Experience Mobile Mobile from James Théophane Jnr on Vimeo.
Everyone experiences art differently, this is especially true for people in Canada who come from different cultural and economic backgrounds. While one can describe what they are thinking sometimes words cannot properly describe the topic at hand.
My idea for Harbourfront is an interactive video installation that has both physical and digital components. Presented in a stream of consciousness style the videos are designed to be culturally inclusive by not pertaining to a single language, medium or form. Similar the the language Esparanto these videos will try be an attempt at creating an universal language through art.
The videos will be a response to an experience at Harborfront, either, music concert, dance performance, or art exhibit. At each attraction there will be a scan life bar code. After signing up the user can contribute to the online video project and can subscribe to further updates. Once a visitor has experienced an event he or she will be encouraged to submit a direct response that will be added an online library, which can also be accessed from Harborfront’s web site.
The content of the response could be from the users personal image collection, a stock Harborfront archive, or from the physical installation at the centre. The physical part of the installation on the Harborfront site will consist of physical media such as a chalkboard, green screen with a mounted video camera, and an audio recorder. In addition to adding a different aesthetic to the content the installation will also allow people to for people without smart phones to contribute to the project. The videos and access to the project will also be published from the Harborfront Website. However once a person Finally, there will also be screens in selected locations playing the videos.
While I recognize that there is room for refinement and improvement I hope this installation will help people from all different cultures connect to new ideas and experiences at the World Routes Festival.
Well, my plans didn’t quite go how I wanted. As the time came to plan school schedules & budgeting, I simply no longer had the spark in me. This changed the moment the Games opened. I spent that first weekend with friends in Ottawa, watching the first few days of the Games on TV. The entire time, I was absolutely sick of kicking myself for not getting myself out there. As soon as our first gold medal came thanks to Alexandre Bilodeau, I knew I had to go.
This is where clever devices came into play. Within 24 hours of (somewhat drunkenly) saying “I’m going to Vancouver!!” I had already arranged my lodging with a friend at UBC, as well as booking my flight out, thanks to a great last-second deal through Air Canada. This was all done on my iPhone, without any computer booking or travel agent. I thought that was pretty cool.
Over the three days between my booking & departure, I began using my phone to do so much more than talk. Having the official Vancouver iPhone ap, I was able to check out what events were happening while I was there. I found a couple hockey games that I wanted to attend, & VANOC had an official fan-to-fan ticketing system, all accessible through my phone. Furthermore, Craigslist provided a huge aftermarket for ticket exchange. I used CL in Toronto to arrange ticket purchase & pickups, so when I landed, immediately after meeting my friend at my gate, I met a ticket vendor at another gate & picked up my first set of hockey tickets. It was pretty fun to be able to do that straight from my pocket.
This continued the whole week I was there. I was able to check ticket availability, event results & locate friends all through my phone on my standard data plan. Finding scalpers through our phones became fun, as my group of friends would all hit the listings & haggle until one of us got a guy down to the cheapest price. This got us great deals, even managing getting lower-than-face-value on sold-out tickets to more than one event. The official iPhone ap was very convenient when events went from scheduled preliminary or qualifying events to unscheduled semi-finals. We were able to check locations, times & results of these events, as no other media source was as up-to-date & accessible. Although there were some shortcomings, such as how to get from the suburbs to the Olympic cauldron via public transit, the ap was still a great tool to follow the greater Olympic spirit. There were many cultural & social events happening all over the city, which would have been fun to see through a clever device. I didn’t follow Twitter while I was there, but I can imagine that a lot of tweets would have covered the nightlife aspect. Through Facebook Mobile, I was able to track down where our Latvian contingency was gathered. Some local Latvians organized some events at bars, such as meeting up before our hockey games or watching our own Latvian skeleton slider Martins Dukurs claim a well-earned gold medal. Truly a special moment.
