Symposium Playing the Urban @Balie 31 maart 2007

http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?podiumid=media&articleid=102445

PROGRAM

13-14h Mobile Learning Game Kit

Speaker: Jan Simons (Associate Professor New Media Studies, University of Amsterdam)

14-15h PlastiCity: A Game for Urban Planning

Speakers: Mathias Fuchs (Senior Lecturer, Programme Leader in Creative Technology, University of Salford) and Steve Manthorp (Special Project Manager, Bradford)

15h30-16u30 Logo Parc (Jan van Eyck Academy)

Speakers: Logo Parc (Daniël van der Velden, Katja Gretzinger, Matthijs van Leeuwen, Matteo Poli, Gon Zifroni)

This symposium was organized by fellow TKCers from Maastricht & Amsterdam “Transformations in Perception and Participation: Digital Games”.

———————– 

legenda: 

> = my remarks, thoughts, etc.

[Skipped presentation1]

PlastiCity is a game based on the Unreal Tournament engine (which is a first person shooter) and aims to be an aid in reconstructing/replan the awfully ugly city center of Bradford, UK. It is still in conceptual phase (read: no money yet). The aim is to put the game in public places like libraries, schools, etc.

Interesting quote: “the game is not designed to function as a designer tool for architects, but as a way of bringing planners, architects, local government officials and citizens together and be silly about redesigning the city.”

> Games may serve to bring people together in complex multi-party projects: games as a new kind of public sphere?

Another quote: “Every game has at some point a stage of chaos”.

> The rules are stretched, things are tried out, often deconstructed or even destroyed. Like identities that are being tried out and parts of it destroyed again.

Game should have ‘real life’ characters in it: not the usual beautiful yuppies you see in most architecture presentations. It should be more realistic. Also with rubbish and so on.

> Games as more realistic than other media in presenting or representing the world? What is realistic about programmed garbage?

One member of the audience experiences a kind of motion sickness while watching the demonstration of the game. She asks: what is the value of this game-speed to represent life-speed? The speakers explain the speed of the demo is set to slow: normal gamers would use at least 3x normal walking speed to move around… (which they briefly demonstrate). 

I brought up: this phenomenon is just like what the first train travelers experienced at 20 or 30 miles/hour: disorienting the senses. Every new technology brings its own experience of space & place & mobility. The train (and car) created a speeding up of travel, which made possible suburbs and the separation of home and work. The city was adapted to this new sense of the city. 

I asked: what then may be the influence of using games as tools for creating new cities for the way cities are actually build and experienced?

Answer: first person perspective of game may be an influence on perceiving the city; as well as the feeling of being in power, in control over your environment.

Another audience Q: what is actually game-like about this? There is no winning this game? There are few rules? Why play?

A: the attraction is the sense of empowerment & creativity players experience in playing the game, both in destroying and rebuilding the city.

> Could it be differentiated according to involvement? Game produces Erlebnissen, while (prolonged) play may produce Erfahrung.?

Game offers the idea of “unbuilding” the city, creating green environments again out of built space (land is cheap in Bradford, so not unrealistic).

> I like that idea of “unbuilding”, can it be applied to identity? “Unbuilding identity” as a way of undoing previous steps, deleting memories of these events in photos, video, text messages, phone numbers, etc. It is maybe a way of “unactualizing” identity, again extracting potentiality out of previous closures and actualizations.

> Such games are also used strategically and politically as part of ideas about the “creative city”. Games have become entangled in a larger discourse, they are being ’socially produced’ as young, modern, trendy, serious yet playful, appealing to people previously difficult to reach (young). If you want to be ‘now’ you have to do something with games.

Presentation 3 – LogoParc – was about the Amsterdam Zuidas and the way a kind of superficial ‘global architecture’ is created which is not related to the local (at least, that’s what I understood of the 2 very abstract talks). Designers at Jan van Eyk, Rietveld created a visual game-like critique on this environment. All facades of building and public space signage was removed, which created a sense of barren desolate landscape. Added were a number of large above-ground ’sewers’ connecting the Zuidas to other global places’ like Singapore, HongKong, Tokyo, New York, Paris, etc.

> I was a little annoyed by this whole talk: very highbrow theoretical critique on so-called placelessness of Zuidas, yet these offices and public spaces are filled with real people that drive their bikes back home at the end of a working day, people who make it a place, even if architecture has done little to embed it in local Amsterdam. 

At 14:00 Waag Society joined in, chaired by Henk van Zeijts, head of the division Creative Learning. First, we introduced the research topic, and separately introduced our individual topics. After that, Waag Society introduced a few of their projects, specifically those that have to do with identity, mobile communication and learning. Waag Society are looking for more scientific depth, and we are looking for ways to collaborate with organisations that ‘produce’ new technologies.
The most interesting project I believe was Frequency 1550 that will be transformed in the future into Frequency Nu. It’s a project that explores the way ubiquitous computing/communication can be introduced into a learning environment.

Below the preparatory notes a made for the meeting, briefly discussing narrative identity, some shortcomings, and some ways in which the central concept of ‘play’ should be introduced into a ludic theory of identity.

051208 Meeting P.I.G. @ Waag Society

Deel 1: (open voor alle geinteresseerde Waag Society medewerkers)

14:00 welkom

14:05 introductie Playful Identities (Jos, Valerie en Joost; mijn voorstel:

Jos opent met het filosofische deel, Valerie en ik vullen aan met

mediatheoretisch en empirisch deel)

14:15 pres aio 1

14:30 pres aio 2

14:45 pres aio 3

15:00 pres Waag Society relevante projecten

Deel 2: verder praten in petit commitee

15:30 tot 16:30

1. mijn achtergrond

> cultureel antropoloog; afgestudeerd met onderzoek in Jakarta, Indonesië in jaar 2000 naar rol van internet tijdens en na de val van Soeharto. Het internet werd tijdens dit bewind gebruikt als subversief medium door studenten om protesten mee te organiseren (encrypted e-mail) en politieke discussies uit te lokken (vooral via IRC en pamfletten, uitgeprint van mailinglists). Nadat Soeharto viel werd internet veel meer in een trendy lifestyle medium van de stedelijke jeugd. Ook symboliseerde internet een economisch wondermiddel dankzij de gouden bergen die e-commerce toen beloofde.

