I have successfully passed my qualifying MIT general exam, I am officially PhD candidate! The general exam is composed of three written requirements and one oral exam.

My committee is composed of:
Professor Hiroshi Ishii, PhD
Associate Director of the MIT Media Laboratory
Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Program in Media Arts and Sciences
Main area: Tangible interaction techniques

Professor Joe Paradiso, PhD
Sony Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Program in Media Arts and Sciences
Technical area: Technologies for body sensing and expression

Professor Edith Ackermann, PhD
Honorary Professor of Developmental Psychology
University of Aix-Marseille I, France
Visiting Scientist. MIT School of Architecture
Contextual area: Psychology, cultural artifacts and semiotics

The oral exam is here to: “show the mastery of the specific knowledge required (analysis), and the ability to think clearly and logically, and to extend ideas into new territory (synthesis)”. What is so great about this process is to combine three persons you highly admire, to think with you on “what could become a research framework”. You have 6 months after you sent the general exam proposal to fulfill the general exam requirements with the help of your committee. The committee was highly invested in the entire process, supporting my explorations of different directions of research, criticizing my experimentations in wearables, health care, toy design, and help me refine a potential framework throughout.

I passed the three written requirements in the form of a paper for each discipline and today I just completed the oral exam that I titled: “Grounding Interfaces: Shifting the body boundaries”.

Introduction ->link to the pdf.

Motivation ->link to the pdf.

Opportunities ->link to the pdf.

Vision ->link to the pdf.

Sensing Technologies ->link to the pdf.

Conclusion ->link to the pdf.

Here is my presentation in .pdf format!

Thank you to all my friends who helped me clarify ideas, refining the framework and letting me rehearse many times!

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: Edith Ackermann, general exam, Hiroshi Ishii, Joe Paradiso, MediaLab, MIT, PhD

I am currently working towards my General Exam, including the qualifying exams from MIT. I will be back on the blog right after! In the meantime, enjoy a beautiful last moment of Indian summer –taken with my camera phone…

A tax calculator is better than 1000 words :)
-> Link

A kit for any klutz who wishes to woo a potential lover, ‘Pleasurecraft’ is a vehicular kit that choreographs gesture and landscape to produce an outting full of splendor and romance. The potential lover wil find PleasureCraft’s luxurious pullows and easy-to-reach champagne cooler irresistable. Suitors will love PleasureCraft for its easy-to-use instructions that make Romance easy - one, two, three!

The suitor begins when he/she steps in the boat and first begins to read the operator’s manual. Pictures indicate what to do next–comb the moustache, don the bowtie, bust out the TicTacs — then uncork the champagne, what tempo to follow, etc.

Often, a clumsy serenade can be attributed to an overwhelming amount of details and a failure to attend to the right ones in the right order. But PleasureCraft solves this problem through its built-in water wheel, perfectly callibrated to the RPM of the River Seine. By listening to the music and glancing at the operator manual, the suiter knows what cues to follow and when.

(‘Pleasurecraft’ questions the human agency in constructing the pictoral imaginary and an ethnographic examination of our species’ mating rituals.)

“Stelarc Ken” by Zoe Khamsin.
Now children can play with cyborg toys!

Stelarc is a poet and scientist of contemporary times and his body, that he himself defined as ‘obsolete’, and others has defined as ‘posthuman’, is the end of the religious principle of body’s inviolability. Moreover he made a mutual correspondence between his body and his art, and this led to his iconic definition. The artist creation - ‘Stelarc Ken’ - builds upon the idea of iconic individuals being replicated in toy form.

It is very pretty, the dots on the white look like steps in the snow. Notice how the sound from the solenoid works really well with the “clock” idea! A nice trick to deal with such noisy technology. You can see a video about Shade Pixel here:

The level creation is the most intriguing, because you got to design triggers and events like switches and buttons. It can be pretty simple if it is just to open a door to the next level but pretty rad ;) when designing a multi-phase boss fight against millions of tech spiders! Also the sharing component is pretty elaborate as other users can rate your game and offer descriptive keywords to your creation, from “brilliant” to “repetitive”. So be sure to invite the right friends who can understand your style!!! You can also invite guest mascot stars! Isn’t that amazing?!

