Winter 1997 Suggestions for img

First IMG session Jan 8, 1997

We started to discuss our plans for this quarter by talking about practices (possibly to get away from the notion of Media which felt a bit frazzled at the edges at the end of last quarter). Xin-Wei mentioned "alternative practices." During the next minutes everybody noted practices as possible approaches to the study of media: medical practice (operations under distant control?), educational practice, publishing practice, political practice ,etc.

It qickly became clear that each member expects different things from such a focus. Some expect practical help, some innovation in specific a specific domain, others would take it as a frame to explore theoretical ideas. Alternative practice was also interpreted as a way to reflect on our own position inbetween industry and university, a position which could be made more stable or legitimate through establishing of a new practice. Then we all agreed that we would rather work together as a project team with the goal of designing/ creating the specifications for some thing leaving unspecified what this thing might be. It was also agreed that we will not at first be narrowed down to implementable things or will try to find money for the effort.

In the following brainstorming a number of topics were brought up; some of them as candidates for the design effort, others are issues that should / could be addressed within the design.

Candidates

Reconceiving /Designing of:
advertisement / space(s)/ electronic field trip/ smart clothes or jewelry/ innovative (=non-imitative) forms of publishing on the web/ news (room/ genre)/.... sketching/....

Issues to be considered

Money as part of practice/ money as a symbolic object/ continuity of experience/ shading...peripheral vision for the experience of space/ getting away from objecthood / differential geometry and topology to provide inspiration for different structures/..rhtyhm/ shading as a temporal indicator/...

We agreed that we will audiotape from now on every session (Helga responsible for that), and have a note taker on a rotational basis.

Task for next session: We discuss candidates and issues, and the forms of participation in this round.

- HW

>>> Please, everyone who's on the img-mail goup
>>> post your reactions to
>>> img-mail@lists.stanford.edu
>>> so we can see what people would like to work on this term,
>>> Please propose questions/scenarios you'd like to study
>>> and for which you can take some responsibility in discussion.
>>> - SXW

Date: 13 Jan 1997 14:34:14 -0800
From: "Helga Wild"
Subject: re- questions/ issues for I

Subject: Time:2:17 PM
OFFICE MEMO re: questions/ issues for IMG seminar Date:1/13/97

Dear IMG participants:
Here are two issues that I would like to pursue in the context of the IMG
seminar.
1. How are boundaries established in social space, geographical space, other
space? Does this have something to do with the experience of inside and
outside? Does this have something to do with the experience of identity? Or
is it ungrammatical to speak of an "experience" of identity? .....
Spenser-Brown comes to mind; physiological evidence of when an object is
experienced to be part of one's body, when a part of one's body is experienced
as foreign. Phenomenology of space (Stroeker, etc.)

Second issue: rhythm - a different approach to time.
Biological, circadian rhythm as disposition of the individual; Short-term,
motor rhythm as the basis of the interaction with objects/ their integration
into behavioral sequences. (Heidegger's ready-to-hand, Miller's midworld)
Social rhythm as temporal basis for collaboration.....



From: Ann Weinstone
To: img-mail@lists.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Alternatives and Practices

Dear All,

Sorry I missed last week. I was exhausted after first teaching, new
classes, etc.

I like the idea of making an object. Here are some
questions/suggestions/directions.

In what way will we define or pursue "alternative practice?" It seems to
me that deciding on the object is secondary to defining the objectives of
our alternative practice qua practice. How is our process of object making
to be alternative? What alternati ve practices do we want our object to
embody? Some of these will, naturally and excitingly, emerge in the
process of construction. But I would think that we have to agree on some
specific desireable practice outcomes in advance. A kind of manifesto?
Some blatantly political aims? Cultural?

I suggest, for many reasons, that we develop alternative writing
14 lines more (you've seen 76%)
I suggest, for many reasons, that we develop alternative writing
practices. Or alternative "presentation of complex idea" practices. First
of all, we all write. And we all are intensely engaged in the presentation
of complex ideas. Note: I am purposely a voiding the word "information."
Indeed, I would suggest the striking of the word "information" as one of
our alternative practices. Then, there is so much kant (pun intended)
about writing and new media. A mindblowing, exemplary, and politically
grounded answer is in order.