In onderzoek ging ik ervan uit dat de rol die een technologie speelt in een samenleving niet alleen maar beschreven kan worden vanuit de functie van die technologie, maar vooral ook begrepen moet worden vanuit de culturele voorstellingen en betekenissen die gebruikers hebben van die technologie. Zo was het gebruik van het internet als subversief medium door studenten nauw gelieerd aan de politieke en sociale omstandigheden waarin er geen vrijheid van meningsuiting bestond. De verschuiving naar lifestyle medium hing samen met de opening van het land naar de rest van de wereld in economisch en cultureel opzicht. Indonesië werd onderdeel van ‘global culture’ en jongeren wilden enorm graag laten zien dat zij modern waren. En het (ten dele) wegvallen van oude mechanismen van corruptie en vriendjespolitiek bood jonge ondernemers nieuwe economische kansen. Dit werd nog eens extra versterkt door de externe invloed van de wereldwijde dotcom hype.

> jaar of 3 1/2 gewerkt bij Kennisland; Bezig gehouden met digitale trapvelden, open source en creative commons, en met creative capital conferentie.

> ook gewerkt bij digitaal trapveld in amsterdam oost. in de praktijk gezien hoe mensen van uiteenlopende leeftijden en achtergronden omgaan met nieuwe technologieën.

2. mijn onderzoek

Sinds september dit jaar bezig aan de EUR.

Het doel van het onderzoek – zoals gezegd – is een antwoord te geven op de vraag of, en hoe, nieuwe technologieën de constructie en beleving van persoonlijke en culturele identiteit veranderen.

Mijn onderzoek gaat over mobiele communicatietechnologieën & identiteitscontructie, persoonlijk/cultureel. Wellicht wat artificieel om rigide onderscheid te maken tussen internet, mobiele technologieën en games – raken immers steeds verder geïntegreerd – maar vormt meer een afbakening van deelonderzoeken van project, anders wordt het te groot.

Het contrapunt voor de vrijheden die technologieën bieden aan individuen en groepen wordt gevormd door externe structuren die deze vrijheden deels inperken en sturen. In het geval van mobiele communicatie is dat vooral commercialisering van diensten. Met dit onderzoek zullen wij in gaan staan tussen de eenzijdige nadruk die in bestaand onderzoek te vinden is op ofwel de leefwereld van sociale constructie, waarin de mobiele telefoon aan de gebruikers schijnbaar onbeperkte nieuwe vrijheden en mogelijkheden biedt, ofwel de systeemwereld van de sociale productie die mensen een een keurslijf dwingt en het onderwerpt aan nieuwe technologische regimes.

Theorie van domesticatie:

In hoeverre is er sprake van een speelse domesticatie van nieuwe technologieen?

1. commodification (sociale productie)

2. appropriation (sociale constructie)

3. conversion (zelf-expressie)

3. bestaande opvattingen van narratieve identiteit (m.n. Ricoeur, Giddens)

Identiteit kan worden opgevat als de constructie rond het ‘zelf’ waarmee mensen richting, betekenis, waarde en zin geven aan hun leven. Mensen verhouden zich door middel van hun identititeit tot de wereld, tot andere mensen en tot henzelf.

Die verhouding wordt gemediëerd door o.a. taal, materiële artefacten, sociale instituties en cultuur.

De Franse filosoof Paul Ricoeur meent dat het verhaal de belangrijkste vorm van mediatie is. Hij maakt een onderscheid tussen idem-identiteit (Engels: same) en ipse identiteit (Engels: self). Idem verwijst naar de fysieke constantie van het zelf in de tijd: een-en-dezelfde persoon zijn. Ipse verwijst naar de ervaring die wij hebben van onszelf als persoonlijke eenheid. De ervaring van eenheid creëren wij door een verhaal over onszelf te vertellen met een plot waarin de verschillende gebeurtenissen en ervaringen uit ons leven tot een logische eenheid gesmeed worden. Deze narratieve identiteit is niet alleen een metafoor maar ook een middel waarmee wij onze identiteit construeren. In het verhaal herkennen wij onszelf. Het idem en het ipse worden verenigd in een narratieve identiteit.

Hoe gaat dat in z’n werk? Ricoeur onderscheidt 3 manieren waarop het verhaal een mediërende rol speelt, die hij aanduidt met mimesis 1-2-3.

mimesis1: verwijst naar onze impliciete voorkennis van het leven, hoe wij ons moeten gedragen en hoe wij er betekenis aan moeten geven. Dankzij deze kennis kunnen wij onze ervaringen en acties uitdrukken in verhalen. (vandaar: narratieve prefiguratie)

mimesis2: verwijst naar daadwerkelijk configuratie van verhaal in een plot dat afzonderlijke elementen in een structuur van logische eenheid samenbrengt. Kenmerken: verhalen hebben een begin en een eind, daarin zit een tijdgebonden lijn (plot), er spelen characters/personages in, er is een plaatsgebonden setting en de afzonderlijke gebeurtenissen staan in een causaal verband tot elkaar. Nieuwe gebeurtenissen moeten binnen die eenheid ingepast worden: dialectiek van “discordante concordantie”.

mimesis3: verwijst naar het reflexieve herconfigureren van het Zelf door onze eigen verhalen en die van anderen te interpreteren. Door het ‘lezen’ van de plot begrijpen wij onszelf en de veranderingen die wij doormaken en krijgt onze persoonlijkheid karakter.

De drie technologieën waarnaar wij onderzoek doen verbinden wij met ieder van deze facetten.

mobiele communicatie > intuïtieve prefiguratie, “lived experience”

internet > verhalende configuratie, “expression”

games > reflexieve herfiguratie “reflection”

4. tekortkomingen hiervan met betrekking tot mobiele technologieën

Narratieve identiteitstheorie is hele krachtige voorstelling van identiteit. Voelt intuïtief goed aan, zeker in onze literaire samenleving waarin verhalen een belangrijke rol spelen.