You are only allowed to create 3 levels that you share on the server side. If on the server the company deems that you are good at creating levels, you can then create some more. If the company decides that your levels are not good enough, then you are stuck and you need to cancel these levels until you are being granted the right to create some more! So that is interesting because it shows that the company is afraid that users aren’t gonna design levels good enough and that this game relies heavily on people’s ability to create neat levels. If users are not gonna create brilliant designs, then this will be a failure because it only comes with 3 small levels … This is like a creation suite for gamers that welcome creative individuals into playing, creating and sharing! I cannot wait to try it. If only they would send a free copy to designers, they would have great levels designed!!

In the meantime, here is a video of the trailer:

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: animation, video, culture, media, DIY, craft culture, video game, playstation, Little Big Planet, mascot

In the series I love animation, I found this graffiti animation that is really fun to watch.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion

A video on the beach by Keith Loutit that resembles stop motion (effect Tilt Shift) found on this super neat French blog Fubiz. The video animates beach lovers that shape like sharp color points using the fashionable effect called Tilt Shift, effect I used a lot to present my sculpture work, playing with a unusual depth of field, to create optical illusions and to give it a maquette look and feel. This effect is apparently also called smallgantics, popular effect based on a Thom Yorke music video.
For the amateurs of the animations with the beach, don’t forget to check “la plage” by Bokanovski.

Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Another video by Keith Loutit where the effect is even more stunning!

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

A very satisfying video of human motions within the light. Large format camera and filmed in high definition, the video entertains the viewer with light coordinated with motions. It is pleasing and becomes satisfying to watch the dancer twisting and jumping throughout the streets, playing with water and flowers. The soundtrack is a nice add-on by M83 (You appearing, Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun), Sigur Ros (Staralfur) et Besnard Lakes (Devastation). Enjoy!

Human Movement in Light from Jordan Clarke on Vimeo.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: animation, video, culture, Tilt Shift, urban, beach, smallgantics, Keith Loutit, media, music, music video, stop motion

The best creations will be used as graphics for a series of T-shirts and accessories to be showcased during Milan Fashion Week in February. You’ve got till 30 January 2009 to focus your ideas, create them and send them in! The jury will select three original and unpublished concepts (such as pictures, composites, wall-paintings, stickers, graphics, banner, sculpture) representing in a young and creative way the logo “C’N'C PLUG GENERATION”.

Prizes
1st - 1000€
2nd - an iPhone
3rd - an iPhone

+ your winning T-shirts and accessories logo will be presented during Milan Fashion Week this February 2009!

Rules
Read the rules ->here<-

Participant must create a concept with any artistic technique, including free-hand drawing and digital art, photography and sculpture. The concept must be sent online to CND in JPG, TIFF, GIF, PDF or PNG format, file of a maximum of 5 MB. The directions on how to upload your creation can be found ->here<-

-> The I.D. review <-

A child playing with Jabberstamp and me in the background blurred by the magical photoshop touch! 

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: product design, culture, children, media, project, MIT, MediaLab

Thank you Adrien!

I had designed a system to cool down the body for mental health support. It is always nice to see how such system can be used in another context such as the Nike Lab that designs innovative garments for athletes. One of the product, that I found in the Print edition of Fast Company Magazine, is a jacket that cools down the body. Discovering that performance falls off drastically when core body temperature hits 103 degrees, the Nike lab designed a vest that slows the rise of core body temperature. It is simply filled in with water, then frozen overnight. The vest is meant to be wear an hour prior to competition.

Screenshot from the Nike designer story

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: product design, body, health, sport, culture, fashion, fabric, haptic

This is the photogram of a Victorian christening dress by Adam Fuss. Gelatin silver print photogram. Discovered in ARTnews, is this the ghost of a child or the ghost of a dress? is it instinct of culture that makes us automatically assume that transparency and translucency are properties of the spirit? This work makes us feel as if a spirit had brushed the hem of its garments across a photographic plate.

