Project Brief

Consider the role of the home in an age of radically hybridized space. Envisage a mixed reality domestic environment — a room, a landscape, a something else — created for an individual with very particular needs, desires, fears, pleasures, or obsessions.
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I failed to understand the value of research and fact as a catalyst for design until I spent 4 weeks running in neutral — rather than starting with fact I began by imagining a man who lives in a future-past and travels about collecting the bored technologies that have been discarded and disregarded by their caretakers. Visualizing this helped immensely with teasing out various outcomes within the project — the what if questions that emerged from the collages allowed me to begin untangling the narrative thread and play out my own obsessions: my love of the micro-world and my desire to understand the implications of present technologies on the future.





Utilizing drawing and research, I shed the written narrative from my project and focused on the iteration of the design. After researching various types of nanorobots and microrobots I became absorbed into the world of engineering and science and began grappling with the same issues that they do — what does it mean to live in a world where our technologies are so smart that they can reach boredom? With the fast approach of autonomous robotics, I can't help but wonder how we will tend to our own makings — is it our duty or responsibility to keep them from reaching boredom?

Asking these questions allowed for the emergence of a hybrid space— not quite a paddock, not quite a zoo — in which the parameters of the autonomous aerobot governed the shaping of the space. The first iterations look at the flight patterns of the microbots as part of a dynamic air-flow system that alters and challenges the flight of the bot so that it doesn't become accustom to or bored of a certain pace or rhythm.





Continuing to build on the technical drawings, I felt as though the re-entry of certain collage elements would help convey the experience of a person within the space. Bringing in the collage elements provided the opportunity to more closely consider the scale and experience within the space — would there be signage? What would the gamekeeper look like? Would there be a spectacle made of the flight of the bots [playing off the knowledge of the circus, the zoo, the carnival...].





The development of the project has resulted in an outcome that seeks to use the dynamic flight of the microbot in combination with technical drawing and collage to question and explore the possible future in which it is our duty to facilitate environments where we can tend and surveil the innate tendencies and habits of the microbots.


Personal Proposal

We know that increasing complexity [in robotics] may give rise to emergent behaviors not foreseen in the design of a machine.

What are the implications of emergent behaviors in machines? Better yet, what are the emergent behaviors of complex machines? As technology and scientists lend themselves to the creation of task specific robotics, we find ourselves immersed in a world of smart and potentially bored machines. Our exposure to smart technology causes a collective trust in an underlying system that increases efficiency and economy but also eliminates our abilities to be self-reliant. The insertion of smart technologies and robotics has crept into our habits without our having to reflect as a culture upon the humanization and self-reliant natures of robotics: the roomba murrs against the floorboard seeking out debris from the day, the surveillance crow watches over the neighborhood detecting moving masses, and the tiniest of nano robots continues to follow the life of a honeybee as it harvests the nectar from the burgeoning plant.

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology grapples with this issue in their online Nanotech Scenario Series in which they “produce scenarios of a near-future world in which exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing becomes a reality that illustrates the challenge of contending with the implications of advanced nanotechnology”. Gerardo Beni states further that the patterning of artificial intelligence adheres to “swarm intelligence, a concept for collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial”. Within the parameters of scientific speculation and documentation, what will become of robots that have outgrown their tasks and are left to their own devices, locked within a perpetual state of animation? With nanotechnologies’ ability to self-replicate and construct larger robots, I believe it is our duty to facilitate environments in which we can tend, curate and surveil the innate tendencies of the nano robots.

Lacking the ability to elegantly decay, nano robots are released from their tasks into an environment in which they have no choice but to continue “living”. Without socratic reason and empathetic capabilities, these smart technologies cannot be trusted to become “free-range”. When dissecting the individual capabilities of task oriented robots, what values govern our ways of tending to our creations? Do they have the rights to be treated as humans, animals, or machines? Who or what manages their inherent boredom? The project will utilize the existing constructions and experiences associated with exhibition venues [circus, zoo, electrocution chamber, etc] as a means for exploring a hybrid container for facilitating the continued animation of nano robots. I will focus on the spatial experience — what does it sound like? are the nano robots orchestrated in flight or more wild? do I pay in order to watch the nano robots complete tasks? can I interact with them through bodily connection or emission of certain electromagnetic frequencies? are they attracted to specific structures revealing their underlying idiosyncrasies? Through a series of static collages that combine technological specs with found imagery, I will craft the potential hybrid space in drawings, collages, and animation. The three together will illustrate a potential space of the aeronautical robot [just one type of nano robot], the interaction between human and machines as orchestrated by the space, and patterns of the nano robots in response to the various human provocations.



