Nevertheless, the article is pretty interesting if you are interested in urban spaces and consumerism in general.

Some of the highlights of the article could be:

In the mall, one can simulate normal social life around the commodity−form, to which the place owes its existence in the first place.

The experiences offered for consumption must be reconcilable with the images of the brands
represented and with the image of the mall as brand zone. The mall, then, is a pseudo−public space or a gigantic private space.

The values of the shopping malls, their sedation of experience and their controllability, are also becoming the values of the city.

I consider myself a storyteller, people have a lot in common in the world. seeing the gaps between the people, language gap, ethnic gaps, sexually gaps, educational gaps. we use those gaps to make communities. make paintings, take photos are things that we do express, to find things in common. self-expression leaves foot steps with the new web technologies.

passive observation. it doesn’t directly ask people questions. people don’t know they are watched. you don’t have the interview’s paradox. anthropologists dilemma with talking to natives.

surveillance. youcan use survelliance to find beauty.[we feel fine]

[universe] ancient greek stories from skies. constellations. what would it be like if we draw constellations on the sky today? page metaphors doesn’t work anymore, storytelling becomes more important. graph and nodes and representation of those nodes in different shapes.

find a manner of presentation that suits into the content of the presentation. we feel fine, human qualities.

helps connect the presentation.

universe, it is more literal,
question start with the question.

how you can answer that question with getting data.

he does the sketching on paper, never used computer for experimentation. use it as a tool.

am I interested in building a tool? yes I am but it’s hard to build a tool that gives insight. he tries to stay away calling it science. storytelling, there is no synthesizers that bring blogs etc.

A revolutionary multi-player, multi-site game and arts space to be played across all five cities. Players use their own bodies to send balls of projected light across the playing space, aiming for goals representing the other cities. Entirely interactive, it’s a competition to see which city has the least light balls in their square when the time runs out. Designed to be aesthetically beautiful and great fun to play and watch, games are a minute long and run throughout the night. Just turn up and play, or get your team together in advance…

Link for the site.
Here is a google video of how people are playing it . It follows very basic rules and intuitive in that sense. 5 Courts was conceived, designed and programmed by digital media artists KMA (Kit Monkman & Tom Wexler).

Why do I blog this?
I think this piece is kind of important because of several points. First, it puts the user in its center and this is not only personal interaction, it becomes a collective set of action rules with opponents in other cities with the basic nature of the game. So the fun gets multiplied. Second, it uses cities as “castles” which might fit as a good example of urban computing application.

It talks about software systems like Jaiku’s which is based around the location of friends and family. One researcher from UCLA Danah Boyd puts a good alternative criticism of this information flooding:

“I worry that people attribute too deep a meaning to raw information,” said Danah Boyd, who researches social media at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

“An increased flow of information should not be confused with a deeper bond.”

Boyd stressed that this also applied to other social media that gather large amounts of personal information, like blogs or digital photo accounts.

“The situation these technologies create is similar to what happens with Angelina Jolie or another celebrity,” Boyd said. “Just because I know a lot about a person does not mean they will help me on a tough day.”

An added risk for the location-announcing services is that people might find themselves unable to break away from following friends or old lovers, Boyd added.

“The problem is that people really, really love stalking,” Boyd said. “When you have just ended a relationship, it is not necessarily healthy to follow the exact location of your ex- lover minute-by-minute on your phone.”

from wikipedia:

Grid Computing is an emerging computing model that provides the ability to perform higher throughput computing by taking advantage of many networked computers to model a virtual computer architecture that is able to distribute process execution across a parallel infrastructure. Grids use the resources of many separate computers connected by a network (usually the Internet) to solve large-scale computation problems.

Those concepts also going to seem to merge at an important point for of us all. That is trust.

Students will work on a two-part semester-long design project based on an information source of their choice. Basic programming or action-script skills are required.

The class will be conducted as a design studio with bi-monthly critiques. It will include some seminar discussions and guest visits by experts in the design profession.

All aspects of visual communication will be addressed, with an emphasis on typography, layout, color, and motion. Students need not have any formal design training, but should come with a particular interest in and commitment to honing their design skills.

It is looking great. For the first class we mostly talk about role of information in our lives. Here are the brief notes that I took: Impact of visualization is what we are going to cover in the class. Engagement is important, what form it can take is equally important.

Demetrie had a good point; Long term thinking of information visualization. We’re piling up all the database and it’s going to be really important how we use that data, reveal that data in different shapes.

Relentless design is a good design.
She wanted us to prepare a proposal for the next class about what we want to do in terms of visualization. Beside synthesizing piles of databases, I am also interested in connecting networks and visualization in a different context. Not only getting a big chunk of data and using it, but getting gradually expanding data from invisible devices that are put in our daily lives and getting data and visualizing them in an engaging manner. The examples I talked about the class are kind of the path I want to pursue.

• Information Design, 1st edition . Robert Jacobson, ed. ©MIT Press; ISBN: 0262600358
  A series of essays from a number of different fields on information design and interaction design. Some are excellent, some are misguided, but all are worth reading and arguing about.
• Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology Stephen Wilson ©MIT Press; ISBN: 026223209X. A fairly comprehensive overview of work bridging art and scientific and technological research in the recent past. Good reference of most of the major art/science collaborations of the last decade, and some interesting opinions on where art, science, technology, and critical theory meet, combine, and clash.
• Design Noir Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, ©2001, Princeton Architectural Press; ISBN: 3764365668

So, brief information, the class is all about using mechanical forces instead of using electricity to make our computers work. I am really excited about this since I do have a novice level of mechanical skills which I am hoping to improve over this semester. By help of this class of course.

Our first assignment is to build a pendulum clock. Gilad, Tikva and I shared the papers to be cutted and set a date for thursday to get together and start folding and gluing. It went pretty good, right now we are 70% finished the clock. Here are some pictures below:

Apart from the clock, we have another assignment which is to build a stirling engine. We bought most of the parts for this and hoping to start this in a couple of days since both assignments are for next week!

In the class we talked about how pendulums work, how pendulum clocks work according to that. Couple of things, since the weight on the pendulum is added some gravity which effects it over time, we have to wind the clock once in a while. Depending on the clock per se. Also the length of the pendulum is what decides the intervals of tiktak. We definitely see date, moon’s movement, AM/PM when loooking at clocks. Those are called complications. Caliber 89 is the world’s most complication-ed watch.

We also talked about how to generate power.

Aeolipile which is invented by hero of Alexandria is the first steam engine that’s known in the history.