Ruggero's Thesis

Hi, I'm Ruggero Castagnola. This blog covers the initial wide spectrum background research for my Interaction Design Master's thesis work on virtual places. Say hi here. IxD route, Iuav University of Venice.

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Digital Placemaking

Now that most people are online, or soon will be, we’ve got a whole new way of bringing people into the process, and we’ve embraced the potential of today’s 2.0 social media to enhance our existing Placemaking services. We refer to this as Digital Placemaking. It’s the integration of social media into Placemaking practices, which are community-centered, encouraging public participation, collaboration, and transparency.

PPS on Digital Placemaking

People look online first for everything, and communities are no exception.

digitalplacemaking.com's About

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Memories of being online

Kelly McCafferty's contribution to the project

Chat rooms, ScReEnNaMeS, AdultKing, cheat codes, Everquest, AOL/Rent essay writing contests. While the cultural forms we encounter on the internet are always changing, there was something palpably unique about the early web; for many of us, this is simply because we encountered it for the first time as adolescents. As many of the entries in When all of my friends are on at once detail, adolescent experiences online in the pre-mobile computing era were often alone, all-engrossing, and/or associated with some form of embarrassment.

When all of my friends are on at once: Memories of being online, organized by Gene McHugh, 48 artists. Article on Rhizome.org

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Christopher Alexander on digital technology

…What one would hope is that pieces of software make each person that encounters that software, more of a person. We’re all of us more capable of doing harm to other people by simply treating them or our transactions as something machine-like. That danger is right there at the core of it, and yet this very computer phenomenon also has the capacity to go to a much much richer place, that actually makes a person, man, woman, child, more humane and caring.

Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language quoted by PPS

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Can you see me now? (2003)

Along with Botfighters, Can You See Me Now? is one of the first location based games. Online players compete against members of Blast Theory on the streets. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory's runners appear online next to your player on a map of the city. On the streets, handheld computers showing the positions of online players guide the runners in tracking you down.

Can You See Me Now? by Blast Theory

"We think location-based entertainment and commerce will be the raison d'etre of the mobile Internet," said Unwired Factory CEO Anders Kjærsgaard Sørensen.

A Micheal Stroud article on Wired (2002)

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Super Mario in real life (2007)

In the early-mid 2000s I started building objects like the Counterstrike crates de_dust. It seemed like the next logical step. Will it look like this when virtuality bleeds into real life?! A lot of the works from that time inherit this question. Later this gesture of reenacting/rebuilding computer space became sort of a cultural 'mainstream' on the web. Just search for IRL Super Mario on Youtube. I’m not exactly sure how to put it but it feels like this was an era where we needed to reprocess the digitalization of society, a way to achieve 'post digital consciousness'. The gaming community was one of the first ones to go through this phase of awareness but for a big part of society the process is still going on.

says Aram Bartholl on Rhizome

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Landline

‘Landline’ is a city-based project that promotes the democratisation of the local voice within the context of the built environment it is affected by. This living archive gains agency through participation and has the potential to become a geo-located audio map of places within the city recounted democratically, and anonymously if the participants wish. Use it to record up to 3 minutes of audio about a space that affects you emotionally or physically. Use is to share an anecdote that needs to be heard. Then listen to what other people think of the spaces they inhabit every day. This is a creative city intervention that discusses the regions culture and current social stance.

Landline by Megan Smith, Michael Grant & Jean-Marc Le Blanc

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Subway Stories

“Subway Stories” is an interactive subway simulator exploring the inner-lives of commuters in New York City. [..] Using two basic handles, a user controls the position of the adjacent car from which the camera peers into the subway on screen. Passengers have accompanying thoughts and sounds that play when the camera is focused on them.

Alon Chitayat & Jeff Ong

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Female characters in Final Fantasy VI

A video essay using footage taken directly from the snes Final Fantasy 3 (US)/6 (Japan). The video deconstructs the game by displaying the trajectories of 2 of the only 3 playable female characters..in a game with 14 playable characters. The sheer lack of female representation in the game is less surprising (far fewer females reportedly played video games in 1994 than today) than the way they are represented. Both characters mention their desires to experience love nearly every time they speak (unlike male characters that do not need to mention it at all), and are introduced with "fallen woman" baggage. Despite their strengths and the plot focus around them, the two characters always remain projections of archetypal powerful-yet-victimized women.