Reflection

This project exploration pushed me to ground myself in my explorations — for many projects, I tend to become lost in the beautiful fiction of it all. But, as Phil says, this isn't an MFA writing program. Acknowledging this, I chose to eliminate the traditional aspects of "telling a story" and allow for the work and the project proposal to speak for themselves. In a way, this was an entirely new way of making for me — and I think it pushed me to be more critical of my own work and the iterations I composed. One of the more valuable aspects of this project was learning how to make precise decisions surrounding a concept and accept that not all emergent questions need to be answered. Moving into my thesis year, many of the undertones and questions brought up from this project will undoubtedly reappear. The incorporation of science, technology, and user experience are the jumping off point for my personal explorations. I hope to maintain the ability to discount pure fiction in favor of scientific fiction in my own work.



Above images are the in-progress collages that will continue to develop over the summer.

Project Brief

When visiting places for colloquium, pay attention, notice, and observe. Find an element from the presentation and visit that sparks your interest and begin your project there.
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When visiting ATSAC, I couldn't help but laugh at how they perceived pedestrians — especially pedestrian walk times [seriously, I don't think the engineer/designer who came up with the time has ever tried to cross the street]. While dwelling on the city from a walker's point of view, I began to wonder about the infrastructure and patterns of the street-scape: a street-scape filled with various levels of surveillance.





My attention was drawn to the idea of the average person being able to use the roadways as he sees fit — cutting out the "car culture" and imagining a section of the city that has been turned into the safest area: pedestrians navigate the street-scape and varying modes of surveillance make sure we never walk too fast or disappear from the grid. A new city section that is decentralized and uses multiple nodes of communication to ensure the utmost surveillance for each individual.





Reflecting on surveillance as infrastructure as well as the rise in microchip trackers, I wanted to explore the new urban landscape for the Black City. What is a daily life in a place that has more than 14 types of surveillance active 24 hours per day? How much reliance is placed on these devices for insuring safety? And how much of the surveillance is about safety rather than economy of movement?





Taking the project further is something I would like to explore — dissecting the way one would navigate such a tightly surveilled city would allow for an in--depth study and application of emerging patterns within the cityscape. The integration of urban planning with surveillance infrastructure is something I find fascinating — especially when it becomes a question of scalability and effectiveness.

Project Brief

This term’s AMP Studio, Public Display, considered the way in which public spaces are now communication spaces. For the first half of the studio, we were conducting a research project. John Ryan and myself explored how public display might relate to staged spectacle, crowds, occupation, and temporary structures.

Project done in collaboration with John Ryan
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Initial Research

If the spectacle is central to garnering attention in today’s media-saturated world, what might we learn by comparing significant political protests and crowds from recent years, to the yard-stick of pop-culture assemblies?

Crowd as Spectacle began with a simple comparing of pop-culture images to political action images. While developing the project, we became intrigued by how much a title and description played a role in our understanding of the piece as a whole. For me, the part of the project that I wanted to explore was the value of art direction and copy and how it forms a relationship between the content and the viewer. What does it mean that the visual difference between Twilight midnight release and Occupy is non-existent?


It was asking that initial question that led us into a much more directed, specific break down of each event.

Location: The city and country where the event took place

Photograph: A photograph of the event/spectacle

Duration: The duration of the event during 2010/2011 and the duration of a larger movement, if relevant.

Coverage & Interest: Google searches for the event plotted against the number of times the event appeared in Google News stories

Hard/Soft Mapping: Mapping the hard/soft or permanent/temporary elements of each event

Demographics: The demographics of those present

Object as Medium: An object which became a key medium for expression

Audience: Attendance versus larger audience/supporters/movement

Driving Social Theory: The unifying social theory behind the event

Media Representation: How the event was represented in the Media

Catalyst: A key figure who acted as a catalyst for the event/spectacle

Sources: Sources for the information presented in this row


Download and view larger image from Scribd

The graphic was meant to be excessive, to be a spectacle itself. Each row allowed for an intensive reading of the particular event. I feel as though the research portion needed to be excessive in order to lead to a process/research driven project that examined the most miniscule of elements found within the trend graph of Occupy Wall Street. My interest with the peculiarities between pop and political movements only grew — which lead to Hype, Happening Project, the parallel emergent project that John and I used to further explore the concept of crowd design and the potential science behind the crowd as spectacle.

