The World Is My Interactive Interface: November 2010

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Call for Participation - Large Displays in Urban Life: From Exhibition Halls to Media Facades (CHI 2011 Workshop)

Large Displays in Urban Life: From Exhibition Halls to Media Facades
CHI 2010 Workshop May 7 or 8, 2011 (final date to be announced)

Call for Participation
Large interactive displays are now common in public urban life. Museums, libraries, public plazas, and architectural facades already take advantage of interactive technologies for visual and interactive information presentation. Researchers and practitioners from such varied disciplines as art, architecture, design, HCI, and media theory have started to explore the potential and impact of large display installations in public urban settings.

This workshop aims to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners from different disciplines such as art, architecture, design, HCI, social sciences, and media theory to exchange insights on current research questions in the area. The workshop will focus on to the following topics: how to design large interactive display installations that promote engaging experiences and go beyond playful interaction, how different interaction models shape people’s experience in urban spaces, and how to evaluate their impact.

Workshop Goals & Topics
The goal of this one-day CHI 2011 workshop is to cross-fertilize insights from different disciplines, to establish a more general understanding of large interactive displays in public urban contexts, and to develop an agenda for future research directions in this area. Rather than focusing on paper presentations, this workshop aims to trigger active and dynamic group discussions around the following topics:

Beyond Playful Interaction
A number of studies found that large display installations invite for playful interaction but often fail to convey meaningful experiences related to content. This raises the following questions:

How can we design installations that endure people’s attention past the initial novelty effect and direct the interest toward the content?
What design strategies can be applied to promote an active individual and social exploration and discussion of the presented information?

Character of Interaction
A number of interaction techniques have been explored for large displays in public spaces ranging from interaction via cell phones, to direct-touch or full body interaction. We would like to discuss:

How do different interaction methods shape people’s experience of large display installations in urban spaces?
How do interaction methods differ from each other in terms of triggering interaction and engagement with the presented content?

Evaluation
Different quantitative and qualitative methods have been applied to evaluate people’s experience and use of large display installations in public spaces. During the workshop we would like to discuss:

How can we evaluate the "success" of large display installations in urban spaces?
How can particular aspects of public large display installations such as engagement be evaluated?
What kind of evaluation methods are most effective in different progress stages (design phase/installment phase)?

We see this workshop as an opportunity to start thinking about a general framework that can inform the design and evaluation of large interactive displays in different urban contexts. With a diverse research community present at the workshop we hope to come up with an agenda for future research directions in this area.

For more details on the workshop please refer to our extended abstract and workshop proposal.

Submission Details
Submit a position paper (maximum 4 pages) to largedisplaysinurbanlife@gmail.com by January 14, 2011 using the CHI extended abstract format. The paper should describe experiences, works in progress, or theories around designing and/or evaluating large interactive displays in public urban settings. We plan to explore approaches and insights from different disciplines to this topic so submissions from art, architecture, design, HCI, media theory, and social science are highly encouraged. We welcome all methodological approaches and techniques centered around the topic of large interactive displays in urban life.

At least one author of each accepted position paper needs to register for the workshop and for one or more days of the CHI conference itself.
Important Dates
Submission Deadline: January 14, 2011
Notification of acceptance: February 11, 2011
Workshop: May 7 or 8, 2011 (final date to be announced)

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
Uta Hinrichs is a PhD candidate in computational media design at the Innovations in Visualization (InnoVis) research group of the University of Calgary, Canada, under the supervision of Sheelagh Carpendale. Her research focuses on the design and study of large display interfaces to support lightweight information exploration in walk-up-and-use scenarios

Nina Valkanova is doing her PhD at the interaction group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain under the supervision of Ernesto Arroyo. Her research interest focuses on the design of urban media facades exploring the intersections between scientific and artistic design knowledge.

Kai Kuikkaniemi is a project manager in Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. He is currently leading a national research project focusing on public displays. His earlier research has focused on exploring novel multiplayer game designs ranging from pervasive gaming to biosignal adaptive gaming.

Giulio Jacucci is a professor at the University of Helsinki at the Dept. of Computer Science and director of the Network Society Programme at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. He leads several interactional projects on interaction design and ubiquitous computing, and is co-founder of MultiTouch Ltd. a company commercializing products for multi-touch screens.

Sheelagh Carpendale is a Professor at the University of Calgary where she holds a Canada Research Chair: Information Visualization and an NSERC/iCORE/SMART Industrial Research Chair: Interactive Technologies. She directs the Innovations in Visualization (InnoVis) research group and her research focuses on information visualization, collaborative visualization, and large interactive displays.

Ernesto Arroyo holds an associate teaching position at the D ept. of Information and Communication Technologies of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain. He earned his PhD at MIT Media Lab in 2007. His research at the Interactive Technologies Group focuses on interaction design, visualization, and user-centered interfaces, enabling and preserving the fluency of user engagement.

Thanks to Uta Hinrich for sending this my way!

Cross-posted on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Media Facades: "When Buildings Start to Twitter" video timeline, via Thomas Schielke, of arclighting, plus lots of related links!

This morning I received a message from Thomas Schielke, of arclighting about his recent work. Included in his message was a link to this awesome video, Media Facades: When Buildings Start To Twitter, which is a video timeline of this history of media facades.