Narratieve voorstelling zien we in onze cultuur terugkomen in bijv. :

- literaire vormen zoals levensverhaal en (auto)biografie,

- film, bijv. typische Hollywoodverhaal van character dat in problemen komt, ‘vastzit’, maar dit uiteindelijk zelf weer weet op te lossen en zich zodoende verder ontwikkelt,

- soaps, waarin door allerlei externe discordante gebeurtenissen de narratieve eenheid van mensen telkens bedreigd wordt en personages zich enorm inspannen om die eenheid opnieuw terug te vinden.

Wij willen onderzoeken of en in hoeverre er een verschuiving naar een meer ludische cultuur aan het ontstaan is.

Ik denk dat ik niet de narratieve identiteitstheorie geheel verwerp. Wel zoeken we naar een kritische aanvulling hierop. Die kritiek op narratief zou je grofweg kunnen onderverdelen in tweeën:

1. bredere maatschappelijke veranderingen die ons nopen de metafoor van narratief te updaten/bij te stellen

2. specifiek inzoomen op technologische ontwikkelingen en de kenmerken van ons gebruik van die technologieën.

Kritiek op narratief dus vanuit maatschappij en vanuit technologie. Dat kan een radicaal: “eind van het verhaal” zijn, waarbij er alleen nog maar chaotische bricolage plaatsvindt: “meer betekenisdragers, minder betekenis” (Braudillard). Maar ook minder radicaal: wellicht worden ‘grote’ verhalen met steeds meer scepsis bekeken, maar er bestaan nog altijd verschillende parallelle verhalen. Verder kun je ieder verhaal eigenlijk opvatten als een spel met de realiteit en je eigen rol hierin. Het verhaal is een structuur van afbakening, een ‘bracketing’ van de realiteit, een eigen cirkel, gedeeld met anderen, een simulatie van de realiteit. Is het dan zo dat alleen de structuur van het klassieke verhaal verandert?

// maatschappij:

Je zou op allerlei niveaus kunnen spreken van een crisis in het unificerende verhaal:

op macroniveau met het wegvallen van ‘grote verhalen’ zoals communisme, nationalisme, modernistisch universalisme van de rationele mens, ook democratie onder stress.

op mesoniveau vooral zichtbaar in wantrouwen jegens ‘expert knowledge’, en in de kunsten kritiek op lineaire verhaalstructuren als enige vorm van betekenisgevende mediatie.

op microniveau vooral in persoonlijke ontwikkeling: steeds meer mensen bestaan in verschillende werelden, hebben niet 1 enkele consistente identiteit (“internarratieve identiteit” Ajit Maan). Steeds meer invloed ook van nieuwe technologieën in de levens van groepen mensen.

// technologie:

De kenmerken van nieuwe technologieën en de wijze waarop ze gebruikt worden tasten een aantal kenmerken aan van het narratief: (zeer voorlopig!! & nadruk op mobiele communicatie)

a. logische eenheid van verhaal (uniciteit)

Dankzij de mobiele telefoon kunnen we in meerdere contexten leven, soms zelf parallel. Vaak doen zich ook contradicties voor in onze verhalen. Die komen steeds vaker aan de oppervlakte, doordat we zo snel heen en weer schakelen tussen de verschillende contexten waarin we uiteenlopende en dus soms conflicterende rollen spelen.

b. lineaire richting en causaliteit van verhaal (plot)

In het plot, dat een centrale rol speelt in narratieve identiteitstheorie is er schijnbaar geen plaats voor gebeurtenissen die geen functie hebben in het grotere geheel van het verhaal. Discordante gebeurtenissen worden concordant gemaakt en anders buitengesloten (vergeten, verdrongen, of we verklaren ze simpelweg voor ‘onmogelijk’ of ‘onvoorstelbaar’ en daardoor ‘onvertelbaar’). Maar gebruikers van mobiele telefoons lijken juist erg bezig met de trivialiteiten van anderen. Onze communicatie per mobiele telefoon kenmerkt zich vaak juist door “gesprekken die nergens over gaan”. Narratieve identiteitstheorieen hebben geen oog voor deze “pulp fictie”.

Saturday, November 19, the 27th Dutch/Flemish Philosophy-day took place. The motto was “Thinking without Borders: challenges for philosophy in the 21st century” (Grenzeloos denken: uitdagingen voor de Filosofie in de 21ste eeuw). It was the first time I attended. The programme started at 10:00 in the morning, which I of course didn’t make quite on time… I’m not that much of a morning person, especially not on a weekend day .

After seeing the last part of the plenary session I attended the breakout session “Man & culture” chaired by Jos de Mul. The papers presented by both Flemish & Dutch PhD researchers were pretty technical in my opinion. As I lack serious background in philosophical thought – and probably even more troublesome: acquaintance with the discourse by which philosophers tend to express themselves – I had a hard time understanding what was said from time to time. Nevertheless, some speakers provoked thoughts in me, so I made a few scribbly notes which I have transcribed below. Here we go:

(paper 2 – Kristien Justaert about objectification of subject by scientific method)

The scientific method has lead to a professional stance towards humans, nature and material objects (“Gegenstand“) that can be described as instrumental and rational. One could argue that demystification or disenchantment (Entzauberung – Weber) has led to a certain lack of respect for the subject in the scientific object under study, or the ‘fetish’ in the material artefact. This disrespect can be seen in the attitude towards the objectified subject, illustrated by Kristien’s example of the large number of mistakes/accidents happening in the medical world.

In our attitude towards ICT’s, we experience again a certain awe caused by the inexplicable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. Art too shows us the ‘meaning’ and ‘value’ of the material object.

In play, the object becomes something that has more meaning and more value than the instrumental/rational. Play could be seen as the ritual search for & recognition/re-valuation of the subject that was turned into an object.

My final thought was: can the scientific subject-object impasse be overcome by the increase in lay-knowledge, – ‘democratisation of knowledge’ – and the availability through (new) media?