Project Brief

For this project, we were asked to create some physical output of the initial research we had engaged in, which examined how public spaces and crowd events are now communication spaces.

This project was completed in collaboration with John Ryan
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Following our initial line of inquiry from the Crowd as Spectacle project, John and I began exploring one instance on a trend graph from Occupy Wall Street. What did it mean that the hype of a non-existent public event occurred well before the broadcast? Hype is to be expected before a release of a book or movie, but before a political, grassroots movement? This line of inquiry quickly developed into a Vinn inspired diagram — one that visualized the moments before, during, and after an event — moments which Mimi Zeiger helped us express through the phrase "hype, happening, and broadcast".




My personal interest began to play out when the diagram went from a static state into a dynamic interface. What did it mean when the triangles could be reconfigured, resized, and manipulated? What sort of events would emerge when a triangle was turned upside down? When an event went missing? What does it mean for hype to be skewed and acute? For an event to be tiny bumps along an enormous landscape of continual eras?

Those question fueled my personal obsession with the project and paralleled the interest John had with the movements of crowds within a hard/soft landscape.


The questions that emerged from using the diagram as an interface was the start to a book. In a way, the development of the project led to our creation of a primer to what would be a science book that speaks to the possibilities behind crowd design and the blending of pop-culture crowds with political. For me, it was important that the incorporation of possibilities and speculative crowds emerge from our intense study — providing moments where the viewer could question what it would mean to stand in line for the new Chipotle opening while simultaneously protesting mass consumerism. The juxtaposition of events is what makes "hype, happening, broadcast" delightfully grotesque in its line of inquiry.

Combining my Hunger Games midnight showing excitement with my desire to participate in a rally for Women's rights is not something I could have imagined until the project became a form of interface.






Book Introduction
Inspired by similarities between images of political and pop-culture crowds, we moved beyond the media representations to the data associated with and generated by the crowds gathered at the events.

Following a strict mode of research, the concepts of Hype, Happening and Broadcast emerged from one small finding. Building on this, we hypothesized multiple combinations and permutations of this simple model which might suggest the structures and roles of crowds in current and speculative events and gatherings.



Political and Pop-Culture Case Studies
If the spectacle is central to garnering attention in today’s media saturated world, what might we learn by comparing significant political protests and crowds from recent years, to the yard-stick of pop-culture assemblies?



Urgency of Presence
This model of Hype, Happening and Broadcast is linked with an urgency of presence which seems to be an important factor in recent cultural and political phenomenon: physical presence and occupation-without-demands as exemplified in the Occupy and Arab Spring movements; the rise of Relational Aesthetics; the explosion of social networking and geolocation services.

Where has this urgency emerged from? What desires, affordances or restrictions have driven it? What will be the long term implications of this new multiplicity of publics and multiplicity of presences: virtual presence, physical presence, and media presence?



The Broadcast of Past Remembrances
As the world population grows, education relies primarily on the replaying of events that hold cultural and historical value. Though the arenas are empty, the town square is long forgotten, and the society is so far removed from the event itself—the spectacle remains, and echo of what once was, what is and what will continue to be.



The Event That Never Occurs
As youths we were all promised lives on Mars, the Moon, on giant Space Stations reminiscent of Deep Space Nine. And yet humanity continues to degrade the surface of the third planet. Every space shuttle launches into the depths of milky black with the eyes of the world watching, waiting, anticipating. A spectacle beyond belief, a spectacle gathering at an event that will never happen.

Reflection
This project is a tangent to my interest in speculative futures. When working with John, we each approached it in such different ways in order to bring together a cohesive understanding of our research outcome. To carry on this project would allow for me to really begin iterating on the meaning of the interface itself to see what sort of events could emerge when the triangles begin to shift and disappear. My fascination with collaging and coding could lead to the next step of the project. What if crowds could truly be designed and commodified? What if cities strove to make people move in crowds always. The landscape of the city would be composed of "hard" elements that controlled the shapes and sizes of gathering? What would the implications be of an emergent society that is perversely public? Though these questions ride on the tail of the larger project, I think that exploring it in finer detail and taking the speculations and working out the details until it becomes flat — the re-evaluating, find the oddity, and explore again. The cyclical pattern of the project [from small moment to large study back to small moment] is a technique I would like to keep using, especially with regard to research and grounded speculation. Oddly, this project has ties to my microbot project in which I explored speculative landscapes based on the control and consumption of bored technologies.