I came home with the biggest smile on my face & stories to tell for the rest of my life. Truly a spectacular, energetic & heart-warming experience. Clever devices did a big part in helping coordinate & facilitate the whole trip, which I thought was something I wanted to share.
I have been heavily influenced by the picture mash-ups that Molson’s did during the winter Olympics where people could send in their portraits to a website eventually becoming a large mural of Canada. I am thinking of some sort of collaborative effort about Canada’s identity, however, not only national identity but also the notion of identity and what creates one. The format is unclear at the moment but I would like to combine visual elements with mixed media and give Canadians a chance to openly discuss or express their ideas of identity. I envision some sort of ongoing project to that could be documented and maintained providing an open forum for expression. It could deal with Canada’s history, culture, topography etc.
Google already offers text translation services and voice recognition, and Franz Och, head of translation services, says that work has already begun on combining the two. The technology is definitely challenging because around the world, there are over 6000 languages being spoken, and only 52 are currently on offer through Google’s existing translation services. Translating languages accurately is no exception, and translating phrases rather than individual words correctly is something Google is progressing over the years. However, Google is pushing the limits on translation technology, and recently, it said it was working to combine its translation tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cell phone photo of a menu in German and get an instant English translation.
In a meeting at Google in 2004, the discussion turned to an e-mail message the company had received from a fan in South Korea. Sergey Brin, a Google founder, ran the message through an automatic translation service that the company had licensed.
The result read: “The sliced raw fish shoes it wishes. Google green onion thing!”
Brin said Google should be able to do better. Six years later, its free Google Translate service handles 52 languages, more than any similar system, and people use it hundreds of millions of times a week to translate Web pages and other text.
“What you see on Google Translate is state of the art” in computer translations that are not limited to a particular subject area, said Alon Lavie, an associate research professor in the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Google's efforts to expand beyond searching the Web have met with mixed success. Its digital books project has been hung up in court, and the introduction of its social network, Buzz, raised privacy fears. The pattern suggests that it can sometimes misstep when it tries to challenge business traditions and cultural conventions.
But Google's quick rise to the top echelons of the translation business is a reminder of what can happen when Google unleashes its brute-force computing power on complex problems.
The network of data centers that it built for Web searches may now be, when lashed together, the world's largest computer. Google is using that machine to push the limits on translation technology. Recently, for example, it said it was working to combine its translation tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cell phone photo of a menu in German and get an instant English translation.
“Machine translation is one of the best examples that shows Google's strategic vision,” said Tim O'Reilly, founder and chief executive of the technology publisher O'Reilly Media. “It is not something that anyone else is taking very seriously. But Google understands something about data that nobody else understands, and it is willing to make the investments necessary to tackle these kinds of complex problems ahead of the market.” (Read more)
This is a follow up to my post about the Murmur Project. As I was listening to the news on my way to school I learned about a new project similar, but not as location based. It is called the Toronto Museum Project and it began just last Saturday. In a nutshell it is a new interactive exhibit that allows people to explore and discover Toronto history through listening and reading people’s stories. Using a similar approach to Murmur, it uses storytelling as a platform for communication and education.
Evolving in 1975 from flight and military technology, Heads Up Displays (HUD for short) are moving towards becoming the standard in information streams. They were used a way for pilots to see flight information on their screen. They present the user information without the need for them to look away at any given point. HUD’s are now becoming part of cars (speed showing in the sightline of the windshield) and is evolving with augmented reality, like on the iPhone.
Technologies such as Augmented Reality allow users to look through their smart phone camera and see prices of food, nutritional are the evidence that this is already happening on a device level. There are even ski goggles that now display your speed and the conditions in the snow, putting the info right in your line of sight.
In the future, I see HUD's being engrained or possibly implanted into humans (almost as a body modification perhaps) that would allow us to essentially be walking information processors.