(paper 3 – Dik Derom about Heidegger and Humanism)

“Other” in narrative is a different “other” from the one in “play”: from an actor in a story (plot) that shapes his own Self with help from co-actors, to a player that shapes and shares with his co-players a communal (‘gemeenschappelijk’) ‘complot‘. (cf. Goffman’s audience, who are sometimes part of the performance, or at least helping out the performers).

The professional maintains much more a subject-object relation to his work. The professional keeps more distance from its subject by being involved in processes of knowledge protection, maintaining exclusivity, institutionalisation and legitimation, power plays with colleagues and clients and, consequently, possibly abuse.

The amateur (cf. Leadbeater’s “ProAm“) has a subject-subject relation to his work, with more attention, respect, love and appreciation. In a way, one could say the amateur has a more playful attitude towards his work.

(paper 4 – Michiel Besters, way too vague for me…)

reaction from the audience: humor is a way of penetrating the barriers we construct between ourselves and reality. Humor pierces through shielding mechanisms (amongst which: language, culture, institutions, social behaviour, media).

(paper 5 – Frank Maet about “the end of art” and beyond)

Art has become separated from the artist. It has become a work in itself, at least, that is what is being claimed of modern art. Distance to the production of the work (of art) can lead to the mystification of it.

Every medium is a mediation of a sensual experience: books – language – hearing; film – image – visual; ICT – immersive multimedia – multiple senses. ICT is not a passive mediation but requires an active outlook (apparently, here I started to drift away, judging from these trivialities . On second thought, mediation seems to have become a double mediation nowadays: a two-tier extension of older forms of mediation. Memory for instance mediates experiences, but now there are numerous technological extensions of memory (mobile photography, weblogs, calenders, etc.).

Heidegger: Identity & Differency: identity is thinking & being, Sein & Dasein. Intermediality is reflexivity about mediality by making a distinction between Sein & Dasein (zijn en zijnde).

Gadamer: in play we re-present ourselves by being involved in the game.

Below the notes I made

051103 Lev Manovich @V2

from www.v2.nl:
Lev Manovich is the author of Soft CInema: Navigating the Database (The MIT Press, 2005), and The Language of New Media (The MIT Press, 2001), which was hailed as “the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan.” He is a Professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego, and a Director of The Lab for Cultural Analysis at California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. This Fall he is a researcher in residence at Piet Zwart Institute | Willem de Kooning Academy | Hogeschool Rotterdam.

————
“scale”
When increasing quantity, qualitative effect will arise.
Wikipedia:result of scaling up. number of people; speed of editing.
Visual examples:
- BBC Archive online.
- Video iPod
Publicly available content will scale up.
Not isolated, but interconnected. Bruce Sterling – Shaping Things. “All object will become smart and interact” ['spimes'] http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/26/bruce_sterlings_desi.html
new technologies (qualitative change) – upscaling existing technologies (much harder to think about consequences – quantitative change). McLuhan wrote about the scale-effect of the railroad.
scale effects:
1. speed – e.g. processor power & computer games. Algorithms for representing image existed already since middle ages: representation of image in ‘pixels’ (example: Dührer).
2. size/resolution – more details, larger screens, wall-sized images leads to new ontology of image: new knowledge of surroundings and world. [effects on perception of "realness" > more detailed, introducing different patterns and textures; effects on representation of reality as 'narrative' > visual]
3. volume – real time streaming of content
(Lev keeps on throwing numbers at the audience – part of his rhetoric strategy to argue for quantitative approach to understanding new media)
4. memory/storage – nevertheless compression will remain

All human art can be thought of as compression: condensing individual collective experience into smaller files: experiences, narratives, images. Compression of world view, of habitat into small file.
Example: hat with build-in webcam: recording your life (in low-res).
Language as form of compression. Art used to be doubling: creating a mirror, but could never be a full mirror, always limited by medium. Now, for the first time in history, you can capture anything at full-res. (E.g. film shot in Hermitage St.Petersburg 2hours, 2 Terabytes large.)
—–
Q&A/ debate:
Q: scale has changed, but our perception of space/time hasn’t.
A: New media forms create new forms of perception. people want more information, that’s why they live in cities.

M. will put chapters of his new book online on his blog.

Q: It is Cartesian and Newtonian
A: ??
Article by … in 1920’s: One point in perspective, same vertical horizon. Later replaced by image of multiple viewpoints.

Q:
15 november – lecture at Overblaak 18:00

Q: scaling up & narrowcasting: new possibilities? Motivation? How ‘narrow’ can you go?
A:

I am just home from a really interesting mini-seminar in Eindhoven, organised during the Dutch Design Week 2005. The meeting was about Ambient Intelligence and ways in which artist make use of these tools. The organiser René Paré had invited a couple of interesting speakers to tell about their work: Elmo Diederiks from Philips Media Interaction, Edwin van der Heide, an autonomous artist that explores the relations between architecture and sound, and Alex Vermeulen, an artist working on the faultline of technology and art.

Especially interesting was a remark made by Edwin that he tried to avoid the notion of narrativity in his work, as he feels that it constrains him too much. Instead he explores the creation of interacting and learning environments.

A little more info about the workshop at:
http://www.dse.nl/~mad/events/WAA/index.html.

Read the full notes I made of today below.

051018 Ambient Intelligence Eindhoven @TAC – Temporary Art Centre

// Elmo Diederiks – Philips

What is AI?
1. Embedded
2. Personalised
3. Adaptive
4. Anticipatory
It’s a new interaction paradigm: intuitive, familiar; it’s how products behave in interaction with human behaviour. (E.g. windows used at night as screens for television). How to use the environment as medium for experience. (E.g. wake-up call adapted to optimal moment, directed by brain activity).
“Augmented reality”, or “replaced reality”.
Outdoors: e.g.: personalised advertisements outdoors; buildings with projected fronts; personalised jogging laps, with timing.
In musea: personalised guided tours.

Technology enablers: what makes this all possible?

