February 06, 2006
From Interaction to Participation:
Configuring Space through Embodied Interaction
"Abstract: When computation moves off the desktop, how will it transform the new spaces that it comes to occupy? How will people encounter and understand these spaces, and how will they interact with each other through the augmented capabilities of such spaces? We have been exploring these questions through a prototype system in which augmented objects are used to control a complex audio 'soundscape.' The system involves a range of objects distributed through a space, supporting simultaneous use by many participants. We have deployed this system at a number of settings in which groups of people have explored it collaboratively. Our initial explorations of the use of this system reveal a number of important considerations for how we design for the interrelationships between people, objects, and spaces." From From Interaction to Participation: Configuring Space through Embodied Interaction by Amanda Williams, Eric Kabisch, and Paul Dourish.
"This paper addresses this very important question: how will ubiquitous computing transform the new spaces that it comes to occupy; or what sorts of impacts on space result when it is populated by ubicomp technologies? The paper starts by describing how space and social action are tightly entwined. Then they examine the development and evaluation of a collective dynamic audio installation called SignalPlay (a series of physical objects with embedded computational properties collectively control a dynamic “sound-scape” which responds to the orientation, configuration, and movement of the component objects).
Some excerpts of this insightful paper:
Our fundamental concern is with the ways in which we encounter space not simply as a container for our actions, but as a setting within which we act. The embodied nature of activity is an issue for a range of technologies.
(…)
This social character means that spaces are not “given”; they are the products of active processes of interpretation. The meaningfulness of space is a consequence of our encounters with it. For ubiquitous computing, this is an important consideration. (…) The research challenge, then, is to understand how it is that computationally augmented spaces will be legible; with how people will be able to understand them and act within them..." [blogged by nicolas on pasta and vinegar]
Posted by jo at February 6, 2006 02:49 PM