WALLPIXEL* is a custom interactive digital wall that allows you to control your decor and environment at the touch of a button; condensing all your lifestyle and media into one simple interface. It is the first generation of digital media wall interface which allows the seamless integration of all your disperate technology component interfaces into one large wall interface, complete with service plan and online updates from a centralized content/ software server. Traditionally, media servers are able to take all your media files, satellite tv signal, digital cable signal, satellite radio etc. and push it out as one output; a pc interface alows for multiple outputs in within a number of windows, but is not designed for handling and modulating data signals. The WallPixel interface makes this all possible.
TREND:
By 2015, the multiple forms of technological devices that we define ourselves with will move on to be integrated into a ‘device’ that has been with humanity since before electricity – the home. Yes, technological devices will be integrated into places that people inhabit. Technology changed when people’s lives became increasingly nomadic in their lives. In 2015, technology will be the anchor that makes the home a place of permanence and stability, a place to return to. Technology will be used to create “smart homes” that not only respond to the environment, but also to its inhabitants’ well-being. The integration of technology as one with the home simplifies the steadily increasing hectic lifestyle that people are adopting.
Skinput uses a bio-acoustic sensing array coupled with a wrist-mounted pico-projector to turn your skin into a touch-screen.
Finding the keypad on your cellphone or music player a bit cramped? Maybe your forearm could be more accommodating. It could become part of a skin-based interface that effectively turns your body into a touchscreen.
Called Skinput, the system is a marriage of two technologies: the ability to detect the ultralow-frequency sound produced by tapping the skin with a finger, and the microchip-sized "pico" projectors now found in some cellphones.
The system beams a keyboard or menu onto the user's forearm and hand from a projector housed in an armband. An acoustic detector, also in the armband, then calculates which part of the display you want to activate.
But how does the system know which icon, button or finger you tapped? Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, working with Dan Morris and Desney Tan at Microsoft's research lab in Redmond, Washington, exploit the way our skin, musculature and skeleton combine to make distinctive sounds when we tap on different parts of the arm, palm, fingers and thumb (see video).
“Ask me anything.” How many times in your life have you said these words? And under what circumstances? I’m picturing two people in a quiet room, the aphrodisiacal haze of trust and latent disclosure wreathing their heads like smoke from a post-coital cigarette. It’s an intimate statement, right?
Or it was until social media platform FORMSPRING.ME co-opted it as its tagline. A site for compulsive disclosers, a site for anyone who has ever felt like their online persona is barking into the void, Formspring.me puts you at the centre of a press conference while a scrum of anonymous askers plies you with unfiltered, unbridled questions about everything from “the most courageous thing you’ve ever done” to your feelings on video games or pet euthanasia. (First you have to tell everyone you know that you have a Formspring account – the easiest way by Facebook and/or Twitter. When they visit it, they will find an empty box into which they can type anything, anonymously.)
Does it feel good? Oh, you bet it does. As Gawker recently put it, Formspring is the “crack cocaine of oversharing.” For a few shining hours, you feel like the belle of the ball. A masquerade ball, where the concealed identities of your questioners make everything seem slightly risky and flirty, and therefore exciting.
Unlike YouTube commenters, a mosh pit of attention-hungry vulgarians whose mutual anonymity provokes cruel idiocy, the questioners on Formspring are most likely known to you, and so threaten to destabilize your social comfort with one diabolically worded question. You’re walking a razor’s edge: One moment it’s all flattery (someone is asking me to talk about my dreams!) and the next, it’s “show us your ta-tas.” The element of danger is perversely thrilling.
It’s a high that cuts across cultures: One day last week, a real-time Google search for Formspring.me turned up a poignant stream of pleas from around the globe. “Ask me anything!” rose the cry from the Philippines, Singapore, Brazil. But as Gawker points out, it’s a fast high; the very next day, the words “I forgot about Formspring” drifted up from the much slower live feed.
Of course, a successful Formspring experience depends on an interested public... and you'd start an account with the assumption that you are an interesting person.
My thoughts on the rise and popularity of the website remind me of what novelist Tom Wolfe put his finger on what was then a nascent trend, a new preoccupation with self-awareness, way back in the seventies, which he called the “Me Decade.”