Though AMP studio is very based on the hard landscape controlling the malleable public it tied into my desire to create a hard landscape for the containment of the microbots in the Inquiry course. Both projects strongly relied on collaging and technical drawings [as well as obsessive] research in a process, iteration driven study.

Project Brief

Participants in this investigation will explore the role of design, technology, computation and social media as vehicles to mobilize community dialogue. Building on the emerging fields of computational journalism, citizen science and DIY technology students will design and deploy site specific interventions, networks and sense making systems to serve as vehicles to instigate and support community awareness, discourse and action. Emphasis will be placed on public presentation of projects and utilizing the diverse communities and geographies of Los Angeles as the locations for design exploration and intervention. Design artifacts, activities, spaces that act as resources for dialogue with community members as a catalyst for facilitate a community lead collective interest or initiative.
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Working in Koreatown, Los Angeles for 14 weeks was one of the more frustrating/enlightening experiences that I had as a designer to date. The project initially started out as an exploration of how space could be utilized, dynamically experienced, and ultimately changed to empower the pedestrian within the plaza: the project, however, veered from that path into a steadfast adventure with a core group of 5 Latino youth who played games in the plaza and explored the transient community alongside myself.





The initial games started out utilizing the tactic of delight. Creating a trail of illustrated tigers that represent a story someone had logged about the space on the internet. By merely using myself as a spectacle, I was able to garner the attention of many plaza inhabitants. While the tactic is widely used and obvious, it was the start to beginning a relationship to the space an the people within the space.

As I continued working at Wilshire/Western Plaza, I noticed that each week I could allow for the games to become more complex and involved. The working relationship I had with them was playful and didn't have the strain of a drawn out process — keeping the tone light when discussing what community means/could mean was essential to the continued relationship. A game of tiger find, framing the community, and community portraits highlighted different aspects of the transient community. The various degrees of involvement from the players translated into different levels of passive involvement from the non players. While a small family played the framing game, onlookers encouraged, helped, and followed along with the game despite not actively playing themselves.

Allowing for a non-threatening voice and presence within the space was part of the projects longevity. Utilizing a more aggressive tone with the project would have truncated its entirety. When stepping back to look at its meaning as a whole, I realize just how important it was to maintain a visual voice that appeared non-threatening despite the fact that I was choosing to highlight, expose, and play with the invisible boundaries of various authorities within the "public" space [TomTom's physical boundary mark, AT&T's vigilant brick pacer, the rotating LAPD bicycle officer, the metro police, etc].

Much of my work in the space corresponded directly to being physically present, but I also began to foster a digital environment that could collect the images/artifacts accrued from the adventures done with the community. The publicly driven blog provided a digital space where the community could have their voice [discuss a skateramp? a foodcart? upload conversations, thoughts, and pictures from the space]. The transition from physical to digital space is one of the most difficult to make, but I felt that having an outlet for communication was essential when discussing the power that a transient community could have within a space.



Reflection
The most important aspect of my work was not the whimsical tigers or the re-navigation of contested "public" space, but it was the development of a repertoire with the plaza occupants. Making small moves, showing up each week at the same time with the same hand-crafted suitcase, and using the same visual language took me from being someone who merely wants to run an exercise in the plaza to a person/designer genuinely interested in working alongside the public and creating tools to navigate contested space. This realization empowered me, it allowed for me to push forward as a designer and not seek to "enlighten" or "answer" for the Wilshire/Western community — they are comprised of many voices — but to craft tools of various implications so that they could take ownership of the space, pose questions themselves, and understand the boundaries that are not necessarily physical.

Though many weeks of this project filled me with desire for an a-ha! moment, it didn't come until I finally let go and allowed for the process to be the project. So often in this course I confronted questions of authority, intention, sustainability — all valuable questions that should be acknowledged — but questions that led me to think I needed one giant intervention. A moment of inarguable, "this will highlight to everyone the inner-workings of a transient community".

But that was not what the project needed to drive forward, the project had morphed into an adaptable process that could be picked up from the ground and pushed on by whomever chooses to use the tools.




