May 12, 2005
Human Interaction with Space
An invitation to researchers, faculty, staff, and graduate and PhD students to submit a letter of interest for a 4-day interdisciplinary workshop--Locative Media in the Wild--to be held July 20th- July 23rd*, 2005 at the Crooked Creek Research Facility in the White Mountains of Inyo County, California. Convened by Brett Stalbaum and Naomi Spellman, Interdisciplinary Computing Arts, University of California San Diego. Funded by the UCSD Center for the Humanities and the UC Humanities Research Institute the goal of this workshop is to share knowledge, methods, and tools between various research disciplines that have a focus on human interaction with space. Our hope is to identify common interests as well as blind spots among a range of disciplines, in order to enrich the various practices represented, and to inspire new areas of research. Four individuals will be chosen to participate. Each will be provided with overnight accommodations, all meals, travel expenses ($300 cap), and $500 compensation. BACKGROUND The fields of cognitive science, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, psychology, dance, art, computer science, the earth sciences, and geography are concerned with the negotiation of space. Recent advances in wireless telecommunications, sensor technology, and Geographic Information System tools have inspired a tide of experimental creative projects. These tools are being used to address how communication, navigation, and big data are played out in space. As the landscape and urban streets become the canvas for ubiquitous computing applications, what kinds of possibilities emerge? How can research across multiple disciplines enrich the various practices?
WORKSHOP GOALS AND ACTIVITY While the workshop is intended to yield useful tools and problem-solving methods for all workshop participants, we are most concerned with fostering an interaction among disciplines, and examining and expanding upon how researchers approach spatial problems. Discussion and facilitated activity will set up a framework for activity over the 3-day workshop. Participants will be asked to present and demonstrate their own approach to spatial problems, and to collaboratively address problems outside their discipline.
The problem(s) addressed will be culled from workshop participants. Possible approaches include but are not limited to: Geographic Information System software, GPS-enabled mobile phones, narrative strategies, social navigation, performance (performative engagement of surrounding), data visualization, and data mining. Mediated or unmediated, digital or analogue a variety of means to communicate with and through space will be explored. A people-centered approachwill be emphasized in a supportive and flexible environment. Results of the workshop will be made publicly available online. Results will serve as a basis for ongoing multi-disciplinary research in this area.
WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS Participants may be at any stage in their career, and do not need tobe affiliated with an institution, academic or otherwise.
WORKSHOP LOCATION The physical location should inspire activities with a range of possible scales, problems, methods, and outcomes. By placing the research group outside of a familiar context, participants will be encouraged to rely on each other to address problems that engage the surrounding. The Crooked Creek facility is located at 10,000 feet in the White Mountains in Central California. Facilities and labs include dormitory-style rooms, a weather station, a Geographic Information System lab, and high-speed telecommunications.
TO SUBMIT A LETTER OF INTEREST Please email a short letter of interest to naomi.spellman@gmail.com with "Locative Workshop" in the subject line. Attach your CV. Explain how your research activity or practice relates to this general theme. Include any specific information you deem relevant. Letters of Interest should be received by June 10, 2005. Questions should be directed to naomi.spellman[at]gmail.com or stalbaum[at]ucsd.edu.
*Date of workshop to be confirmed
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION An online discussion and bibliography hosted by Brett Stalbaum and Naomi Spellman, November 2004: Exploring and defining the social and cultural implications of Geographic Information System tools and computerized mapping in a multidisciplinary setting: http://34n118w.net/UCHRI/
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The Weekly Show
drawing from extrastruggle.