What do you think?

xxAnn


Date: Tue, 14 Jan 97 11:32:11 -0800
To: img-mail@lists.Stanford.EDU
From: niklas@leland.Stanford.EDU

[From Niklas - XW]

Keeping my promise to write a short response to the last Img
meeting-discussion and taking my cue from certain coomments that Xin-wei
and Helga made, I would like to raise the following issues-topics for
discussion and possible joint exploration:

What is a hybrid physical-computational domain? How can it be
characterized 'ontologically': as material? as semiotic? What are the
implications for designing a medium
presuming we can specify the differences between, in short, the
prediscursive and discursive descriptions? How can such a medium if medium
is indeed the word for it , become supportive of a public domain that
thereby honors the embodied condition of its 'occupiers'?
Could such a public domain function as an agora or as a novel
theatrical stage? What kind of social relations/institutional
arrangements are to be in place for such thing to arise and what kind of
social ties would it, in turn foster?

These are some of the issues iam interested in. I recognize they are
difficult and not easy to translate into "implementable solutions".
However even if they can not themselves be 'solved' by the group, they
bring attention to 'the social-political' which Ithink should constantly
and consistently inform our
search for better understanding and designing! During the meeting I raised
questions concerning the economy and role of money in this brave new
World, but i refrain from trying to raise, here, questions about them.
Crucial as they are I think we are going to have our hands and minds full
just trying to address the issues of the aforementioned questions.
That's all for now. Niklas



From: Sha Xin Wei
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 97 12:07:41 -0800

Dear img folk,

My interest in this joint exercise is to approach some of the
conceptual problems, rather than design for the sake of design. More
specifically, I'd like to do this gedanken experiment explicitly with
the aim of sharpening our(my) currently vague notions of
continuous/smooth field ontologies. I'd like to think about how to
sketch marks that can support precise, sustained reasoning about fuzzy
or non-object stuff. The marks should sustain a variable degree of
precision and depth, unlike most computer systems which support only a
phenomenologically "superficial" engagement (eg. using a drawing app),
or a deep but very narrow form of cognition (eg. composing and
debugging programs in a procedural language).

With that in mind, how about: a hybrid physical-computational park --
a "public" garden -- as our object? Here are some questions. I'll
keep some of my preliminary conjectures in suspension.


0. Why a park? I agree with Ann and others that "that deciding on
the object is secondary to defining the objectives of our alternative
practice qua practice." It may be useful to implicitly define a set
of political or cultural stakes in the context of a park.

1. What does it mean to sketch in diagrammatic systems? Can we
extend this to designing rooms and houses? Sketching, to me is
different and much more evanescent/less commit-ful from construction,
which underwrites the engineers' notion of rapid prototyping.

2. How do regions and borders get established -- in aural field, in
community space, in private relations?

3. What are some notions of metric that do not directly derive from
kinesthetic schema, yet could be useful in topologizing a hybrid
space?

4. Can we apply the paradigms of sketching to the construction of
hybrid physical-computational spaces? Does this offer a "mindblowing,
exemplary" extension of the notion of writing?


Here are some references from SIGGRAPH96 that impinge on our topics...
These are valuable windows into the state of the art and the ideology.

Improv: A System for Scripting Interactive Actors in Virtual Worlds

http://www.siggraph.org/conferences/siggraph96/core/conference/papers/t130.2.html

Lumigraph (plenoptic function, alternative to QTVR for merging synthetic
and sampled images)

http://www.siggraph.org/conferences/siggraph96/core/conference/papers/w1015.4.html

SKETCH: An Interface for Sketching 3D Scenes

http://www.siggraph.org/conferences/siggraph96/core/conference/papers/t1015.1.html

Superior Augmented Reality Registration by Integrating Landmark Tracking
and Magnetic Tracking

http://www.siggraph.org/conferences/siggraph96/core/conference/papers/f130b.2.html

Adding Force Feedback to Graphics Systems: Issues and Solutions

http://www.siggraph.org/conferences/siggraph96/core/conference/papers/f130b.4.html

- Xin Wei PS. Mark Pesce appeared in at least three panels, but I didn't see anything worth relaying. Ann may be interested in analyzing him ;)