And now? Well, we are in the Me-Me-Me Decade.
But the savvy attention to the needs of Me – we hired life coaches and professional shoppers, expected personal trainers to transform our bodies – has somehow led the individual to make an annoying assumption: The world is paying him specialized attention, ergo, the world wants to know what he’s doing now, how he feels, and whether his kid barfed up his breakfast. We seem to have an uncontrollable urge to emote, to share, to treat life as an Oprah-esque talk show.
It’s as if humanity – the Western part of it, anyway – is in a collective teenage moment. We are anxious to individuate, a tendency manifested in our obsession with social media, our relentless blogging about nothing. We want to be heard and seen. There seems to be a need for an online presence.
Yet we also make it easy for everyone to be the same. Everyone can have style, courtesy of mall-store versions of brand-name designers. Every home can have a bit of Martha. Everyone has access to the same information. Everyone sips from the same cup. It’s only natural that people would want to make clear how they are different and use their individual experience as a tiny protest against the mass embrace of values and products.
Well, maybe as we dive into 2010, we’re experiencing the crest of the Me wave. We can only hope. To put it in perspective, let me remind Net Gen types out there that while they may think that all their tech wizardry is revolutionizing the world (which, granted, it is), they are simply continuing a trend begun by that most annoyingly self-reverential generation, the Boomers. So, come on, think up something completely new, will ya?
I could be wrong, of course. You may love how the world has evolved. This tirade could just be about me.
Easy Money - Disruption
Since the 1950’s money has been rigidly controlled by longstanding organisations such as banks and credit companies. However, new technologies and developments threaten to upset this system, to disconnect money from the organisations that control its flow and put it into the hands of the individual.
Over the next five years money will come to be understood on a much more personal level. Microtransactions from person to person via mobile or other devices will become common, and new avenues for microtransactions will open themselves. The phenomenon of life-gaming will lead to the growing precedence of buy-in currency that can be used to make purchases in-game and thus can hold real-world value. By bypassing banks and credit companies, money can achieve an ease-of-travel and instantaneous nature never before seen. Small businesses and even individuals will be empowered with the access to a large base of consumers who no longer carry any physical currency.
Evidence:
· Technologies such as Square and TwitPay let people make microtransactions quickly, easily, and in a way that bypasses traditional infrastructure, processing fees and delays.
· The growing popularity and value of in-game currencies and “points” such as FarmVille Bucks, Gold (World of Warcraft), Microsoft Points.
o Controversy over “gold-mining” activities in games such as WOW and legal battles over the real financial value of virtual, in game goods. Many online currencies have unofficial but very real exchange rates with the US dollar.
· “There are more FarmVille accounts then Twitter accounts... you pay real money to get virtual money” Jesse Schell, Carnegie Melon
o See: http://gigaom.com/2010/02/22/video-reality-tv-iphone-the-future-of-technology-why-its-all-a-game/
· PayPal and Google recently opened to public development their commerce platforms, allowing for online purchases at a fraction of the traditional cost.
Opportunities:
· How might services such as PayPal, TwitPay, Square build off the growing use of in-game currency and the growing popularity of life-gaming such as FourSquare. What are new ways of making money off micro-transactions linked with games played as part of day to day life?
· How might cheap, infrastructure-free access to card-carrying customers empower small businesses and passionate individuals?
· What sort of new purchase/payment models can be created to take advantage of cheap, infrastructure-free and instantaneous transactions? Eg. iTunes and PayPal systems.
Kindred Spirits
Every day the world grows a little smaller, new tools and technologies come into existence that allow for the fostering of small communities with real-world pursuits. Building off the DIY Revolution (technology to manufacture and create quality custom goods now accessible to garage hobbyists), small communities can form and produce small batches of custom goods, designed to the interests of a particular niche.