The final proposal for the space went far beyond the potential of the Wilshire/Western Plaza and became a process that could be adopted by many transient communities who find themselves either without a voice or being spoken for by someone who is oblivious to the goings-on of the space. My aim was to work toward creating a document that could expose the needs and desires of a community that is never completely together and always being shuffled around by the rhythm of the passing trains/buses/cars/rail.

The proposal for a designed process of interactions/interventions can be facilitated by one and taken on by many. Much like my experience in Koreatown, it takes small moves and subtle gestures to begin building a body of work that can be used as a tool for conversation within a transient community. The proposal as a whole will question what the community legitimizes through its emergence. This same community that could emerge harkens back to the writings of Jane Jacobs who mentions the eyes on the street — those who peer down, not directly involved but actively watching. Whether authority or no, the implications of a rise in transient community will shake the existing structure from the bottom up — a refreshing change from the canon of top-down social infrastructures.

What are the potential outcomes by providing a voice to a non-place? While it is pleasant to think of taking ownership of one’s space, a very real alternative is the levels of authority restricting further the public’s use of the non-place as a community expression. Taking into consideration the opposing possibilities is key when using and developing the tools — but as a designer who believes in active presence and participation, these questions foster richer interactions and allow for conversations to emerge that go beyond the directly effected community and into the communities nested within and without.

Though seemingly unrelated to the other two courses I participated in this semester, I realized at the end just how related the outcome of Wilshire/Western was to my Inquiry and AMP courses. Wilshire/Western was very much about actively participating in a space and designing and iterating in public — which masked the underlying similarities. The tiger project was about playing something out from beginning to end — about picking at a single thread until an entire galaxy of issues begins to emerge with each tug at the thread. When tugging at AMP studio, the science of crowds emerged: when tugging at Design as Inquiry, intensive architectural sketches emerged questioning a future where robots could possibly have rights, and we could possibly live within the fossil of a future machine: when tugging at Wilshire/Western, an entire array of community authority and hidden hierarchies emerged. The agglomeration of iterations was essential into my seeing this pattern in my work: I do not let go of a path that I believe is taking me somewhere.

As I mentioned in my gateway, I know when to let something go — but just as importantly, I know when not to let go and to push on and stick to my guns. That mentality is what drove the Wilshire/Western project into a place where I grew as a designer. As Elizabeth said, I am confrontational like a hippy from the 70s — I walk up to the police and put a flower in the barrel of the gun and patiently wait and smile. Never have I had a project put me in the position where I was labeled confrontational. As a designer, I have often fallen back on the "I don't want to be seen, I just want to watch and have them interact with something". But the pulling at the string at Wilshire/Western pushed me to a new place — I called people out on their keeping of invisible, contested, consumer driven boundaries but did it with tiny, colorful tigers and family games.

Wilshire/Western was about embracing a tactic as well as acknowledging who I am in that space. Many times in class the issue came up for me about how to utilize specific tactics when engaging a public — answering this question involved me saying out loud "I am a young, white, female". Obvious. But this acknowledgement is invaluable to my critical reflection of myself in the project — I needed to know this, because it plays a role in why I had more agency in the space. I looked responsible, I appeared older than high school, I had illustrated tigers hat looked well made and not lazy: and I wish I had acknowledged this last semester.

Important note of reflection? Appearing non-threatening can be essentail when weaseling my way in public and should never be seen as a disadvantage unless I want it to.





If the project continued on in my own work, I would like to develop the process so that it could be taken to community boards. The questions asked from the process, to me, are essential in developing a voice for the desires of a transient non-space. Through re-mapping diagrams, dissection of rules, and example elements of each step, I could envision the project becoming a much broader discussion piece for people seeking agency within contested "public" spaces.

Brief
Develop a concept and scale for your Structures project. Use this to inform a 3D physical model that performs a further translation of some aspect of the project.

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Data Structures required following a path blindly into modes of making that were completely foreign to me, but, through this process, I acquired an interest for generative knitting.

The creation process involved four distinct steps:

1. Develop and categorize a collection
2. Translate the creation into an XML and CSV document
3. Take the data set and use it to generate processing
4. Create a structure (any scale) using the same conceptual driving force as the other three





When approaching this project, I took a small scale approach and categorized the things in my immediate surroundings based on which of my fears they could kill most efficiently. The exercise was a personal look into how I see the objects in my world. Even though I was given the opportunity to alter my collection, I decided to stick with the initial collection to see what sort of rigid structures could come from objects that had been categorized primarily through personal mythology.