- Moore’s Law: processor capacity; disc capacity; RAM, etc. (battery capacity lags behind!!)
- Computing platforms are getting more powerful, real time, some sort of rudimentary artificial intelligence.
- Media processing/interaction technology: quality of image in video; speech recognition (problems of social acceptance in talking to apparatuses); DRM/copyright protection;
- Ubiquitous connectivity: how to connect all these devices? RFID with unique numbers;
- Storage: next step = blu ray (hi-def DVD); nano technology
- Lighting: energy efficiency and lightness of screens, esp. outdoors; solar powered.
- Displays: digital paper, large projection areas, e.g. room walls.; mood enhancing lighting while watching TV (via colour analysis of screen), needs perception research; lightning incorporated in textiles, e.g. linked with cell phone as indication. >> “Soft way of communication”.

Personalising time and experiences through technology (stopping/recording/playing a TV show with taking with you a pen from room to room).
- iCat = cute little cats with facial expressions (affective computing) – more human-like communication channels. > computers showing what they are doing in a human-like fashion, in order to change use patterns according to the state of the device, e.g. computer having a hard time doing intensive tasks and showing it. [technology dictates human interaction?!?]
- Content adapted to personal taste. Involving art.

// Edwin van der Heide – artist SON-O-House house Eindhoven
“Different perspectives to real-time”

Traditional Concert:
- fixed order
- beginning & end
- uniform experience
- composer, score, notes: it’s not about the result, the performance, but the artwork is the score, detached from performance & audience.
- architecture of the music hall creates the conditions for the performance (acoustics, quite, non-obtrusive, etc.)
- hall has a front: audience sits in same direction facing the stage.
[same characteristics as 'narrative', as opposed to 'play']

work:
Water Pavilion at Neeltje Jans, Zeeland
“Liquid Architecture”
- space & sound content design was originally unrelated; new cooperation between architects and sound artists to create a communicating “sounding building”. Speakers integrated in building, shaped like building, hidden. Spatialised sound creating individual experiences, sensors.

SON-O-House
Interactive architecture & sound. Visitors were challenged to relate themselves to building, building & sound is not supportive, but_IS_ the work. 24 Sensors indicate the activity across the building. Intention was to interfere with natural behaviour in building and redirect people to other parts, by using sounds. Sound was generated in RT. “Meaningful sounds” vs. “non-menaingful sounds” > building learns to control peoples behaviour, develops intelligence.
Is an ever-changing building getting the same after all?

// Alex Vermeulen

States if humanity – project: different chapters wherein content itself looks for appropriate technology to use. E.g. solar cells that generate magnetic field that can make things move > Alex made a pond filled with figures that move up when sunny and go down again in the evening.
Other project SOH 10 – the Opera: story about scientist experimenting with AI, exchanging organic material with computer, but then her brain crashes. Multimedia performance with live-edited film, story, dance, theatre, music, video.

—————-
break
—————-
Q: Very much supply-driven applications? Why would people want this? Is it only for ‘new experiences’?
A: Involve end-users in early stage; get ’softy scientists’ in the company; follow marketing & consumer trends, globalisation, individualisation. E.g. ambi-light television.

Technologists know everything about small parts of making things work, artists are more generalists. Who’s in between, who translates between them? How do you integrate art & technology > through design.

Edwin tried to create a integration of architecture & sound, not sound in a room. But how do you place speakers? How do you avoid of them being perceived as objects that produce sound? One solution: use only interference, as in SON-O-House. Edwin didn’t want a narrative approach: sound telling a story and directing people through space. Instead E. created parameters that make it more complex, more room for general expression and possibility of change and learning by system. “Structural approach”, “organic”; our perceptions are often non-linear: sound between A and B is not perceived as ‘in between’, it’s another experience. Creating a changing, emerging individual experience.
How do you make change that is not equally different (i.e. at the same distance from the same)?
Q: in what way is space different, how do users experience space?
A: Very complex, no maps. Your own perspective dictates the space. BY entering, you become part of environment, influencing parameters, you’re co-responsable for next stage of the building, more or less consciously. Creating a “meaningful different context”.

Push < -> Pull: creating possibilities for users to act upon/with: appropriating the technology and the meanings it creates

Different carriers have different information possibilities: visual cues are used most of the time, auditive signals are relatively little explored.

Q: How about other senses than only visual/aural?
A: Sometimes it can be very overwhelming [sometimes technology should clearly stand apart from ourselves _as_ technology, not as part of us, because it could be too overwhelming].
Difficulty of experience: how do users perceive this?

051014 André Nusselder – promovendus EUR

“interface fantasies”

Andre uses Lacan theories about fantasies. Sisek too. Lacan stands in tradition of Hegel. “Mediation” > new term “mediatisation”.
topic: Mediation of Self by means of media.
Levy “Becoming virtual”. 3 Forces of virtualisation:
1. language
2. laws & rules that virtualise powers
3. technology

Freud: Reality always mediated. Freud started out with “Lifting up forgetfulness”: forgetting events in reality. Later he found out that many of those so-called events in reality hadn’t really occurred > psychic reality of neurosis (vs. material reality). This led Freud to doubt reality ‘out there’ and let him to believe that reality is already partly constituted by our psychic activity.
Lacan: calls himself Freudian. De Saussure > linguistics > back to Freud. Theory of imaginary; theory of personal identity. “Das Ich muss enwickled werden.” The “I” is being formed by identifying oneself in images: mirror is example: child learns to see itself as other, as “me”. Gives unity to incoherent self. Doubleness: natural body & imaginary body. Unity is virtual, alienated. According to Lacan: a person is already alienated (so alienation is not only due to media).

In Lacanian theory 2 orders: imaginary order & symbolic order.
About symbolic order: we are speaking beings “parlettre”. The word only gets meaning through communication. People are intersubjective by nature. The other is place where we find meaning and understanding. The other is place where we find truth. Truth always has the structure of fiction, says Lacan. Truth is grounded in ways people speak about themselves.
Self is substitution by significator. Self can only be found in speaking: fictional alienation.

Authors André uses for thesis:
Michel Candric: reality is always shaped by technology. There is no pre-technological reality, this must be an illusion. Language can be seen as technology too.
André tries to show that technologies are a basic fact of human life, not some ‘virtual world’ next to ‘real life’.
Frank Biacra: our experience of presence is a psychological construction.

