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DAT503 – Urban API – Plymouth Bomb Sight

The Brief

Urban API is a live project. The project will generate an open real-time intervention or map of the city. The project should map or challenge the city as complex cultural, political and social phenomenon or the project should hack the city in its functions as a whole or aspects of it.

The Project has TWO components:

  1. Methodologies: A series of research, design and production methods will be presented along with practical mini projects to help students build an appropriate set of methodological design and research tools to complete the overall project. As part of this process, some key practical skills will be introduced such as hacking the Open Data and Google Maps API and Unity 3D.
  2. Planning: Following the introduction, students will be tasked to identify a site (used in the broadest sense) that will be the focus of their project.

Continue reading “DAT503 – Urban API – Plymouth Bomb Sight”

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DAT501 – Creative Strategies: Process

Artists often start work without a clear idea of where they are going to end up. They react to what they have already made to expand their work, and they continue until it is finished. This methodology has a focus on the process.

The opposite, where you define where you want to be and then figure out how to get there, has a focus on the goal. This approach is more common in engineering. Continue reading “DAT501 – Creative Strategies: Process”

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DAT503 – “Resistance is Futile” – Paper Review

The Esper machine, from Bladerunner
“Resistance is futile’”: reading science fiction alongside ubiquitous computing

Authors: Paul Dourish, Genevieve Bell
Published: 15 May 2013

This paper asserts that design-oriented thinking is a collective imagining influenced by both the prevalence of science fiction in the cultural backdrop of the ubiquitous computing research community, and by its inherent preoccupation with visions of near-future technology and alternative technology. Continue reading “DAT503 – “Resistance is Futile” – Paper Review”
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DAT503 – On Broadway – Paper Review

Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich

“Dr. Lev Manovich is one the leading theorists of digital culture worldwide, and a pioneer in the application of data science for analysis of contemporary culture.”

(http://manovich.net/index.php/about)

One of “25 People Shaping the Future of Design” (complex.com)

“Lev Manovich used his first computer in 1977, after two years of writing programs on paper for a programming class in Moscow. His code was impeccable, but when he typed it in, the machine spat back a failure message. He’d never used a computer keyboard before, and had typed O’s instead of zeroes. Continue reading “DAT503 – On Broadway – Paper Review”

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DAT503 – Reflexive Design Workshop 3 – Sound

We were asked, in groups, to venture out to record our own sounds, voices and atmospheres and then assemble them into a creative soundscape. We were also encouraged to add raw data via Audacity software as a way of producing a sonification of data – to bring data out of the digital realm and into the physical via the medium of sound.

This is the completed piece: Continue reading “DAT503 – Reflexive Design Workshop 3 – Sound”

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DAT503 – Reflexive Design Workshop 2 – Collaborative Art

Chinese Whispers

This workshop commenced with a standard Chinese Whispers activity.

“Chinese whispers is an internationally popular game, in which one person whispers a message to the ear of the next person through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly from that of the first player, usually with amusing or humorous effect. Reasons for changes include anxiousness or impatience, erroneous corrections, the difficult-to-understand mechanism of whispering, and that some players may deliberately alter what is being said to guarantee a changed message by the end of the line.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers

Continue reading “DAT503 – Reflexive Design Workshop 2 – Collaborative Art”

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DAT503 – Reflexive Design Workshop 1 – Paul Klee

Paul Klee – “Drawing is taking a line for a walk”

“Whereas Picasso, Matisse, even Mondrian and Kandinsky concentrated on abstracting from perceived reality, Klee began with a point, extended it into a line and famously took it for a walk wherever it wished to go. The exact stage at which this abstract construct began to suggest an image was not premeditated.”

(https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/taking-klees-line-for-a-walk/167355.article) Continue reading “DAT503 – Reflexive Design Workshop 1 – Paul Klee”