User-made “you are here”

… or you can spot where you are based on a location people made clearly visible through touching a paper-based map… seen in Paris last week-end.

Pixels Per Person: making WiFi networks tangible

Pixels Per Person by Carina Ow is an inspiring design project that looked at how to give a tangible existence to the public WiFi network in the city of Geneva:

“In images, WiFi connections are usually represented as a series of fluctuating waves derived from signal strength indicators that fall and rise according to the strength of the WiFi connection. This inspired the creation of a system that would not stay static, but would instead be in a state of constant motion. To represent this idea, each installation takes the form of a dynamic OLED surface modelled differently each time depending on the characteristics found on site. Organic LEDs (OLEDs) were specified for surface of the installations because they work both in the light and dark, and can therefore contribute to the spatial quality of the installation site at night.
(…)
The graphical system is designed as different configurations of these pixels forming pixel images derived from classic Wi-Fi signal motifs. Depending on the total number of users connected to the network, the image will change to reflect the network traffic, i.e. the more users, the more pixels used in the composition of the image. The pixel images morph between themselves in a pre-defined transitional animation.“

Why do I blog this? Because of my long-time interest in representation the digital envelope of urban environments. This project is intriguing as it represents WiFi usage and aims to induce a sense of participation and ownership in the users.

The smart city backdrop

“It should come as no surprise that the design and development of urban informatic systems is currently dominated by people coming from a background in web design. Despite the fact that these are very smart, extremely talented people, they struggle – as we all do – with the received assumptions, latent biases, and hidden agendas that one’s background inevitably brings to the new and relatively uncharted territory. So you find urban system designers that can’t help but view the city as a website“

Mark Shepard, “Toward the Sentient City”, Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space, 2011

Why do I blog this? The perusal of this excerpt from Shepard’s book about urban informatics, on my way to Marseille for Lift France 2011, immediately echoed with my own feelings. What he expresses here, was actually a footnote but I found it quite important to highlight an interesting phenomenon. This footnote was related to a part of the book intro in which Mark Shepard describes that the underlying logic of “smart cities” can sometimes be limited to functionalist views such as “a searchable city with an easily accessible shopping cart”. More specifically, this quote echoes with my feeling when using various mobile services/apps (public transport, restaurant review, location-based signage, augmented reality…).

Urban dérive on the (urban) information superhighways

This video of two Japanese guys using Google Streetview to visit the USA from their living room is quite fascinating.

It’s not necessarily the numbers that caught my attention (90 hours, 104,619 clicks, lots of energy drinks). Of course, they’re quite extreme but what’s curious here is the practice itself. Unlike some commenters who fund it useless and pathetic, I find it rather curious and intriguing as a human practice.

This made me think about a recent project by French writer François Bon called “Une traversée de Buffalo” in which he gives an account of how he lost himself in this area of North America using Google Earth (via).

On the same topic, it’s clear that the recent release of Liberty City Streetview map by GTA4net is also relevant (via). It basically allows you to “plunge into the boroughs of Liberty City from the safety of your own chair“. But again, this is only a partial view. The point is not just use this as a complement of the game… exploring this Street View map is a game in itself (a playful activity let’s say).

Why do I blog this? This kind of (extreme) practice can be considered as an intriguing signal for narratives or services that would tell stories in new ways. A sort of dérive is happening here.

Habitar: bending the urbran frame

For researchers and designers interested in urban informatics and architecture, the HABITAR exhibition at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industria seems to be a great pick. The curator (José-Luis de Vicente) and his conceptual advisor (none other than Fabien) describe it as:

“The new urban landscape is no longer predicated solely on architecture and urbanism. These disciplines now embrace emerging methodologies that bend the physical with new measures, representations and maps of urban dynamics such as traffic or mobile phone flows. Representations of usage patterns and mapping the life
of the city amplify our collective awareness of the urban environment as a living organism. These soft and invisible architectures fashion sentient and reactive environments.

The Habitar project offers a journey through these emerging urban scenarios. It is a three-dimensional catalogue of projects and images by artists and design and architecture studios, as well as hybrid research centres and media labs. It is an overview of the practices, tools, solutions and languages that are being developed to negotiate every day life in this new urban predicament.“

The artists, designers and researchers who contributed to this are: Timo Arnall, Julian Bleecker, Ángel Borrego – Office for Strategic Spaces, Nerea Calvillo, Citilab-Cornellà, Pedro Miguel Cruz, Dan Hill, IaaC – Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Cataluña, kawamura-ganjavian + Maki Portilla Kawamura + Tanadori Yamaguchi, Aaron Koblin, Philippe Rahm architectes, Marina Rocarols, Enrique Soriano, Pep Tornabell, Theodore Mohillo, Semiconductor, SENSEable City Lab, Mark Shepard.

The catalogue of the exhibit (PDF) also features 8 essays from Benjamin Weil, Molly Wright Steenson, Bryan Boyer, Usman Haque, Anne Galloway, José Pérez de Lama and myself.

Why do I blog this? I see this exhibit (that i still have to explore) as an important landmark in the evolution of urban informatics. The projects and abstract considerations describes in the catalogue can be seen as interesting pointers to what I see as the most intriguing issues and topics in the field.

Crowd dynamics determined by more than physical constraints

A long time ago, while still doing a bachelor degree in biology, animal cognition was a pet project of mine. Ants and bees or ethology methods were highly intriguing and paved my way towards more technology-oriented studies of behavior. I still keep an eye on this field and the following paper from one of the lab I followed recently caught my attention (via):

Moussaïd M, Perozo N, Garnier S, Helbing D, Theraulaz G (2010) The Walking Behaviour of Pedestrian Social Groups and Its Impact on Crowd Dynamics. PLoS ONE 5(4).