New tools for collaboration are arising out of the need for like-minded people to meet and share ideas, resources and responsibilities. In 2015 small industries, not linked to geographic location but rather through shared interest and expertise will change the commercial landscape. New technologies will make it easy to meet and communicate, to create ideas and to then push those along to the point of a final product. New services will come into existence to allow small communities to get access to the tools and infrastructure they need to create and distribute products.
This trend emphasises the power of both the individual and the community. Large corporations can be bypassed and the niches otherwise missed can be filled. People can now pursue their passions and want to meet with like minded people.
Evidence
· Smart companies such as Apple, Google, Intel, Twitter, Facebook have opened their platforms to personal and community-based development. Twitter might not even exist anymore were it not for its openness to community development.
· The success of open-source projects such as Linux attest to the potential of a specialised, passionate community (remember, these people do it for free!).
· Companies such as Local Motors, creating a crowd-sourced car design sell their kits and access to workshops, appealing to a small but passionate niche market.
· Services such as Alibaba allow easy access to Chinese (and worldwide) manufacturers for small-medium batch production. Even includes built in translator.
· Services such as CrowdFunding and RocketHub let you meet investors, experts, and interested people to work with on a project.
Opportunities
· What might companies of the future look and operate like in a world with no traditional boundaries (location, language, etc)? What if companies worked like Wikipedia?
· How might this grow with the trend of Easy Money?
Ownership
Ownership over the content of our devices is always a disputed landscape. Large corporations tie up what we do & make with our devices into frozen contracts, such as End User License Agreements, Terms of Service & Copyright contracts. Many of these notions revolve around 20th century norms of copyright protection & profit sharing for sold material. Large corporations have become more and more scrutinized over what is seen and what can be seen on their devices, therefore they are limiting the creation & sharing of the content on their devices.
Countertrend
This is frustrating users more and more, pushing many to hack, modify or unlock their devices for the sole purpose of removing anyone’s hand from their pocket. This is a belief that the internet is a free platform for sharing, creating and collaborating rather than property to be subdivided amongst the largest corporations. This grounds-up movement is gaining momentum, and may soon topple the power of those who currently control internet and device content. The push and pull relationship between truly open devices and what seem to be will sway towards fully user controlled environments.
Evidence
· Not-for-profit organizations such as Creative Commons and Electronic Frontier Foundation are slowly getting exposure & use. Their presence on many of the internet’s largest creative spaces (such as Flickr and deviantART) offer users the protection and right to control what is okay to do with their creations.
· The world’s largest stores iTunes and Amazon have converted to DRM-free electronic content. Although dubious in intent, this proliferation of an open-ended purchase concept of electronic goods through the internet’s largest marketplaces is a good start.
Opportunities
· How might we promote the release of 100% open devices to large manufacturers?
· How might the internet’s “freedom fighters” garnish enough attention from the general public for them to become influential-enough representatives of user rights?
· How might legal contracts change to accept customer freedom while maintaining the rights of the creator?
· How might we make user-created content a viable business idea, so everyone gets a slice of the cake?
LifeSearching
As our mobile devices grow smarter, as more and more sensors are packed into them they will as a result offer new opportunities for interfacing with the world. As the price and power-issues of processing and advanced sensors drop new devices will be created with an ever greater ability to recognize and react to the world.
The “real world” will meet the “unreal” – the world of the internet, the cloud, and with these new technologies the two will in same ways merge to create a sort of hyperreality. A world where all of life can be associated to some sort of metadata, where your day to day interactions, everything you see and experienced can be indexed and referenced to a greater community and body of knowledge available online. In 5 years new devices will exist that will allow for the easy linking of the physical to the meta-physical, without the use of cumbersome technologies such as RF tags or QR codes.
Image recognition technologies, along with increased context-sensitivity (through the use of GPS and other sensors) will allow always-aware devices. Linked with an increasing amount of personal information we comfortably share online, our line personas will be inextricably linked to our real selves.