Angela Washko

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Aram Bartholl's POV

Pic from Aram Bartholl's blog

But the virtual spaces we LIVED in, spend our precious youth in are like memories carved in stone, like a Mayan temple hidden in the jungle, like a faint tattoo but full of memories from the first day. They are way more transparent and clear to us, in their artificial complexity, than all the multi-generation airport sprawls we get lost in again and again.

Aram Bartholl's Artist Profile on Rhizome

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Google Earth flight simulator

Pic taken from GEBlog

You can fly around the globe in Google Earth using the flight simulator feature. This allows you to operate a simulated aircraft using either your mouse or another controller.

Google Earth flight simulator

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Bob Dylan Uses iPhone Geolocation App to Market New Album

So it's something of a surprise that Dylan is using a geolocation iPhone app to promote his latest album, Tempest. The Sound Graffiti app, which can be accessed at listentobobdylan.com (but only via your iPhone — you can't download it from a desktop computer), lets fans unlock free songs from the album when they visit various locations. For instance, 3012 West Cary St. in Richmond, Va., is the home of Plan 9 Records and 2000 4th Ave. in South Minneapolis, Minn., is another record store, Electric Fetus. Other locations, however, have special significance to Dylan, like the venue where he first played electric guitar on stage and where he broke into the folk scene.

App for Bob Dylan's Tempest

Article on The Creators Project

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Recalling 1993

[..] Agency and client have launched "Recalling 1993," offering a raw, unfiltered listen to what was going on around New York City 20 years ago. The campaign turns pay phones into geo-located time capsules—dial (855) FOR-1993 from any pay phone in Manhattan, and you will hear a personal account of what was going down in that particular area in 1993, a pivotal year in the city's history. The recordings offer memories of everything from the World Trade Center bombing in the Financial District to the club culture at Limelight in Chelsea to the opening of Angels in America in Midtown.

Droga5's Recalling 1993

Thanks to Manfredi Pumo

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Memory traces

The Mobile Experience Lab interviewed prominent 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation Italian American immigrants, including Mayor Menino, and produced 150 episodes that relay their memories. The Memory Traces site visualizes these stories overlaid on a map of the city. In addition to being geo-located, stories can be explored by person, time, period or theme. The mobile application lets users follow the stories as they travel through the city of Boston, blending digital storytelling with the physical urban environment.

MIT Mobile Experience Lab's Memory traces

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Dream Bubble Machine

A dark room with a raw, restless machine. It produces soap bubbles filled with smoke and projected images.

Dream Bubble Machine by Lorenz Potthast and Fabricius Seifert

What is interesting is the possibility of projecting onto a moving object as a small and temporary support, therefore allowing for a quick change of set.

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Sensing first

“Thinking is for doing” is a phrase popularized by social psychologist Susan Fiske. Her point (and William James’ when he commented similarly a century earlier) is that our brains exist first and last for creating physical actions. In fact, the brain is just the midpoint of the perception-action chain. The real action starts with our sensory systems. We see, smell, and feel, then we process those sensations for the purpose of choosing and executing our next move. Sensing never happens in a vacuum for its own sake. There’s always a physical purpose. [..]

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How performative architecture operates

The viewer activates (operates) an instrument (what the viewer has at hand) that in turn activates (builds) an architecture (what the viewer is in) that in turn activates (carries) a sign (what the viewer shows off): the viewer becomes the victim of a cultural sign which, however stays in existence only as long as the viewer works to keep the instrument going.

Vito Acconci (1981) quoted in Performative uses of space in mixed media environments by Giulio Jacucci and Ina Wagner

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Oyasami

With Oyasami, one sets the wake-up time. Once this is done, the clock suggests three sleeping times. Each of these is a sleep cycle of 90 minutes. Research reveals that if one sleeps within a sleep cycle there are more chances of a healthy night’s sleep. Oysami is wirelessly connected with Philips Hue so that when the sleep time approaches it gently starts to dim the lights of the room. One can skip this by interacting with it. Furthermore, one can also choose to be nudged to sleep with music.

Oyasami by Pierluigi Dalla Rosa, Neha Parekh and Shamik Ray