Freud: desire. Fantasy is unavoidable for construction of object of our desires. We try to construct the objects of our desires by means of new technologies.
Steven Johnson: technological developments & interface design are kind of art form.
Derick de Kerkhove: Skin of Culture. Media design our culture, its skin. Technologies are extension of ourself. In these designs, we can find the interior images of ourself. Presence in V.R. is as close to pure design as possible in technology.

Theory of imagination implies that we already live in virtual space of the mirror. We are living a duplicate life. We give a form to data-objects with our interface designs. Doubleness in the world: we experience with our sense, while acting as a mediated, constructed personality in the world.

Avatars: identification with images in technological worlds that belong to our identity construction. This is not naive Spielerei, but ‘real’. John Suler (psychotherapist in cyberspace) lets patients adopt avatars in role-playing therapy.
Lacan’s theories can be used to counter perceptions that new technologies break down humanist values.
——————–
Q: what is difference between medation vs. mediatisation? In what ways are technologies (as mediatisation) principally different from language, images, etc. (as mediation)?
A: Difference lies in aspects like multimediality.
Stef: content: sense of unity through mediation, medatisation leads to fragmentation.
time-place relations

Subjecttheory: we can never coincide our selves with our imagined selves. This is a good thing: If we are too fixed on a certain self-image, we become pathological…

Coherence vs. multiple ‘ironical’ personalities.

Q. image vs. language as constituent of identity.
Image is

Q: Lacans theory stresses the imaginary, subjective foundation of humans. Is there something before that, something material before the imagined?
A: The body is always formed by imagination from outside, not natural.

Q: You have to be careful not to sweep mediatisation under mediation, by saying all is imagined from the outside, then you deny the media-specific, materially grounded qualities and meaning.
Q: and also: the interaction between technologies and humans, not one-way influence.

Q: does multimediality give us direct experience that works on the body? Is it different than other media in this respect?
Q:
A: what is the body? Is it organical, flesh? Or our imagined external expressive energy, libido, desire?
Q: difference between mediation/mediatisation: we don’t realise that the former is a medium, while we see it with the latter.

Read full notes below

Waag lecture: hackers & Utopia # 3

Mark Pesce (title to be announced)
Moderator: Jan Simons (University of Amsterdam)
Introduction by Stef Aupers
Waag Society for Old and New Media, Nieuwmarkt 4, Amsterdam, 20.00-22.00 hrs.
Mark
Pesce developed ‘Virtual Reality Modelling Language’ (VRML) in the
1990s and authored various books, like The Playful World. How
Technology is Changing our Imagination (2000). As a self-proclaimed
‘technopagan’, Pesce wrote and lectured extensively on the affinity
between the ontological claims of magicians and virtual reality. With
Terrence McKenna he lectured on Technopagans at the end of history
(Essalen, 1998) and speculated on the future of humans in his film
Becoming Transhuman 2001 (a narrative of what-we-are-becoming).

Since October 2003 he began teaching at the Australian Film Television
and Radio school in Sydney.

050928 Waag Society – Cyberspace Salvations 3

Mark Pesce – www.playfulworld.com

This is the third lecture organised by the research project Cyberspace Salvations.

// introduction – Stef Aupers
First 2 speakers: better world through better worlds; secular, not utopian in a religious sense.
Pesce: Cyberspace consists of nothing: we need to create our worlds there, as gods.

// Mark Pesce – LIVE stream from Sidney by webcam, projection on a piece of cardboard at the table
Many writing about new technology have a dystopian drive, Mark’s is a utopian. Partly as a strategy: we make our future. Mark wanted to write Utopia, leave a paper trail of writings.
“Virtual is not television of future, but telephone”. It’s a means of communication, not information. Characteristics of VR:
- there’s nothing in it intrinsically. It requires visitor to clear their minds and create an own imagined world. Close to Buddhism: mystical perception that world is created by us ourselves. Isomorphism in philosophy of Self. “no atheists in cyberspace”: everyone was a believer in the potential of the medium.
Hacker culture: how well can you turn your will into code. Exteriorise your imagination > mysticism.
Today’s VW’s are balancing between your own authentic experience, and the produced & sold ‘ready made’ world.

Cyberspace opened up human ontology: ‘medical..’, humans are made more pliable to information streams. Extensions of body. ‘Technological incorporations’: your ontology is modified by interaction with device. E.g. iPod: changes our interaction with space (what is in your head) & place (were you are, what is “in the eye”).
VW example1: breath-balance machine, derived from experience of scuba-diving. Body is fundamental locus in VW: re-embodying. Body: from gnostic view of “dragging you down” to new view of “keeping you up”.
VW example2: view of earth; mystical state of viewing the earth from ‘above’. Standard image of world as passive. Google earth does this now. Can help people to understand relationships between self and others. “deep ecology” (cf. Arne Naess ?). Neo-pagan movements are ‘in touch with’ earth. With development new mobile technologies, ambient intelligence, what changes does this bring to perception of earth and place?

Social networks: exteriorisation of morals (cf. Mead). Maximum size (Dunbar number) is about 150. Seems to be hard-coded into humans. “Understanding is embodied”, information can be exterior. Blogging is exteriorisation of understanding of groups. New technologies are devised to exteriorise human knowledge “social technology”.

New cooperations between people: “convents” with common ideals?

