Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 201

“An uncoordinated mishmash of relatively unsophisticated data-gathering methods haphazardly connected to infrastructure”

*The epic tale of our era, folks.

*I’ll go out on a limb here, and say that unmanned-vehicle road-drone delivery systems are the design endgame for “self-driving cars.” They’ll probably be small, light, and inhumanly fast, like smart mobile grocery carts lined in rubber bumpers. Big, ponderous, driverless cars as we know them today are quite similar to manned spacecraft. Once you subtract the man entirely from the vehicle, you find yourself able to do all kinds of useful things much more cheaply.

*The science fiction writer Frederik Pohl used to say that one should contemplate future traffic jams instead of fixating on the horseless carriage. But even though we’ve got self-driving cars that kinda work, we haven’t as yet given much thought yet to the second and third-order effects on infrastructure and society. At least this piece is making an honest effort.

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/we-need-to-think-about-the-infrastructure-for-autonomous-cars-too

Google’s Plan for Autonomous Cars Doesn’t Go Far Enough
BY TERRY BENNETT

(…)

“…we need to focus more on thinking about advances in infrastructure along with advances in the components, interfaces, and related devices.

“We need to design a system where cars can talk to the road, other cars, or a transportation management center. We already have the technology we need to do this: GPS; Wi-Fi; embedded sensors; 3-D planning, design, and construction tools. But here’s what else we need to do to make autonomous cars work at scale.

“Break down the infrastructure industry’s traditional silos between people, applications, and workflows. By rethinking holistically how we plan, design, and build integrated transportation systems, we can ensure data isn’t just collected, but used to get rid of slow traffic lights. For example, by favoring automated turns at intersections; using self-governing engines to synchronize speed and merging; or providing real-time feedback for crowdsourced projects like StreetBump. All of this paves the way for “infrastructure modularity” — the industry term-of-art for the ability to change and adapt to new innovations and new modes of transport over time.

“Create ways for cars to collect, coordinate, and upload roadway info, so the physical environment can “listen” to roadway sensors and optimize traffic performance in real-time, as well as “learn” and adjust longer-term patterns. By leveraging and installing wireless transponders called Roadside Units or similar smart embedded sensors, cars can feed safety information into our highways and rural roads. Such information would include static road hazards like curvy roads or low bridges; changing risks such as construction; and information about traffic density, flow, volume and speed. It’s not unlike transferring data back and forth to high-speed tolling lanes — but with much richer data.

“Designate transportation mega regions delineated by need versus political jurisdictions. Just as Eisenhower did to create highway systems in the first place, we need to eliminate state lines — at least when it comes to transportation planning, designing, and funding. Carmakers and the U.S. Department of Transportation (as well as its 50 state agencies) need to work together to create a national “smart highway” initiative. It’s the only way we can draft system-level plans, rather than having the patchwork of competing plans within neighboring towns or states like we have now. After all, funding a smart system in one state and not in a neighboring one defeats the purpose of such a system in the first place…. (((etc etc)))

       

FutureEverything, Manchester, March 27-April 1 2014

*”Future Everything” would be a swell place to go contemplate your “Speculative Everything.”

************************************************************************************************

For immediate release

FutureEverything Festival 2014:
Art programme announced: City Fictions / Data as Culture / Hello Lamp Post / CV Dazzle Anon Salon (((Is it even POSSIBLE to get more hip to the twenty-teens than this?)))
Manchester, 27 March – 1 April

Tickets available from futureeverything.org

A pop-up city, anti-surveillance makeovers, talking lamp posts, pioneering data art and audio-visual installations are set to transform Manchester when FutureEverything Festival returns from 27 March – 1 April 2014 with the theme ‘Tools for Unknown Futures’. (((Who can’t like it?)))

The art programme takes places in venues around the city and embodies FutureEverything’s approach to ‘festival as laboratory’, through playful experiments, urban interventions and participatory installations. It complements the Conference and Live strands of the festival by exploring how we can collaborate on new tools, devices and systems to transform many spheres of life, from the arts to democracy.