(Pedestrian flows in Toulouse, France as observed in this study)

Some excerpts I’ve found interesting (my emphasis):

“Human crowd motion is mainly driven by self-organized processes based on local interactions among pedestrians. While most studies of crowd behaviour consider only interactions among isolated individuals, it turns out that up to 70% of people in a crowd are actually moving in groups, such as friends, couples, or families walking together. These groups constitute medium-scale aggregated structures and their impact on crowd dynamics is still largely unknown. In this work, we analyze the motion of approximately 1500 pedestrian groups under natural condition, and show that social interactions among group members generate typical group walking patterns that influence crowd dynamics. At low density, group members tend to walk side by side, forming a line perpendicular to the walking direction. (…) when crowd density increases, the group organization results from a trade-off between walking faster and facilitating social exchange.“

Why do I blog this? what is interesting in this work is that the crowd dynamic model should take into account the presence of people who put more emphasis on social activities than on movement efficiency. It basically shows that pedestrian flows are complex and not determined by physical constraints induced by other pedestrians and the environment, but also significantly by on less utilitarian reasons (communicative, social interactions among individuals). This result is perhaps taken for granted in the social sciences but it’s curious to observe it with this kind of modelling work.

All the movements made in the space of one year by a student

The famous drawing extracted from “Theory of the Dérive” (Théorie de la Dérive) by Guy Debord. As explained by the author:

“In his study Paris et l’agglomération parisienne (Bibliothèque de Sociologie Contemporaine, P.U.F., 1952) Chombart de Lauwe notes that “an urban neighborhood is determined not only by geographical and economic factors, but also by the image that its inhabitants and those of other neighborhoods have of it.” In the same work, in order to illustrate “the narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives . . . within a geographical area whose radius is extremely small,” he diagrams all the movements made in the space of one year by a student living in the 16th Arrondissement. Her itinerary forms a small triangle with no significant deviations, the three apexes of which are the School of Political Sciences, her residence and that of her piano teacher.“

Why do I blog this? Tracing some documents and insights about chronotopic representations.

“The World As Seen From New York’s 9th Avenue”

While discussing the Here and There project by BERG with Etienne, he pointed me on this great New-Yorker cover from 1976 by Saul Steinberg. Entitled “The World As Seen From New York’s 9th Avenue”, is directed towards the West (Europe is absent as if the authors wanted to turn is back to it) with the big-rectangled USA right across the Hudson river and then the Pacific with foreign countries such as Japan, China or russia.

Why do I blog this? There’s a lot to be drawn here concerning the implications of such representation of course (see here). However, I was rather intrigued by this sort of mapping that represents a subjective view of the world, and how this sort of viewpoint could be curious for paper map design.

Mountain cues

The presence of patina on mountain rocks is an interesting “footsteps in the snow” sign: the activity of people modify the environment, which in turn reveal relevant cues for other persons. Especially when hiking in a rocky environment. It allows to find your way and avoid unnoticeable crevasse and cracks.

Pacman maps

Been stuck into Pacman maps and cartographic representations lately, as the one above (that represents the “strawberry and first Orange” levels. I found the one above at this Unified Resource Locator when practicing random combinations of keywords on the Google (an activity I often carry out with a keen interest).

I do not really know why but they seems highly peculiar and remarkable, perhaps as a seminal depiction of video game levels; in other words, one of the most important (and early) representation of a digital environment based on a metaphorical grid (Not to mention the 256th “split screen” special).

Beyond this map metaphor, what is also intriguing is the solution possibilities, which are based on the fact that Pacman works on a deterministic but not random. What I mean here is that the opponents you have to escape from have very specific kinds of behavior. Each ghost has a specific role (chaser, ambusher, fickle and stupid). As explained on the Wikipedia:

“enabling experienced players to devise precise sequences of movements for each level (termed “patterns”) that allow them to complete the levels without ever being caught. A later revision of the game code altered the ghosts’ behavior, but new patterns were soon developed for that behavior as well. Players have also learned how to exploit other flaws in the ghosts’ behavior, including finding places where they can hide indefinitely without moving, and a code bug occasionally allows Pac-Man to pass through a non-blue ghost unharmed. Several patterns have been developed to exploit this bug. The bug arises from the fact that the game logic performs collision detection based on ghost / Pac-Man occupancy of grid squares, where the grid squares are large relative to the size of the characters. A character occupies (for collision detection purposes) only one grid square (“tile”) at at time, despite its graphic depiction overflowing to another tile. If a ghost and Pac-Man switch tiles with each other simultaneously (which is not a rare phenomenon, because the tiles granularity is large), a collision isn’t detected“

The solution is about finding patterns about the grid and artifacts’ behavior, which is something some players understand and some others never get. At least, some who did, took some time to get it or were told to spot a pattern.

Why do I blog this? Pure curiosity towards this historical piece of culture. There must be something to nail down here about Pacman’s grid (and players’ behavior) as a metaphor/vehicle for discussions nowadays about the advent of augmented maps. We all know the cartographic representations updated in real-time (or in a more asynchronous way) and based on the aggregation of digital traces. Mapping the use of cell-phones for instance to highlight urban activities with a platform such as Citysense.

To what extent the “instant maps” based on the collecting of digital traces will require users to perform the same pattern analysis than Pacman maps? Should it be like them? different? How can we formulate the difference and help users to spot patterns?

But wait. What is pattern anyway and why do we need to reveal them to people in the first place?