When breaking down the objects for the XML document, I began to become even more attached to the categorizations of weapons than before. Because the categorization of items was so subjective, I had to be very rigid when working on the logic tree. This forced logic made me acutely aware of rules and systems—knowing why or how something is categorized drove the resulting categories of dying. I struggled when attempting to get away from such fiction—my project was teetering dangerously on the edge of complete fiction and was lacking an edge of commentary.





The processing sketches were an attempt at finding a line of inquiry. What if I brought the user into my mythology and allowed them to see killing as an abstract element in system design? Through creating a series of similar sketches, I wanted to focus on the minor differences to draw out just how similar my objects were as weapons of destruction. Why is a love letter a better weapon to slice with than the edge of a bobby-pin? Though it seems asinine, the distinction needed to be made in order to develop the system.

Despite this need for specificity, I found that by attempting to separate the objects rather than group them hurt my project. It wasn't until the final iteration of making a structure that I felt as though the concept of "bands of weaponry" began to reemerge. By eliminating the desire to make something completely specific, I was able to expand out and look at the concept as a whole piece. What interested me about my project to begin with was the connections of the weaponry and the ability of mythology to have gaps where information has not yet been decided. Somewhere along the way I had lost my line of inquiry and didn't get it back until the final iteration. While re-orienting my project, I came back to different types of codes and processing and felt that dealing with a nano scale expression of my objects would bring me to a more interesting line of inquiry.





My initial attempt still erred on the side of too specific and fictional—but from the dimensional sketch of the "synapse destroyer" I finally pulled back and looked at an entire system/infrastructure of these dimensional objects. Then, utilizing processing, I translated that sketch into a knitting pattern that could actually accommodate the death and gaps that exist within a mythological system.

If I could take the project further, I would follow this new line of interest and utilize processing in combination with the knitting craft to create a broader understanding of the system of processing and how we understand and comprehend complex data structures. Much of this inspiration is also taken from the parabolic coral that was crocheted allowing for an understanding of complex geometries. The ability to design objects that allow for understandings of complex systems is the great takeaway I had from the project as a whole.

Brief
Our introduction to the Media Design Program involved a tour exploring L.A.‘s infrastructure, specifically the Port of Los Angeles and One Wilshire (one of the West Coast’s primary carrier hotels). Following the trip, we had a 48-charette in which to create a public interface to an aspect of L.A.‘s infrastructure.

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The semester Kick-Off Charette submerged me into a world of systems and movement. Starting at the Port of LA, we got the opportunity to watch some of the largest carriers load up to take shipments across the ocean—but never to worry, we also got to witness the beautiful mess of One Wilshire. A place where running with scissors and accidentally snipping a wire could shut down communications between the US and overseas.

The significance of these systems did not fall on deaf ears. My team and I were absolutely amazed at just how fragile the communication systems were: at the sheer ease of shutting down all communication with parts of the world—as well as parts of the country.





Our project focused on the fragility of communication by projecting a not so distant future in which humans become the data carriers. A select handful of people apply to be trained as a carrier—allowing their personal desires and interests to become their knowledge bases which they share with their owners. While data carriers are going to be able to provide you information, band width, and a more solid sense of access, they are still human. How far are we willing to go as a society to remain connected? Would we go as far as to train up generations to serve as pods of information? Would we willingly sacrifice a few years of our own lives to serve the greater ideals of connectivity and knowledge sharing? The 48 hours of development drove the project into this line of questioning and took the form of a fictional comapny, Huma. Huma predicts that this future isn't so bad—because hey, the retirement benefits are great.




Brief
The results of the bus tour charrette project were conceptually exciting and full of potential. For this relatively brief first project, we are now asking you to develop and refine these ideas. Each team must materialize at least one aspect of your project and engage in additional research to clarify, inform, and ground the development of your ideas.

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When looking at our project again, we felt it would be beneficial to imagine the larger projection of this idea. Just what would the history of time look like if Humans became the primary information carriers...yet again? Is history bound to repeat itself? As a team we dug through the history books to find common links that parallel current society. It feels like not too long ago when the tradition of guilds and passing of stories was the primary way to learn—could we return as a society to that ideal?





