see yourself sensing
by Sara Hendren on 19/01/12 at 3:32 pm
Black Dog sent me Madeline Schwartzman’s new See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception: Lots of great projects in here—many I’ve not seen before. Plenty of both high- and low-tech projects and with a sense of history and breadth. And the critical analysis is also well done—she groups these projects together to show their raucous investigative [...]
unknown armature: body socks
For a couple of months now, I’ve been researching and testing some body sock prototypes, as part of a series of prosthetic research initiatives I’ve been calling Unknown Armature. I’ve mentioned body socks before; they’re wearable therapeutic tools for people with sensory processing disorders. You can’t find sensory processing challenges in formal diagnostic catalogs like [...]
read morebecause someone’s always said it both earlier and better
I am not a cyborg simply because I wear an artificial limb. I see cyborg more as a subject position than an identity, and believe it is more descriptive of my position vis-à-vis the relationships of production, delivery, and use surrounding my prosthesis than my actual interface with it. In other words, if I am [...]
read moreorgans everywhere, and more news
My semester at Harvard GSD is winding down; I’ll be sharing some new work in the coming break. In January I’ll be taking a course at the Adaptive Design Association in New York and interning with Artists in Context here in Cambridge. And I’m looking forward to a residency at UC Irvine next June, part [...]
read morethe importance of being a cyborg ableist
This article in H+ emphasizes the importance of embracing technology to further the cause of women’s equality in contemporary society. This is the kind of essay where you could almost swap out the feminist terminology for that of disability rights, with very few changes. Kyle Munkittrick lays out nicely the stakes for the cyber-feminist in [...]
read more“curiosity is a vice…
“…that has been stigmatized in turn by Christianity, by philosophy, and even by a certain conception of science. Curiosity, futility. The word, however, pleases me. To me it suggests something altogether different: it evokes “concern”; it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; a readiness to break up our familiarities and [...]
read morematerial interfaces, part ii
First, just quickly: I’m quoted in Monday’s Boston Globe article about the Awesome Foundation. I’ve sung their praises here before, of course. And I’m now through the first section of work in my course on Crafting Material Interfaces at the MIT Media Lab. (Here’s the first post about this class.) We’re documenting our work all [...]
read moreradicalism and “miniaturized music”
“We do not return to individualized or privatized emotions when we use the Walkman: rather the Walkman’s artificiality makes us aware of the impending presence of the collective, which summons us with the infallibility of the sleepwalker. What the Walkman provides is the possibility of a barrier, a blockage between ‘me’ and the world, so [...]
read morehigh-low tech
In the spirit of the public amateur, I’m going to document my way through a class I’m taking at the MIT media lab: Crafting Material Interfaces. It’s taught by Leah Buechley, with instruction and time in her lab to investigate materials and methods. The High-Low Tech group brings together digital and analog, futurist and traditional [...]
read moreborder town: beyond ramps [curitiba, brazil]
![border town: beyond ramps [curitiba, brazil]](http://www.ablersite.org/wp-content/themes/gothamnews/thumb.php?src=wp-content/uploads/curitiba_busstube.gif&h=150&w=150&zc=1&q=90)
How does a bold, military-appointed, possibly technocratic architect-turned-mayor create a model universal-access transportation system, cheaply and effectively, and use it—along with other initiatives—to turn around the environmental prospects of the entire town? [image] This post is part of Border Town, now exhibiting at the Detroit Design Festival. Border Town took place in Toronto this summer: [...]
read morechristine sun kim is unlearning sound etiquette
Filmmaker Todd Selby profiles Christine Sun Kim‘s performance work. From the description on the Nowness site:
Deaf from birth, Kim turned to using sound as a medium during an artist residency in Berlin in 2008, and has since developed a practice of lo-fi experimentation that aims to re-appropriate sound by translating it into [read more]
EDGE lab
The Experimental Design and Gaming Environments lab, or EDGE lab, at Ryerson University, works—among other things—on adaptive tech for children with disabilities. Like the High-Low Tech media lab group where I’m taking a course now, EDGE researchers are committed to democratizing materials for maximum customization and replicability. Following the example of the Adaptive Design Association [read more]
AGNES: the age suit
The Age Lab, at MIT. Thanks, Tim.
antonio rezza
Just discovered Rezza. Can’t get this image out of my head.
urban immune system research
Over at We Make Money Not Art, there’s a long and substantial interview with the Institute for Boundary Interactions and their various prototypes for a large and ongoing project, Urban Immune System Research:
The Urban Immune System Research [UISR] project was the culmination of a two day event we ran in December 2010 as part of [read more]
mark shepard’s CCD-me-not
This isn’t the first adaptive umbrella I’ve written about, but it’s certainly as timely, and there’s now a prototype in development. Mark Shepard is creating a Sentient City Survival Kit—a “set of artifacts for survival in the near-future sentient city”:
As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces [read more]
deus ex: the eyeborg documentarian
Remember this guy? I mentioned Rob Spence in this post a while back; he’s now working on several film projects around his own and others’ prosthetic gear. Lots to think about here, in the ways he frames the possibilities and discussion.
Thanks, Andrew.
michael kontopoulos’s “water rites”
I had an exchange with Michael Kontopoulos about “Water Rites,” a design fiction where literal and cultural relationships with water are “far less cavalier.” Kontopoulos was intrigued by science fiction narratives like that of Richard Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land; in that story, an arid planet creates social rituals around water—the resource becomes precious, [read more]
sascha nordmeyer’s “communication prosthesis,” and more at MOMA
Sascha Nordmeyer‘s prosthetic “smile simulator” tool will be part of MOMA’s Talk to Me, a show that opens today. Looks great—and there’s a blog where the curators have also cataloged their process of finding work to include. A whole database of interesting projects there, both under the checked tab and in the queue.
“Talk to [read more]
talk-o-meter: so many, many uses
The Talk-O-Meter has made the tech rounds already, but I had to post it here. It’s so simple, and so good.
This phone app efficiently memorizes the speech patterns of two people at a table. It then can calculate how much each person is talking—giving “gentle bio-feedback” when one party or the other is dominating conversation.
So [read more]
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