Evidence
· The new Microsoft phone and OS has a hardware search button on the phone. Microsoft recognises that the primary function of the device is as a portal to information. The phone also integrates feeds from social networks into your content and Photos, again emphasising the unification of real and online.
· Nokia has developed a radar system for mobile phones that allows them to sense the presence, speed and direction of objects nearby. This will allow them to recognise gestures and activity without the use of a camera.
· Great deal of research placed into context-sensitive advertising for mobile phones.
· Services such as Google Goggles and Recognizr allow users to identify objects, places and people with their phones camera and pull up relevant online searches. Recongizr links realtime a person with their online personas.
o See: http://www.tat.se/site/showroom/latest_design.html
· Google Latitude and Stalqr allow users to track friends through GPS
Opportunities
· How might new methods of advertising be created that target themselves relevant to context and moment in life?
· How might issues over privacy arise when we can no longer escape our online identities?
· How might this technology become even more powerful when linked with realtime media such as Google Realtime and Twitter feeds?
DIY Revolution - Disruptive
The cost of rapid prototypers, circuit-board printers, CNC machines and other technologies are making it easier and cheaper to produce small batches of specialised goods for niche and mass markets. As the price continues to drop these technologies will become accessible to almost anyone. Where traditionally the manufacturing of physical goods was limited to corporations and craftsmen, new industries can now come into existence with the capability of mass production with quality matching or exceeding that of larger companies.
Over the next 5 years, rapid prototyping will become cheaper, more accessible and more useful for batch production. Building off Easy Money and Kindred Spirits, new communities of interested individuals can form around the creation of physical goods, designed for their specific interests. As retail space in prime locations becomes cheaper due to the sagging economy, and with many laid-off workers taking to their passions the time is ripe for this technology. Also motivated by the economy are Chinese manufacturers, who are now more open to working with smaller batches, accepting PayPal (see: Easy Money) and communicating online.
These new technologies will allow the same sort of radical changes in business seen online to finally make their transition to the real world.
Evidence
· Rapid prototyping machines which 5 years ago cost over $125 000 have now dropped to the sub $1000 price range. A CNC can be built with crowd-sourced plans for the same price.
o See http://www.makerbot.com/, http://buildyourcnc.com/
· “The days of companies with names like “General Electric” ... are over. The money on the table is like krill: a billion little entrepreneurial opportunities that can be discovered and exploited by smart, creative people” Cory Doctorow, Makers
· Platforms like Arduino allow cheap access and easy development to programmable computers.
· Businesses like Etsy which deal in small-batch high quality goods have exploded, Etsy making over $200 million in sales last year.
· Services like Alibaba exist to connect small-scale manufacturers with Chinese factories. A $12 billion company with 45 million registered users.
Opportunities
· How might Toronto encourage the development of small businesses and companies?
· How might the creative crowdsourcing needed for these projects be encouraged and organised?
· How might we promote open-sourced digital media by starting with physical media?
There are 5, however we wanted to throw in a Wild Card trend. You know, just in case.
Travel-free society – wild card
With real-world applications of technology services increasing by the day, people are finding less reason to leave their homes. Online marketplaces are destroying real-world businesses and forcing competitors to jump on the bandwagon and alter their business-plans to align with e-commerce. Our need to leave our homes, villages or cities is becoming smaller and smaller as there is a variety of online services to cater to any of our desires. Urbanisation may become less attractive as we need fewer immediate, real-world services. Tourism may even decrease, as visiting a new place without leaving your living room is becoming more real and more engaging.
Business travel is becoming obsolete, as much of the trade interactions formerly done in person can be automated or bridged through the internet. Companies can become decentralized and don’t necessarily need any proximity to their suppliers, manufacturers or customers.
We will no longer need to leave our homes or businesses whatsoever.
Countertrend
The human’s desire for a physical connection to our partners and environments may forever supersede any online, electronic or technologic meetings & discoveries. Technology may facilitate these interactions, but human nature will forbid them from being replaced entirely.