“Subject and technique conspire to let us participate vicariously in the experience of those early photographic pioneers, high on darkroom chemicals and on the possibilities of their new toy –Francine Prose for ARTnews”

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: art, photography, culture, ghost, body, fashion, fabric

Grassland is the result of many years of experimentation to grow grass and to let it dry under controlled conditions. The special appeal of the objects is to make visible the concept of change and the transitory nature of things, turning them into real “memento mori”. To experience every moment of change makes these objects fascinating and vests them with a life of their own in the living room.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: art, sculpture, culture, environment, grass

As I focused on the chapter “how space communicates”, I find intriguing the way Hall compares cultures and their reading of non verbal communication cues. He particularly states that the distance between individuals differs and can drastically affect the dynamics of space interaction. For instance, an American needs to take between 20 inches to 36 inches in a neutral conversation for a personal subject matter. Apparently in Latin America the interaction distance is much less. This claim was also proposed in his other book, The Hidden Dimension. This seems like a pretty large distance to me!

I was wandering, as we are becoming nomads, or neo-nomads –term created and analyzed by Dr. Yasmine Abbas, now that we travel constantly, I wander how these distances of interaction and non verbal communication cues have evolved. Is it possible that we absorb most of these social interactions in our everyday routines, and that after each travel, each interaction, we come back “socially transformed”? Would these non verbal communication cues become more obvious to us?

In one of his other book, The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time, Hall explores the way humans are intrinsically linked to the rhythm of life, how being unsynchronized can disturb them and even bring them into depression! He explains, based on observations, how people are tied together and yet isolated by hidden threads of rhythm and walls of time. Time is treated as a language, organizer, and message system revealing people’s feelings about each other and reflecting differences between cultures. He claims that repetition is not appreciated or that Americans are not trained to appreciate repetition. Through repetition comes learning, comes depth of understanding, comes rhythm. He proposes that the invisible rhythm is not widely recognized, that rhythms are only presented on stage by talented performers! Hall assumes there is a relationship between rhythm and love. Basically it affects our entire being. Synchrony in life seems strangely related to rhythm in music. The pattern of our movements can translate into a beat. Without this rhythm, we are not synchronized and we loose our contact with life …

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: PhD, MIT, research, interaction, theory, book, anthropology

The idea is to design a device that inherits the characteristics of human skin. Surveying prior work in materials, flexible electronics, sensing matrices and sensor networks, Gerardo presents a new type of artificial sensate skin: low power, scalable, mechanically flexible, and that extracts a rich set of multi modal sensor data. Also each node in SNAKE is capable of changing its behavior by changing its code. One can use SNAKE as a scalable smart material that covers interactive surfaces!

This Skin is composed of one or many Skin Patches which in turn are composed of one or many Skin Nodes. Each node is able to measure Strain, Pressure, Ambient Light, Pressure, Sound and Mechano-reception. Each Skin Patch can either work as a stand-alone device or as a data extraction device if this is attached to a Personal Computer through a different type of device referred to as Brains. Each Skin Node and therefore each Skin Patch: is Dynamically Adaptable meaning that they can adapt to external stimuli by either modifying their behavior or by completely changing their code. Construction of a sensate skin in such a modular fashion promises intrinsic scalability, where peer-to-peer connections between neighbors can reduce local data, which can then be sent to the brain by the high-speed common backbone.

Paradiso observed two general trends in sensor networks: Either the individual sensors are routed to a central processing unit or as completely decentralized sensor networks. So in SNAKE, data can be processed locally because each node is given processing power. Each node can also be connected to each other to create a skin like surface to react to the same kinds of stimuli that our skin encounters. The idea of a communication link between nodes is inspired by how our cells communicate with one another. When stimulated they generate an electrical pulse, informing our brain, while also releasing neurochemical transmitters received by neighboring cells.

Each skin patch in SNAKE is a sensor network composed by sensor nodes. Each node is made of a multi layer, flexible circuit substrate that sense six physical quantities: Stain/Bending by using two orthogonal custom made strain gages. Proximity/Activity by using a piezoelectric cantilever. Absolute pressure by using a quantum-tunneling effect material. Ambient light by adding an integrated sensor. Audio by adding a MEMS microphone. Temperature by using an integrated temperature sensor.