// Q&A – panel
Q: body vs. virtuality: in 1990’s cyberspace was a mirror for ourselves to augment understanding, partly by process of disembodiment. World like a “system of systems” (Gaia, Fritjof Capra). Before, with formal technologies, there was the ideal of transgressing old identity categories (gender, age, race etc.). Now, how do old categories return with new social technologies?
A: old distinction between real-virtual is getting more complex. Mark’s ‘virtual presence’ at this lecture is example. New technologies are not only used to reach out to others, but also to segregate ourselves from others (iPods, mobile phone, etc.).
Q: ‘cyberspace as feature-less space’: is it changing due to “overcrowding”, commercialisation, etc.? And what is the role of online games – MMORPG’s? What happens to agency?
A: Only humans live in cyberspace. Cyberspace often gets character of ‘new frontier’: let’s get to new lands! Moving on largely done by anthropologists/researchers.. Recent WOW virus: it’s not a controllable environment. It’s magic!
Q: There seems to be a culture of magic, with LOTR, etc. New notion of ‘life’ imposed on apparatuses. Does the world become animistic? Does this lead to better understanding? And who is responsible?
A: Responsive technologies, interactivity have invaded our world. We expect things be interactive. …

// Q&A – audience
Q: In context of development of new technologies and new relations with it: Anxiom in playing with magic: “do not call up what you cannot put down”.
A: Example of privacy infringements and databases as “pan-opticons”. It shouldn’t be seen only by someone from above, but by everyone. We need to be careful with prisoning people in new cells.
Q: Why do you propose such a technological determinism? What can we do about it?
A: I am a determinist: people change under influence of technologies. But to what extent is contented. We need to study technologies and teach children to be suspicious. Technologies develop logarithmically: we are obsessed by this development.
Q: some people are affected, other not at all.
A: people who are adaptive will outperform those people who are not.
Q: tension between utopianism, technoogy that is ‘there’ <> developing your own world?
A: Internet was very seductive. New technologies give people a vision of their possibilities. So it is not fixed in itself.

Pesce is caled a “Techno-pagan” in Wired. He has considered writing a book about techno-paganism, but withheld because he didn’t wanted to lay down the rules, but let people play and create their own projects.

Wednesday evening, September 21, I was at the second Cyberspace Salvations lecture (missed the first one) at Waag Society, Amsterdam. Cyberspace Salvations is a cooperative project by several Universities in the Netherlands, together with Waag Society that researches the “re-enchantment” of the world under influence of new technologies.

Talked to two members of the research team afterwards and made some sort of vague promise with Stef to work together on some fronts. Could be useful, as our projects look alike a lot. They also organise a couple of smaller meetings which I hope to attend.

Below the full notes of the meeting.

050921 Waag – Cyberspace Salvation, 2nd lecture 20:00 – 21:45

source: http://www.cyberspacesalvations.nl/activities.html:

Waag lecture: Hackers & Utopia # 2
Richard Bartle: “A better World through Better Worlds. MMORPGs and Practical Hacker Ethics”
Moderator: Marinka Copier (Utrecht University)
Introduction by Stef Aupers
Waag Society for Old and New Media, Nieuwmarkt 4, Amsterdam, 20.00-22.00 hrs.
Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw developed the first Multi User Domain (MUD) around 1980. He is also a writer on all aspects of virtual world design and development.He authored Designing Virtual Worlds (2003) which rapidly became the standard work for anyone developing persistent 3-dimensional worlds (like MMORPGs). Bartle is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering at Essex University, Essex, United Kingdom.

—————–

// introduction by Stef Aupers:
“Promise of enchantment” in virtual worlds. [cf. Huizinga's magical elements in 'play']

// Lecture by Richard Bartle
## Virtual Worlds
invited to talk about “utopian thinking in dev. of computer technology”. But also about “hacker ethic”.
Characteristics of virtual worlds: persistent, simulated environments, multiple players, simultaneous. Why are they important? How did hacker culture shaped them?

example: World of Warcraft (WOW): 4 million players ww. They pay $15/month subscription. 25 % female (rumored 45 %, but kept secret not to ‘disturb’ the game).
- in Asia: players look alike; in west characters look different.

example: Lineage, game from S-Korea. 4.2 million player, 50 % of pop. S-Korea has played Lineage at least once.
issues

- problem of addiction. Some countries pose limits on playing games (Thailand, China)
- real money trading (RMT): Runequest characters for sale on eBay for > $ 1000. itembay makes more money from RMT than all commercial subscriptions together. Estimate: $ 1 billion, could be 20 X this!

## Hacker Ethic
Hacker ethic influences: games have developed from previous games, but *done better*.
1999 Everquest (EQ 480.000 players) > WOW; shared architecture, design, ideas, code is different: ‘branch/fork’
1990 Dikumud > EQ; EQ is quite identical to D.
1987 Abermud > Dikumud; D was improvement from A for achievers, ran out of the box, tested. Alan Cox involved
1978 Mud1 > Abermud; Mud clone, ran on Unix-based systems too, Mud only on Dec. A. swept up Mud.

Concept of virtual world invented independently 6 times in diff. games.
Bartle c.s. invented Mud, some virtual world design decisions from MUD are still intact: e.g. different levels; language use like ‘mobs’, ‘newbie’. Behaviour of players in VW is shaped by the code of the game and its culture, both inherited from parent VW. Real world brings in culture too. As MUD was designed by hackers, hacker ideals were promoted, deliberately. E.g. freedom of identity: B. “I wanted players to be who they wanted to be; in other words: who they really are. So: as open-ended as possible, no narrative.” VWs still value freedom to be..

People bring in real world culture into games: language, morality, social norms. But traffic not one way. People change the VW: “they become more of who they are”. Some key-words inserted into MUD still affect people ww: freedom, tolerance, individuality, imagination, art, rebellion, understanding. So in political terms: “non-paternalistic, counter-cultural liberalism”. [are these concepts so very "counter-cultural?"]. Certainly NOT religious…
Hacker culture was present at Essex univ. at te time, but B. didn’t consciously adopt it, he didn’t know the term.
Steven Levy’s ‘hacker principles’ in MUD
- information should be free > concept VW in public domain
- create art and beauty > MUD as artistic expression
- computer can change your life > MUD: and live of others

## Utopia
B.: we wanted to create Utopia, yes, but not in software but through software: changing real world by means of virtual worlds. Creating virtual worlds as Utopia is missing the point.

// Q&A Stef & Marinka
Q: Utopia in real world? A: Changing lives normally goes via metaphores and stories. Game offers possibility for people to become better people. ‘rite of passage’ in RL, often nasty. VW presents less harmful way of ‘becoming’.
Q: Have people actually implemented values from VW in RL? B. thinks so. People have become more tolerant from playing games. Helping for sake of helping ['responsibility'].
Q: to what extend are players becoming their characters, vs. only playing their character? A: That the aim of playing. Characters as extension of me. Role-playing is immersive: playing someone you’re not doesn’t immerse you as much. The longer you play, the more you become what you want to be. Eventually you ‘lock’ the 2 together: you are playing yourself.
Q: is playing helping you to find ‘the magician in yourself”? A: games help you to become yourself. Before VW existed, you had to travel to find a new metaphore for becoming. Q: VW also make use of symbols, narrative, etc., its not that different from RL? A: People play because its fun. Spiritual? Could be. If you take spirituality as something that can help a change in life, them OK. Games are experience of different world, not an imagined other world.