City Fictions

Sat 29 – Sun 30 March / 10:00 – 18:00 / NOMA

In City Fictions, ideas for a future city will come to life. Visitors are invited to experience playful prototypes of near-future city institutions, realised through extraordinary design, art, architecture and interactive experiences in public spaces. In this pop-up urban experiment, the museum presents objects from the future rather than relics from the past. (((Dang, man.))) In the new public square, the street furniture and lamp posts talk to passers-by, and everybody can be part of a people’s parliament. A clinic prepares a three course lunch in a petri dish, while a hair and makeup salon provides anti-surveillance and facial recognition makeovers to disguise visitors from ‘Big Brother’. A factory introduces 3D fabrication for the masses, with artists, designers and makers converging on the creative quarter to fabricate and create together.

City Fictions will feature:

· A museum that presents objects from the future rather than relics from the past, including Adrian Hon’s ‘A History of the Future in 100 Objects’, a hybrid of fact and informed speculation which presents a journey through the near future of humankind by means of the artefacts we might leave behind.

· Adam Harvey’s ‘CV Dazzle Anon Salon’, a world first hairdressing and makeup salon where the artist applies makeovers to visitors using unique geometric designs, making them invisible to ‘Big Brother’s CCTV facial recognition software. (Op-Art, New York Times, Dec 14 2013)

· Watershed presents…‘Hello Lamp Post’ by PAN Studios, visitors to City Fictions can speak with newly sentient street furniture and lamp posts, reassuring them of their future or confirming their worst fears. Begun as a city-wide installation in Bristol in 2013, Hello Lamp Post challenges myths and preconceptions around the internet of things and smart cities. (Nominated, Design of the Year Award)

· ‘Parliament of Urban Rights’ by Zuloark is the City Fictions town hall, a free-access temporary debating space constructed of wood, open to anyone in Manchester to use for civic purposes, such as neighbour or friend meetings and assemblies. Emerging from the protest movement in Spain, the intent of the project is to build a Universal Declaration of Urban Rights, aiming to reach a consensus about regulation of construction, legislation and use of public space. (Winners of Digital Communities Golden Nica, Prix Ars Electronica 2013)

· BUQs (Ubiquitous Electronic Lifeforms), the data network at City Fictions is alive, comprising a swarm of autonomous, electronic lifeforms, communicating with each other, invading surfaces within the built environment and using them for the creation of sounds. Watch out for their invasion of urban infrastructures across the city.

· ‘You Are Not Here’ by Nicky Kirk and Mel Woods/SerenA, provides wayfinding and a unique sense of place. Signs and 3D structures on the City Fictions site help visitors navigate and create a pathway of discovery, with chance encounters and serendipitous experiences along the way.

· Ben Dalton’s ‘NoPayPhone’, is the City Fictions telecoms service, providing free telephone communication through the redistribution of donated free minutes from inclusive mobile plans to public telephones.

· ‘Storystorm’, visitors take part in collaborative storytelling around the City Fictions site, bringing playful ideas of near-future city institutions to life using digital technology.

· ‘Futures 10’, a showcase of wearable prototypes, including wearable devices by Superflux, Fabrica Studio and James Bridle that enable people to evade or detect surveillance in the city. These speculative designs reflect an alternative and richer vision of a wearable future than is demonstrated by current ‘big tech’ products.

· ‘Bio Strike’, a collaboration of Open Wetlab/Waag Society, Biologigaragen and the Center for Genomic Gastronomy that uses DIY science and antibiotics research methods in an interactive manner, mapping food controversies and prototyping alternative culinary futures.

· ‘5th Dimensional Camera’ by Superflux, blending physics and speculative design, translating Hugh Everett’s ‘Many Worlds’ theory of quantum mechanics into a tangible prototype.

Data As Culture
Sat 29 – Sun 30 March / 10:00 – 18:00 / NOMA

Data as Culture, curated by Shiri Shalmy, is a new partnership between FutureEverything, the Open Data Institute and Lighthouse, that will present the next generation of data art across the three organisations, exploring the relationship between data and arts, and how data can be used as a tool for artists. It will include work by James Bridle, Sam Meech, YoHa and Matthew Fuller, and Thickear.

