mdp
new ecology of things class, anti-homogenous
I just wrapped up my The New Ecology of Things class at Art Center’s Media Design Program. The class addressed the design of ubiquitous, massively networked systems – i.e. emerging ecologies of things. Our topic this term was “anti-homogenous” and we looked at heterogeneous alternatives to the mouse, keyboard, screen for specific work and play activities. This continues the idea mentioned in my Microsoft Future 2019 video post, where interactions should adapt to the type of activity, rather than the person adapting to the same type of interaction for every task. The 13 students designed and prototyped projects ranging from a special table for art directors to a lamp that receives and projects video messages from your friends. The projects addressed different affordances as well as the relationships between tangible, embodied things and their meta-data/meta-content. More details and links to project websites below the photos.
All projects are working interactive demos that use the Make Controller in combination with our NET Lab Toolkit (Pen & Book didn’t use the Make).
microsoft future 2019 – not so original
The Microsoft Office Labs Vision 2019 video recently shown at the Wharton Business Technology Conference, by Microsoft’s Business Division president Stephen Elop (text of speech), does a good job of showing potential modes of interacting with embedded and ubiquitous multi-touch displays. But how original is it? My students in Art Center College of Design’s graduate Media Design Program have been working on ideas like this for many years, and have made speculative videos like this, as well as working prototypes and real projects. See below for several examples, as well as some thoughts on where future interfaces should go – is Microsoft just proposing another version of windows?
Update: Behind the scenes of the making of the video
[flashvideo file=videos/msofficelabs2019.flv  image=videos/microsoftnews.jpg  width=600 height=400 /]
Microsoft Office Lab’s Vision 2019 video
MDP Alumni Sebastian Bettencourt’s Beyond The Fold Newspaper Project
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Here are links to several of my students’ past projects:
- 2004 – wall – scott nazarian, nikolai cornell
- 2005,2006 – mirror – in search of identity, infiniti interactive – nikolai cornell, phil van allen, others
- 2006 – interactive table – acura oracle – nikolai cornell, jonathan jarvis, phil van allen, others
- 2006 – handheld augmented reality – telepath – matt mcbride
- 2007 – e-paper newspaper – beyond the fold – sebastian bettencourt
Talk at USC – What is The New Ecology of Things?
On April 25th 2008, Anne Burdick (MDP Department Chair), Nik Hafermaas (Dean of Communication Design @ Art Center) and I gave a talk at the USCÂ Interactive Media Arts and Practice Program to discuss the MDP’s New Ecology of Things research initiative. This talk was webcast, and the web recording of it can be seen on Adobe’s education site.
Honda & GPJ donate multi-touch table to the Media Design Program
American Honda and George P. Johnson have donated one of their Oracle Multi-touch Tables to the Media Design Program. We now have it permanently in our graduate studio where it is available for faculty and students to develop new applications. In particular, we’re interested in exploring how large sets of text and image content can be explored in a collaborative way with multiple users.
The New Ecology of Things Publication
The Media Design Program’s new transmedia publication, The New Ecology of Things, is complete. The book, website, poster and mobile phone content address the design and educational issues related to ubiquitous computing and is an ecology of essays, glossary, forum, interactive works, video, and a short story by Bruce Sterling. You can order the book here: The New Ecology of Things (NET)
NET Lab Connect covered on coolhunting.com
My visit to the Maker Faire was briefly covered on coolhunting.com