We've been having a back channel conversation amongst the trackers at unmediated about how/whether to update the way in which we aggregate, present, and make useable the content on the site, in light of all the various aggregators, digg and its clones, and role model group blog sites that we all consume/use/hate/love. Since we all primarily support open media movements and the freedom of bits and so forth, and with all of us being busy with our primary projects, we are looking for ways to make getting content on the site easier and more streamlined, while making it obvious that we are presenting other sources content. With the availability of open API's for just about any type of media aggegration literally getting past the saturation point, and mashups taking every possible form, we are wondering, is it time to take a step back, or a step forward with how/what we do at umediated? In the course of my surfing today, i found this new site, Boxxet Which just might be the straw that breaks the camel's back in how we all perceive the current mix and match nature of the web as it now stands. What's different about Boxxet from other aggregators and mashups like the newest entry popurls, (which aggregates digg, slashdot, reddit, newsvine, tailrank, and flickr) is that Boxxet is a Website generator. Thats right, just pop in all the urls u want to aggregate (and WHAT from them) choose how u want to format it, plug in the url that u want it to be accessed at... and whammo: Your own site with everyone elses content, and all thats left to do is decide whether googleplex or yahooza is going to be the source of your linklove revenue. And if u have on older domain that u plug this into...well, we all know how the pageranking with search engines work by now. It used to be that u had to have a bit of code knowledge to make all this stuff work. Eyebeam's Re-blog engine which powers this site was not a simple undertaking at the time that Michael Frumin and Michael Migurski put it all together... a half a year before Marc Broadband-mechanicked the term Reblog as his latest buzzword before casting his attention on the ourmedia-meme. (kudo's, kudo's) But now, with the cut and paste mentality of webculture that we at unmediated have helped create, the pace at which people are remixing and repurposing code is accelerating at a rate similar to the curve that we saw with pro-sumer desktop video... almost anyone can do it. I have this sinking feeling in my gut that we will arrive sooner than later at the same existential threshold that the film studios and record labels are squirming under to our joyful cries of "die, dinosaurs, die!". What i am wondering, is how long until my hero of the open-information movement, Cory Doctorow, and the rest of our pals at BB will tolerate re-aggregation and repurposing of his content, (now that he is investing so much more time at the site) before he (or any of one us) screams, "FOUL!" Stewart Butterfield over at Flickr is dealing with this beast at the moment...and i have to admire the dryness with which he states, "I loaded the FlickrCentral pool and firefox got up to using 240mb of ram before dying. So that's not a great user experience, but it's really terrible for Flickr. If it catches on and you don't limit it, we'll have to cut you off :\" Sure, Stewart, blame it on the user experience and firefox. ;) I admire your candor, and personal attention/approach to what has become one of the hottest new BRANDS in Web 2.0 ...that u still have time to be personal and all flickr-fuzzy even after being acquired, but I am sure that your jeans feel like they're fitting a bit tighter all of a sudden. Pretty soon, I expect, a lot of us bell-bottomed infornistas are going to wake up in a similar pair of Jordaches. I'm curious which of us will cut the inseams and sew in another totally different material to keep our style,and which of us will claim that now that we're wearing skintight jeans ("they're really really comfortable...REALLY! You think i should get a pair of Reeboks to go with 'em?"), that the manufacture of bell-bottoms should be forbidden. I point this all out in good humour only to illustrate a point: The times, they are('nt) a changin'>, and Cory just might wake up one day soon in his magic kingdom, and say "Hey, man, where'd all my whuffie go? And he's going to have no choice but to join Walt's pinstripesuits in pushing for copyright extension. It's a pill i hope he (and we) never have to swallow. So i pose the question to our community readers: How do you see unmediated-Are we crossing the boundaries in how we repurpose content? Would you like to see more editorializing? Narrower/Broader scope? Are we a repository of information that you come back to use, or just part of your daily information addiction? Let us know... I, for one, would like to have an idea about what pair of jeans to wear this year ;) michael
Featured Project
Berkeley Conference: Online Video and the Future of Television - Friday, September 30, 2005
This one-day conference brings together archivists, educators, technologists, entrepreneurs, producers, legal experts, and investors to explore the enormous promise offered by the availability of online video and television content. Demonstrations and interactive panel discussions will highlight new video technologies, services, legal issues, and economic models. Participants from diverse – and until now, largely disconnected – specialties will be especially encouraged to interact.
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About unmediated
unmediated is a group blog that tracks the tools, processes,
and ideas being used to decentralize media production and distribution.
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