For our projected cosmology, the answer is yes. There is a possibility that some of the older traditions will re-emerge within the body of newer technologies. There are simply things that people are capable of that some machines are not. Looking into this idea, we created an alternate history timeline, a new urban plan, and a micro-scale of a knowledge economy. We, as a team, predict that knowledge will become community based—that the integration between the human and the subject will become so integrated, so ingrained, that it will be absolutely necessary for the person to live, breathe, and obsess over their craft. To keep the ball rolling, this idea will greatly effect the way that urban scales morph. No longer will the idea of suburbs be effective—because the city as a whole will disintegrate into pods of people with specific lines of study.

Starting off the semester with a project that could develop into an entirely imagined cosmology is as terrifying as it is exciting. If the project were to go further, I would imagine multiplying the project so that it has greater gravity—making a statement on the cyclical nature of world history and imagining the possible events and outcomes that will emerge as history turns back on itself.

Team: John Ryan, Gregorio Ahn, & Betsy Kalven

Brief
Select a news story that either describes an idiosyncratic individual or a very specific condition for which a small number of people would have to adapt. Create an object that is adapted in a highly specific way to the idiosyncratic conditions of the life or situation depicted in the news story. The final presentation will be a one minute film that represents your object in everyday use.

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Personal Effects started as an exploration into the realm of okie noodling. Drawing inspiration from the event itself, I used the project to think about a device that could create the experience for someone who wanted to feel the same stress, anxiety, and excitement of the event without necessarily going noodling.





The process of researching the event led me to research the human body and its varying systems, athletic garments, as well as the world of S & M. All three of these worlds are very important in the evaluation of my work because I need to position myself with them since my work strongly references elements from all of them. To help me in this process, I decided to write about the character who embodies this device. Through the writing I was able to understand aspects of the device that I didn't notice when I was merely making the contraption.





The story of Frank explored three primary parts of the contraption: the desire, the ritual, and the fetish. With the character, I began to develop a stronger idea of what sort of system could arise from a device and a story. To complete the project, I needed to make a video that told the story of the device. Where my video failed was when it came to contextualizing the piece. The focus of the minute chosen was the fetish that drives the desire to be one with the device: the strong feelings that are evoked by wanting to use it, be near it, and feel the exhileration. I wanted to express the ritual behind the device: a ritual that also involves a person who has started to fetishize a life alongside the object.

If I were able to take the video further, I would start exploring a longer time frame and add back in elements of the narrative that had been lost.



Fortunately, I had Week X to expand my concept further. While I had originally planned to take the week to remake the video, I decided to go a different route and really focus on what it was about the project that inspired and exited me: how was I going to use this project as a catalyst to a larger question or idea? I needed to continue exploring the devices that I had started to think about for Authoring Critical Media. The ability to closely integrate the narrative to the device was something that had sparked larger ideas of systems and structures which could govern a person's use of the device. Primarily focused on the multiplicity of the system, I felt strongly about thinking about the details of the use of a device.




Week X: Empathetic Attachments

Empathetic Attachments are sensory devices that
create intense emotive and physical responses for the user. Inspired by individuals who catch fish with their upper limbs, the system is designed to allow people to
experience the stress, pain, and anticipation of the event. As the project progressed, it morphed into an exploration of empathetic moments created through a device—moments that may not be felt otherwise.

Though the attachment is a system within itself, it is a
part of a broader scheme in which there are multiple devices used within a network of individuals desiring to experience sensory responses beyond ordinary.

The heavy form rises from the angularity of the human bone while the tensile portions respond to the sinuous trails of the nervous system. The integrated forms
manipulate the body while evoking emotion through subtle alterations of blood flow, pressure, and tension.

And so Elizabeth came about. Elizabeth is a character who knits for 16 hours a day, every day of every week. At one point, the yarn would sing in her hand, the texture running smoothly against her palm, but, with the over-exposure, she began to lose feeling, to lose her ability to sense the colors and textures of the wool. Elizabeth decides to get a device to allow her to feel the color of the yarn again, to have the sense return to her again—but as with all benefits to the senses, one sense must be sacrificed: and so Elizabeth donned on her devices and lost her sense of sight...

I spent the week researching the idea of the device being a part of a larger system. A system where there are rules and consequence to the use of the device. This take on the project pushed me forward as a designer. Changing the scale of how I evaluate myself and the level of questioning I use to discover gives me more push and pull with my own interests—providing the opportunity to explore my interests about our exposure to the everyday and how every moment has the opportunity to become something extraordinary.

Brief
Use combinations of high- and low-tech objects, materials and devices to create three site-specific interactive interventions in everyday places in and around Art Center.

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How do you dispense things to a community that is on the move? What sort of questions, interactions, or statements can serve as probes when knowing transient communities?

Digital Story time was at first an epic failure. And quite possibly the most difficult of the three for my team and I to work with—we went through many iterations until we decided to use social media and dozens of branded boxes to help us on the knowing journey.


Iterations
The initial reaction to the dispenser prompt was to attach hundreds of business sized cards on each seat around the Metro Goldline—hoping that this process would allow people to interact and engage with the pieces that had travel quotes and fortunes (fig. 01).

This experiment was a one-liner: poetic, yes, but completely lacking in sharpness and personal interest. By getting the iteration out of our system, our team was able to figure out exactly how we wanted to interpret dispenser—and where we felt it fit best with our personal lines of inquiry. My line of inquiry lying in community story telling and dialogues within transient spaces.


The second iteration (fig. 02, 03) is where we re-incorporated our love of story time. As a team we created a “Goldline Girl” and a “Goldline Guy” persona—each persona having seen the love of their life on the train...but having just missed them. Playing off of the “missed-connections” fad on craigslist, we had hoped that the study would lead to rich territory of participatory narratives. Would train riders respond to us? Email our accounts with their own missed connection? Could we develop an ongoing tête-à-tête? A few riders responded, but from the interaction as a whole we learned that people are more eager to be outsiders watching the play than participants on the stage—an idea that later influenced our other project, Personal Perimeter Patrol.


The Evolution
From the many failed experiments, we at last rested on dozens of boxes that were unleashed upon Hillside campus on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Utilizing Twitter and Facebook, we notified students that the boxes were coming back and to prepare stories to give to us—then the stories would be posted on the Facebook wall and shared with the entire Art Center community.


The boxes were simple cardboard boxes with the ACCD Digital Stories logo adhered to the outside. Each box was provided with a set of 20 cards that included a five to six word prompt, a twitter handle, and a Facebook URL. The familiarity of seeing a suggestion box (especially on a campus) is something that we took advantage of when deciding on a form for Digital Stories. The mere act of putting a logo on a cardboard box elevated it to a "legitimate container". From multiple iterations we learned that the smallest of changes and references to the familiar allow for people to suspend their disbelief and play along with the system.

After going through the iterations and leaving the boxes out (unattended) overnight—we began to see how people really interacted with the story receptacles. People took ownership of the system and began to write their own prompts, source other paper for material, and write back to "the keepers of the boxes". If the project could continue on—I would be most interested in picking up the idea of the "keepers of the boxes". The guaranteed anonymity of submitting a nameless paper into a box that appears to have no owner provides a new interface through which students can communicate. So much of our current administrative communication system involves emails that can be trailed back and archived—with paper, information and thought is fragile, it can disappear as quickly as it appeared. To continue the project would mean further exploring a "story time" interface which could serve as a platform for temporal communication—going beyond non-sensical diddies and delving into the broader idea of communication interfaces in public space.

Concept Year: Term 1
Team: JiSu Choi & John Ryan

Brief
This project involved selecting two places for study: a physical non-place in LA, and a virtual space. Visit each and employ survey techniques and high- or low-tech tools to ‘zoom in’ and find evidence of human existence and effect. Organize and analyze your collected materials.

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My digital non-space, Dissipating Beats, was an exploration into the collective iTunes library of train car 743A.





The specificity of the train car allowed for me to iterate many times on how to "hear" the iTunes on the train. The first exploration was direct: "what are you listening to?" , "cool". Then I would write it down and associate it to a seat and a stop. This method of exploration was empty in potential and empty with regard to my personal interest.





When I began investigating the "left over" sound of a train car occupant, I learned more about the space and how its use could be reinterpreted by simply collecting and associating data. Would people want to sit in a seat if it had a collectively higher tempo? Or would I want the 4/4 seat to keep my day even and calm? By moving around the train to sit next to people who were tuned in, I began a collection of data that paralleled my physical non-space. This collection is something I still have on the back burner—the observational qualities of the data have me interested in the next step. What would happen if I were to actually begin revealing the qualities of the seats? Would the space adapt to the additional layer of information? The sampling strategies of knowing a digital non-space gave me a new lens to look through. The lens has become a tool for how I explore other projects—allowing time, repeated visits, and observation to create potential opportunities for design proposals.