Workshops

Bringing together artists, makers, hackers, designers, technologists and theorists a series of workshops and sessions will bring together like-minded visitors to create new work, and collectively explore and develop the ideas and concepts of this year’s festival.

Based on an ethos of sharing and collaboration, these will include:

· legendary synth builder Rob Hordjik and circuit bender Joker Nies will lead a session to build the Benjolin, an analogue synthesiser ‘bent by design’

· a family 3D printing workshop led by Golan Levin, guiding in the use of several free 3D modelling applications and of the Makerbot Replicator, an inexpensive 3D printer widely used in schools and hackerspaces

· artist Sam Meech leads a session explaining the ideas and techniques used in the creation of ‘Punchcard Economy’, an artwork on show across all three Data as Culture spaces which applies Robert Owen’s ‘8 Hour Day Movement slogan to the digital economy

· Fixperts FixHub is a self-contained pop-up hub that will demonstrate the importance of fixing and personalised design as a way of thinking for the future. Comprising of a library, makerspace and gallery, it aims to share knowledge, skills and tools and engage communities in thinking about the value of fixing through film, active demonstrations and workshops.

· BBC Connected Studio host a session for digital agencies, technology start-ups and individual designers and developers to submit ideas for features and formats for the future of the organisation

Live programme

FutureEverything’s live programme presents as series of live music, sound art and performances, at venues across the city, including the Royal Northern College of Music. Events include:

· Jem Finer’s thousand year-long musical composition ‘Longplayer’ began in 1999 and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again. At FutureEverything Finer will lead a discussion and exposition with sections of the work being performed by voices from The Joyful Company of Singers and Manchester Chamber Choir.

· The world premiere of ‘Projectors’ by composer, performance artist and videographer Martin Messier. Working with everyday objects, such as alarm clocks, pens, self-conceived machines and sewing machine, Messier aggregates their operational sounds to produce densely textured and rhythmically complex sound patterns.

· Lighting designer and live visual artist Emmanuel Baird (EMN) and engineer David Leonard premiere an installation piece commissioned by FutureEverything and RNCM. ‘The Hall’ is an investigation into the sensation of how scale and distance are perceived and judged by the human brain through the use of lasers, mirrors and other optical effects. On Sunday 30th March, the installation will feature a live performance by electronic composer and musician Evian Christ and special guests.

· Lumière, a brand new audio-visual live performance from acclaimed sound artist and producer Robert Henke, co-developer of the Ableton Live music software and founding member of the electronic music project Monolake. Three powerful white lasers draw rapid successions of ephemeral objects, seemingly floating in space, while the data used to draw the shapes is transformed into audible frequencies performed as an improvised dialogue between the artist and the audio-visual machine.

A full live programme release is available.

ENDS
For further press information please contact
Chris Baker or Matt Railton at Four Colman Getty
Chris.baker@fourcolmangetty.com/
Matt.railton@fourcolmangetty.com /

NOTES TO EDITORS

Now in its 19th year, the FutureEverything Festival brings people together to discover, share and experience new ideas for the future. It combines art, design, music and performance with new technology, insightful discussion and playful social experimentation. Alongside the art programme the festival’s Live programme features performances from leading names in sound art, audio-visual performance, contemporary classical, electronic and experimental music. A two-day conference for over 700 international delegates will host presentations by leading artists, designers, urbanists, businesses, and academic thinkers.

FutureEverything is an award-winning innovation lab for digital culture and annual festival, established in Manchester in 1995. For almost 20 years FutureEverything has been exploring the meeting point of technology, society and culture which lies at the heart of the digital debate. Through a community network and regular events it makes connections between thinkers, developers, coders, artists, designers, urbanists and policy makers – inspiring them to experiment and to collaborate in new ways.

Year round, FutureEverything champions the role of grassroots innovation in the digital creative economy. It creates opportunities for artists, programmers and coders though regular commissions, hackdays and innovation challenges. Through its research it identifies and explores areas in which technological, creative and societal innovation could facilitate change. Through policy work and thought leadership it advocates for the creative use of open data to improve government and empower citizens and communities.

       

Spring is coming, don’t say you weren’t warned

*The Continuing Climate Crisis.