Below is a description of the video, by Thomas Scheilke:
"The timeline depicts international media facades with their different artistic, social or brand messages up to interfaces like iPhone Apps or brain sensors for public participation. The movie is a shortened version of the lecture, The semiotics of media facades - When buildings start to twitter" that was presented at the Parsons The New School for Design in New York in 2010."

Luminous tweets and retweets
"During the day, façade structures with their windows and material combinations grant a specific building image to the public. However, after sunset electrical light is the medium for an architectural image. The light appearance sends an atmospheric signal to the citizens like hang on in front of an asleep structure, look at an inviting but static façade or enjoy a vivid architecture sharing short stories. In the last decade, media facades have become a widespread element for luminous tweets. They establish a network between the building owner and the citizens, sometimes driven by aesthetical debates, other times by commercial intentions to avoid traditional light advertisement."
"The pursuit of persuasion by way of big screens gives the impression that size receives a higher relevance than content, comparable with the large amount of trivial tweets in Twitter. Various media facades appear as monumental monologues repeating a fixed animation daily. A few facades use signals from the environment and transform them into a play of light and shadow. Others emerge as urban dialogues when buildings show combined moving pictures. Some even allow people to send messages to the building to receive luminous retweets. They turn the city into a community following the dialogue and with the respective Apps may possibly even gain a following community worldwide."
"The historical overview of international projects covers various lighting methods and techniques from lighting designers as ag4, Arup Lighting, blinkenlights, Fusion, LAb[au], Licht Kunst Licht, L´Observatoire International, Mader Stublic Wiermann, Okayasu Izumi, magic monkey, Matthew Tanteri, Onur Sonmez , Qosmo, realities:united, StandardVision, Urbanscreens, Uwe Belzner, Yann Kersalé and architecture like Asymptote Architecture, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, O.M. Ungers, Peter Cook, Peter Marino, UN Studio, schneider + schuhmacher, Simone Giostra, WOHA architects1. Artists like Doug Aitken, Jaume Plensa, Kurt Hentschläger and Zhong Song are included in the timeline as well." -Thomas Schielke
http://www.arclighting.de
FYI: Thomas is one of the authors of the book "Light Per spectives: Between Culture and Technology". Lean back and relax to the music as you watch a related video by Schielke: Light Architecture: Luminous Walls

Related info from Schielke's YouTube site:
Luminous walls: From clerestory windows via modernist wallwashing to pixelated planes
"The movie is a shortened version of the lecture that was presented at the Cornell University in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis in Ithaca/USA (Oct. 18th 2010) and at the Columbia University in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York (Oct. 26th 2010)."
"Luminous walls belong to the essential repertoire of qualitative lighting design. With light, spaces can be defined and reinterpreted. Illuminated walls allow us to provide orientation and to perceive the form and dimension of space. Further, their glow and play of brilliants could bestow a space with an impressing scenography. The timeline reveals different lighting approaches: From backlit clerestory windows for spiritual enlightenment in the gothic period to modernist uniform wallwashing. Contemporary examples will open the view for pixelated colour changing planes based on LED technology. The movie with an overview of international projects covers lighting methods and techniques for luminous walls and their visual appearance. With a perception-orientated design perspective the designer could use vertical illuminance to create bright spaces and thereby also contribute to sustainable lighting solutions."
"The overview of international projects from architects like Antonio Gaudi, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Jean Nouvel, Peter Zumthor, Raffael Moneo, Toyo Ito, Christoph Ingenhoven and Karim Rashid or light artists as Peter Kogler and Erwin Redl covers various lighting methods and techniques for luminous walls and their visual appearance. Note: The image for 1814 needs to be reassigned to Bergisel Panorama in Innsbruck/Austria painted in 1897."
RELATED
Previous posts:
Revisiting Urban Screens: 555 Kubik Facade Projection Video; Info about Media Facades
More Urban Screens and Outdoor 3D Media Facades

Urban Screens, Urban Scenes, Media Facades: Obscura Digital's Outdoor iGoogle Artist Themes Launch in NYCU

Media Facades and Projected Social Graffiti at Drexel University (Includes a 7-story tweet)

iRis Remote Interaction System, Newly Updated

Other Links
Book: Media Facades: History, Technology, and Content (M. Hank Haeusler)30+ Dazzling and Interactive Media Facades
Media Facades Festival 2010
Media Architecture Institute
International Urban Screens Association
Urban Screens
"URBAN SCREENS a project by Urban Media Research Berlin, investigates how the currently commercial use of outdoor screens and related infrastructure for digital moving images in urban space can be broadened with cultural content. We address cultural fields as digital media culture, urbanism, architecture and art. We want to network and sensitise all engaged parties for the possibilities of using the digital infrastructure for contributing to a lively urban society, binding the screens more to the communal context of the space and therefore creating local identity and engagement. The integration of the current information technologies support the development of a new integrated digital layer of the city in a complex merge of material and immaterial space that redefine the function of this growing infrastructure of digital moving images."
Urban Screens Video Channel
3d Projections on Buildings: A distinctive Way of Communicating
Communicating Through Architecture: Media Facades and the Digital Infrastructure The Rathous (Contains an assortment of videos and pictures)
Art and Commerce Meet on Building's Interactive Media Facades Kelsey Keith, Fast Company, 10/2/2009

Cross-posted on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog.