Category: Links

“One thing that’s very interesting to me is using this rapidly-produced thing then becomes a ’social object’: creating conversations, collecting scribbles, instigating adventures – which then get collected and redistributed. A feedback loop made out of paper, in a place.” Which would be an awesome mechanism to use in a game sometime.

Via Mr. Koster’s blog: A concept map that attempts to lay bare the working behind the concept of play. Hard to grok just by looking at it on a screen or an A4 sized print. But intriguing nonetheless. There is also a step by step build-up of the poster here.

Great presentation by Hill that illustrates in a clear way what might happen when we create feedback loops in the city, using sensors, processors and actuators.

A high speed history lesson on pneumatic tubes presented by Molly. Good fun, plus some great archival imagery.

Dan Hon rants about in which ways ARGs could be improved. I agree with a lot of this, but the ludologist in me squirms at the emphasis on storytelling. I’m not disputing that games tell stories, but I am wondering if it is their ultimate purpose.

Video of an awesome installation by Pablo Valbuena for TodaysArt 2008. Projections on the city hall of The Hague that create the illusion of the building’s façade transforming. Imagine this were real…

Tijmen Schep on the tendency of people involved with locative stuff to flirt with the Situationist heritage: “So, we have two options. Either we stop pretending the situationists are our forefathers, or we actually do see them as our forefathers, and start using computing to disrupt instead of streamline society.” Perhaps “disrupt” is putting it too strongly. I would go with “subvert”. Subversively changing people’s views on public life, public space and public identity. Not by destroying the current one, but by shifting it into new territory.

Wonderful bit of technology-mediated playfulness in urban space. It wouldn’t take much to turn this into a cool game. I would also love to try this in my home-town and compare the results with Kacie (this project’s initiator).

Service designer Anouk Randag has sent a letter to one of the biggest newspapers of the Netherlands requesting better and more coverage of design, pointing out that design is more than just pretty lamps and such. I find her definition of design thinking problematic, but apart from that, this is a laudable initiative. (The letter itself looks pretty too.)

An interesting discussion of how to educate game designers, which takes as its starting point an article by a Belgian professor of art theory on different models in art education.

A companion film to the book Data Flow, which documents the new wave of aesthetic data visualization. This is mostly talking heads, graphic designers geeking out about data.

A decent intro to phenomenology for interaction designers. Some of the comments to this pieace are less than encouraging. Johnny Holland’s audience doesn’t seem very willing to broaden their horizon.

It is strange. Years ago, when reading JJG’s book The Elements of UX, I thought he made a lot of sense. Now, I feel many of Dan Saffer’s arguments against Garrett’s highly controversial IA Summit keynote are what the latter was arguing before. Anyway. The one thing that makes it most evident JJG is somewhat out of touch with things is his seeming lack of awareness of interaction design happening away from the web.

This post contains a short documentary film shot at the very first Come Out & Play festival which took place in NYC in 2006. It contains footage of Cruel 2B Kind, The Go Game and Journey to the End of the Night (part of SF0). It also contains a short bit of Frank Lantz talking about how games can be like sculpture, with play functioning as the act of observing, encouraging people to look at reality as dynamic systems.

For those with access to academic papers, this comes recommended. The authors quite persuasively show that some of interaction design’s highest held principles must be re-evaluated in the light of play and game design.

Jonas Löwgren has created a deck of cards with a nice example of information visualization on each (122 in total).

Julian has published a piece that tries to answer (amongst other things) the question: “How do you entangle design, science, fact and fiction in order to create this practice called “design fiction” that, hopefully, provides different, undisciplined ways of envisioning new kinds of environments, artifacts and practices.” Which sounds mighty interesting. On the to-read list.

Timo superimposes dashed circles on still and moving images to highlight the spatial and embodied properties of wireless technologies. A simple technique, but it works beautifully.