       

Datamonster

*We need lots more tech-art stuff like this. Gizmos that are like: here it is, it sort of does something about something in a radically open-ended way, it’s on GitHub, it’s fast, powerful, purpose-designed for creative exploration, relatively easy to mess with, and it’s open, so have at it. This spastically floppy device may not look like much, it’s humble to the point of abjection, but there’s a lot more to this gizmo than merely tying art-world bows and ribbons onto some proprietary piece of subversively re-purposed wreckage from the mainstream tech world. It’s got more means, more motivation, more opportunity. This isn’t the apex of achievement, but this is the way forward.

http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/tweets-rouse-moody-robot/7448

“Maker robot reacts to Twitter and motion input.

“Send a tweet to Data Monster if you dare — the robot has been known to respond violently to Twitter. Data monster doesn’t only react to social media, the 2-foot tall, wood and metal robot can convert other data input into gestures, actions and motions, according to an Intel researcher.

“Data Monster maker robot

“Looking like a prehistoric talon of a claw, Data Monster expresses itself via movements, gestures and excited twitches based on Internet data and localized movement.

” “Data Monster was designed to “abstractly look at data and assign meaning to the data,” said Lucas Ainsworth, an Intel research scientist who developed the robot from a DIY robotics kit using the open source Intel Galileo computing board. It can respond to data input or sense physical motion.

“The custom robot, the first Ainsworth has built, can track hand movements using three infrared sensors. Its wooden robotic arm, controlled by servo motors, moves more actively when the sensors detect motion and becomes more lethargic as the motion subsides. Motion dampeners physically control the speed.

“Data Monster connects to the Internet using a standard laptop Wi-Fi card, allowing it to scan social networks or online data sources. When it detects a tweet with the word “datamonster,” its arm moves without motion damping, mimicking agitation, offering an example of how mood can translate into physical gesture. People can customize other social media or other triggers within the robot’s open source code….”

https://github.com/IntelOpenDesign/DataMonsterCpp/tree/master/docs

       

Design Fiction: Future Factories and Futurematic Situation Lab in Toronto

*I’d go.

http://situationlab.org/2014/02/22/future-factories-futurematic/

The Situation Lab invites you to take part in two upcoming events with award-winning New York City-based design collective, The Extrapolation Factory.

Founded by designers Elliott P. Montgomery and Chris Woebken, the Extrapolation Factory sets out to “explore the value of rapidly imagined, prototyped, deployed and evaluated visions of possible futures on an extended time scale.” In 2013, they won the Core77 award in the Speculative Design category for their project 99 cent futures, in which they held a design jam to create speculative products from the discount store of the future. When an exhibition incorporating 99 cent futures opened in China last December, CNN published this report.

For their first visit to Toronto, the Situation Lab is hosting two exciting opportunities for members of the design community and others interested to learn about – and take part in – Chris and Elliott’s amazing work.

Lecture: ‘Future Factories’ – Thursday February 27, 2014

Future Factories will take place at 49 McCaul Street, Toronto, on Thursday February 27, 2014, at 5:30pm. This event is free and open to the public.

Design Jam: ‘Futurematic’ – Saturday March 1, 2014

Poster design by Ceda Verbakel

Futurematic is a design jam to fill a vending machine with artifacts from the future. Participants will conceptualize and execute designs for the objects, focusing mostly on packaging design and rapid prototyping as ways of exploring possible futures. The jam will also include an opportunity to play the Situation Lab’s brand-new imaginary objects card game, “The Thing from the Future.”

The jam will take place Saturday March 1, 2014, from 10am until 5pm at 100 McCaul St, Room 187 (Lambert Lounge), OCAD University, Toronto.

Also a free event, note that places for Futurematic are limited. Please RSVP via the Facebook event listing, by emailing us at futurematic@situationlab.org, or by using the form below.

Facebook event listing

Futurematic is a joint presentation of the Situation Lab and the Extrapolation Factory.

Futurematic RSVP Form…

       

Architecture Fiction: Simon Park/Freefarm, “Walking City”

*I don’t know what to call that, but it’s rather charming.

Walking City from Simon Pyke / Freefarm on Vimeo.