// Q&A audience
Q: “Become who you really are”: doesn’t VW – RL create a discrepancy? Can it lead to MPD? A: VW identities cannot always be transferred back to RL, and vice versa. RL identities like ethnicity become meaningless in VW. [is that so? language use tell-tales]. Physical body as part of RL identity cannot be taken with you in VW. VW aren’t healing environments per se.
Q: what are the metaphysical differences? A: there are of course differences, otherwise it wouldn’t be fun to play, as opposed to the real world. Different rules apply.

[what help can the concepts of the sacred vs. the profane (Durkheim) offer in understanding the role of games?]

Seumas Miller – Australian National University – Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics; privacy issues
Cathy Flick – Charles Sturt University – ICT industry, codes of ethics, policies, trust, privacy
Jeroen van den Hoven – TU Delft; prof. Ethics of Technology; privacy issues, moral identity
Alper Cugun – MSc student TU Delft; social issues, online communities
Noëmi Manders – PhD researcher TU Delft; ethical aspects of identity management
Bibi van den Berg – PhD EUR; ambient intelligence
Jeroen Timmermans – PhD EUR; playful identities
Michiel de Lange – PhD EUR; playful identities

There were some interesting topics discussed. Read the full notes on the meeting below:

// Jeroen vd Hoven:
Privacy issues & moral identity: the right to write your own biography (Isaya Berlin).
With more and more data, identities are being constructed about people on the basis of database- information.

Popper: 3 worlds
objections:
1. someone interrupting and interfering in your autonomous thoughts
2. increasing your self-awareness by ‘looking at you’ – new perspective
3. information gets stored into databases > who will see it? quasi-independent information objects leading life of their own.

Institutions can constrain information (physical, deontic, epistemic) – moral justification:
- preventing harm (cf. Nazis in NL with lists of jews)
- transparancy – personal data has become commodified and is being sold
- information must remain in its original context; it can be used in discriminatory ways if it leakes into other domains.
- One can only write his own moral biography. Other institutions/person shouldn’t have acces to information that could picture your Self. [one cannot know what it is like to be you; persons change and develop their personalities]. Privileged acces only for subject.
We expect modesty in others in judging us and saying “I know you”.
——–
Q: is breach of privacy justified when you suspect someone is doing something evil when your aiming for the truth, but it’s difficult to get at?
Q: What lattitude should people have to keep aspects of their life private?
> people need a ‘time-out’ from morality to experiment with it and develop their owm moral identity.
[individualist perception of identity; atomistic vs. collective image]
> We reveal more of ourselves to invite others to assist us in identity creation.
[presupposing an autonomous kernel that knows itself].
[the individual that constructs itself can do so in language that is not at all useful for other to comprehend - Wittgenstein]
Q: how can you describe the boundaries of what others may know things about you (just like ’social space’. A: one can descern information as being ’sensitive’ when it can be used to describe your moral identity; Q: but what is ’sensitive information’? differs from person to person. Stereotypes can quickly emerge.

// Bibi
ambient intelligence: personalised space.
Q: to what extent can you expect a technology to ‘know you’ and adapt to your personality? Is the Self becoming a set of preferences?
concept of ’strangeness’ of places: in a globalised world there are a lot of places that are familiar: the same everywhere. No room anymore for the ‘ongemak’ and the unexpected, unmediated experience. Sometimes persons are formed by uncontrollable events.
Q: what if there are many different people with all their own preferences present in one place?
Q: what does collective experience mean when all places are personalised?
Q: when does it turn off? how does it respond to your changing preferences?
Q: Responsability for experiences are being handed over to technologies. Who is responsable for the quality of these experiences?

// Cathy
Trusted computing: chip on motherboard, booting in ‘trusted mode’. Trusted modes are becoming ubiquitous: everyone needs to have a ‘trusted computer’. Large corporations are developing this. Possible problems:
- TC could be used to enforce DRM
- Technical specs change often
- open standards group TCG originally set up has been left by MS
- it can be used also for ‘trusted communication’ between terrorists, MS has not fully incorporated it in Vista.

// Seamus Miller
Collective actions.
individual action – collective action (behaviour/congnitive). How can this be morally significant?
- assertions you don’t have the right to have
joint procedural mechanism: not one person, not collective, but through adding/combining different databases to create profiles > who is responsable?
Q: make distinction between responsability – accountability?

I had met Clift before, a year or two ago, in Amsterdam, when I was still involved with ‘Digitale Trapvelden’ (digital playgrounds). These are a kind of community neighbourhood centres that give easy acces to new information technologies to people who are normally not able to work with them.

Clift gave us a presentation of his work with E-Democracy and IssueWeb. Some aims and strong points of IssueWeb / E-Democracy are:

• One can rapidly create a coalition about some issue online
• It helps strengthen the cnocept of civil society as opposed to a view about politics as the act of raising money around an issue or electorate
• It helps getting people with different backgrounds to join space in a “public sphere”

Some critique:

• Some people post way more than others
• White middle class male is overrepresented
• Scalability of the project: how to get more cities involved?
• Very much text-based: not appealing for everybody

It was an informative meeting. Interesting aspects for me were questions like whether these kind of initiatives are only helpful for creating coalitions amongst people that are against something (the NIMBY-effect) or also pro-something? In other words: to what extent can a resistance identity be transformed into a project identity (Castells 1996)? According to Steven Clift, certainly the majority of issues are opposing something. Nevertheless, there are also some very constructive initiatives taken on the web.
Another topic I find interesting is self-presentation of politicians on the web. What is their motivation? Why do some succeed in getting across their image/message and why do other fail?