

What is the Beal Centre for Strategic Creativity?

gva — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 21:04:03 -0400

The stated mission of the Beal Centre for Strategic Creativity is: to enhance education with new methodologies in imaginative thinking; to contribute to the development of knowledge and economic wellbeing; and to explore new ways of improving the human condition.

Bruce Sterling’s Speech at ETech 2006

gva — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 20:59:04 -0400

This item links to the transcript -- or the script... not sure which -- of Bruce Sterling's speech at Emerging Technology 2006, San Diego, CA, March 2006. In the author's words, "Delivered at alpha-geek central, it may include indecipherable techie in-jokes. Well over 6,000 words. Includes illustrations." The audio, which is quintissentially Sterling and thus more fun to consume, is available at http://www.itconversations.com (keyword search for Sterling). [del.icio.us/gva]

Innovation vs. Invention

gva — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 20:48:00 -0400

I'm not so much interested in creativity, imagination, or invention on their own, but rather in how these can lead to new, useful ideas and systems in the world, i.e., in how a new design is adopted by large populations. In short, I'm interested in adoption. (There is a literature on the subject that goes by the name "diffusion studies" or "diffusion research" -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations)

In keeping with this idea I distinguish between invention and innovation. Invention signifies the moment when novelty arises, when something new is created. For example, Edison invents a light bulb. I do not apply the word "emergence" to this moment, because at this moment there is not yet a complex dynamic of adoption or diffusion in the picture.

I define innovation, on the other hand, to include a significant element of diffusion, adoption, or as Wikipedia calls it, implementation: "Innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved idea, good, service, process or practice that is intended to be useful." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation)

With this in mind, in my most recent research I am seeking to articulate a distinction between emergence and design in a way that recognizes the dynamics of emergence in the patterns of adoption (with less emphasis on the moment of invention).