Walking City

from Simon Pyke / Freefarm PLUS 2 weeks ago /

“Architecture + Evolution + Movement

“Referencing the utopian visions of 1960′s architecture practice Archigram, Walking City is a slowly evolving video sculpture. The language of materials and patterns seen in radical architecture transform as the nomadic city walks endlessly, adapting to the environments she encounters.”

Audio by Simon Pyke of Freefarm – download soundtrack here: soundcloud.com/freefarm/walking-city
featured as a Vimeo staff favourite vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/85596568

       

Design Fiction: “Speculative Everything” by Dunne & Raby

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/speculative-everything

Design Fiction: “Speculative Everything” by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby

Since its subject is ‘everything,’ “Speculative Everything” says a lot. Most every page throws open the workshop door on some surprising vista of possibility. This is certainly the most important and thoughtful book about speculative design ever written to date. Anyone involved in the field needs to own this book and study it with care.

It’s been five years since the appearance of the seminal Dunne and Raby video, “Technological Dream Series No 1: Robots.” This odd work marked the world premiere of “design fiction,” because it was impossible to classify it as anything else. Dunne and Raby never did another video within that “series” of theirs — probably because every work of speculative design since that time has been its spiritual successor.

Still, given these five long years, it’s startling to see so much hard work remains as yet undone, how tentative and explorational this book is, how much creative room there is. Despite its host of cogent examples, nothing is summarized as yet: ‘everything’ is at stake.

Each chapter of this book deserves thoughtful response, but I will settle on one point. On page 100, there’s an important and persuasive argument made about the distinctions between “critical design” and “design fiction.” These distinctions clearly exist. They are cultural distinctions, every bit as real as the distinctions between, say, British car design and American car design. It may seems odd that such traditional divisions can still occur in a networked world where everybody watches everybody else in real-time. However, they do. You’ll never argue somebody out of being Californian by sending them email.

I’m inclined to think these distinctions will not fade, but intensify. Both “design” and “fiction” have always thrived within regional schools, in tight circles of shared sensibility. Even though “design fiction” is a form of design and not fiction — and even though its best-known practitioners today are all barnstorming, globalized nomads — it is likely to take on a stronger local color. “British critical design” and “American design fiction” will remain as distinct as the RCA in London and USC and ACCD in Los Angeles; and we will see other regional variants emerging. European critical-design scenes will appear, plus some distinct US West Coast / East Coast approaches.

Someday, we may see regional forms of speculative design that are as full of character as regional clothing, cinema, cuisine and popular music. It will be thrilling to see such creative variety in what might have seemed a rather recherché and abstract undertaking.

It took some nerve, at first, to use real-world design skills to talk about technosocial situations that just don’t exist. However, once that feat was achieved, it turns out that everybody everywhere has the basic problems that critical design addresses. “Design as a medium” has the capacity to speak to everybody. Speculative design is as hard to do well as any other form of design, but it’s not, by its nature, a niche activity. People in many walks of life enjoy this form of design. It possesses viral appeal. It even has some twenty-first century folk-roots in naive handicraft, such as costume play, steampunk and Renaissance fairs.

Much remains unclear. Does “critical design” have “users” or an “audience?” Does it have “patrons” or a “viewership?” Is it a craft, or some form of activism? It’s also unsettled whether its main concerns are, or should be, functional prototypes, diegetic special FX, speculative online videos, design-museum dioramas, or performance art and/or experiential happenings. It’s hard to believe that any designer, however Eamesian and polymathic, will ever be good at doing all these things at once.

However, even modern Hollywood can’t figure out if they’re about the theater tickets, the web-streaming, or the collectible transmedia toys. Our world is rapidly filling with hacker spaces and fabrication labs: they have similarly perturbed business models. Why are modern people flocking to those places? They’re not employed there; they just go.

Nobody is ever going to crisply buy a kilogram of “critical design.” It’s precarious — but that problem is far from unique to “critical design” as a modern practice. It will shake out somehow, because the sun is shining and the topsoil is fertile. We may not see any golden, corporate GMO crops, but we’re about to see a whole lot of weeds.

This book is entirely necessary for its bibliography alone. This is truly an otherworldly cluster of imaginative texts. I’ve read and admired many of those cited books, but I’ve never seen them assembled in a canon, or proposed as the basis of a discipline. It’s a startling contribution to scholarship, worthy of serious attention from well outside the design world, and I can only imagine the pedagogical effect on some bright undergraduate who started reading that list with the A’s and worked his way through to the Z’s. That would be an imaginative education of a kind that nobody has as yet had, an unheard-of melange of the metaphysically wild and the intensely practical. If I were eighteen today, I would give that a try.

In conclusion, something should be said about how refined and handsome this book is, as a designed artifact. Though it’s a work for the academy and not for the coffee-table, it deliberately upholds a high standard. All the illustrations, and there are many, are in crisp resolution, while starkly obvious pains have been taken to see that due credit was given to every creative person involved in every image. It’s the polar opposite of the carefree, slobbering virality of Youtube, Tumblr, and this weblog, and there’s something heart-lifting in its living demonstration of what can be achieved today. Not tomorrow, and not in the imagination — but really, right here and now.

       

O’Reilly Solid Conference May 2014

*O’Reilly sure haven’t lost their knack for trendy.

http://solidcon.com/solid2014/public/schedule/full

SCHEDULE

9:00am

Wednesday Welcome
Wednesday, 05/21/2014
Location: FESTIVAL PAVILION
Jonathan Bruner (O’Reilly Media), Joichi Ito (MIT Media Lab)

Jon Bruner and Joi Ito, Solid Program Chairs, welcome you to the first day of the conference. Read more.
9:20am

Keynote with Rodney Brooks
Wednesday, 05/21/2014
Location: FESTIVAL PAVILION
Rodney Brooks (Rethink Robotics)

Rodney Brooks, Rethink Robotics Read more.
9:35am

Making Machines that Make
Wednesday, 05/21/2014
Location: FESTIVAL PAVILION
Nadya Peek (MIT Center for Bits and Atoms)

How can you rapidly prototype new computer controlled tools? With modular and reusuable subcomponents (including kinematic systems, sensor/actuator interfaces, motion control, and machine interfaces), we enable non-experts to design and build not just new parts, but new machines. Combined with digital fabrication tools, we can produce a whole new range of machines that make. Read more.
9:50am

Google[x]‘s Focus on the Physical World
Wednesday, 05/21/2014
Location: FESTIVAL PAVILION
Astro Teller (Google)

Using examples from Google[x] projects, the talk will explain why Google[x] has this focus on atoms, not just bits, how that choice has shaped the culture and efforts at Google[x], what additional challenges this focus creates for us, and some of the general directions we see for the future of intelligent hardware. Read more.
10:05am

Hardware by the Numbers
Wednesday, 05/21/2014
Location: FESTIVAL PAVILION
Renee DiResta (OATV)

Conventional wisdom is that hardware startups are hot right now. What does the data really tell us about underlying trends in what’s getting funded and who’s starting companies? Read more.
10:20am

Real Time Robot Dance Party
Wednesday, 05/21/2014
Location: FESTIVAL PAVILION
Carin Meier (Neo)

In this fun, energetic talk, we will explore way to control multiple robots in real time. Roombas sway to gentle computer generated music, while Spheros balls roll with flashing lights. This robot jam will culminate in spectacular finale when the AR Drones fly in to join the dance. Read more….

       

Musica Globalista: ✞ЯфPKiLLΔℤ, “Промо микс для России”

*If Chapo Guzman is in jail while Yulia Tymoshenko is out of jail, this calls for some Tropkillaz.

       

Photographing the Euromaidan

*What an awful, physical mess Molotovs can make.

*There’s something very ex-Soviet about Molotovs. Not only are they named after Molotov (obviously), but they’re weapons full of fossil fuels. The governments of Russia and Ukraine throw gas pipelines at each other, while the civil population throws liquor bottles full of flaming gasoline.

*I really hate seeing people rioting, burning and shot under a waving EU flag. Up till now, it’s been the one flag Europe has that isn’t bloodstained.

http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2014/02/visual-report-front-lines-protests-kiev/