Related work in the field

Paintable Computer designed by William Butera for his PhD thesis at MIT. Paintable Computing is: “An agglomerate of numerous, finely dispersed, ultra miniaturized computing particles; each positioned randomly, running asynchronously and communicating locally -Butera”.

Tribble designed by Josh Lifton is a tactile reactive interface built by linked elements assembled in a sphere made up of tiles. The advantage of this work is to be a completely decentralized network; each node is capable of processing its own generated data without the need of a centralized processing unit. The cons is probably its shape, fixed, preventing it of being a scalable smart surface. Also it is power hungry!

Tribble

Pushpin Computing
The project developed by Josh Lifton & Michael Broxton consists of a hundred of peer-to-peer wireless sensor nodes freely distributed over a table-top interface.

Pushpin

Recreating the sense of touch have been explored by many other researchers, but all of them rely on a centralized processing unit to process the data extracted from the sensors. For instance, Lumelsky’s sensitive skin, a prototype of a skin patch with infrared lights and receivers used as proximity sensors. Hakozaki created a flexible robot skin to cover wide robot surfaces. Rekimoto presents a capacitive “smart skin” sensor for use in interactive surfaces.

Also prior work as shown artificial sensate skins not implemented as sensor networks but as sensor matrices: each sensor must be individually routed to a central processing unit. This is the case for instance for Takao Someya and his large flexible sensor matrix with organic field effect transistors or for M. Sergio’s textile-based capacitive sensor array that can be used as sensitive skin.

Takao Someya’ sensor matrix

An artificial sensate skin needs to be flexible. The innovative work of Stephanie Lacour is probably the most prominent example. She has created a new conducting material that can be stretched and still retain their electronic properties this by depositing thin gold layers on elastic rubber substrates. Also one can refer to the work done on the e-paper by Jacobson, micro capsules, filled with electronically loaded white parts that were dissolved in a dark colored oil.

-> Link <- to the .pdf of Pérez thesis.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: electronics, PhD, MIT, research, textile, technology, interaction design, robotic

Each block represents an electronic component. As the child assembles the blocks together, the child designs a circuit. All the pieces have a magnet underneath. They can be assembled on a metallic large plate, plate that works as the circuit ground. The game is about electronics, analog electronics, but the iteration process of electronics discovery is “tangible”. The child can relate to the kit like a puzzle and by this is invited to experiment with each piece. Many authors have claimed that the understanding of electronics is hands-on. Making this process connected to the learning of electronic symbols + offering a puzzle based interaction to circuit design is very exciting! Now there is a consequence to the connection of the pieces, where the electronics knowledge starts and the children are empowered in the design, focusing essentially on their component and how they spatially fits. Later on they can move on to working directly with the components …

I have a more recent version of an electronic kit that shows directly the components, not the symbols. The connection is made by inserting wires between each component. I much prefer the puzzle based approach that welcome easy improvisation and experimentation with circuit design.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Technorati Tags: children, electronics, PhD, game, collection, research, tangible, interaction design, toy

Paul L. Harris is Professor of Developmental Psychology, Oxford University, and Fellow in Psychology, St. John’s College, Oxford. He is the author of Children and Emotion, and co-editor of Developing Theories of Mind, Children’s Understanding of Emotion, and Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific and Religious Thinking in Children.

This entry will be a repository of my notes on the book, as summaries chapter after chapter.

Intro

The author reminds us on the human radical evolution 40 000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolitic era. The observation was made that even if we could not analyze the brain modification, we noticed a radical change in what humans did with their hands between the Upper Paleolitic era in contrast with the Neanderthal era. These created artifacts testify a cognitive change, a change in temporal organization and planning. The artifacts resemble children’s props for make believe, helping participants to be transported out of reality into some imagined settings.

Chapter 1. Bleuler in Weimar

In 1911, Bleuler distinguishes two modes of thinking: logical or realistic thinking and autistic thinking.

For Bleuler, autistic thinking is not a pathology confined in a group of children, children who exhibit a withdrawal from other people and the external world (as in Kanner, 1943). For Bleuler autistic thinking is a normal mode of thinking in both children and adults. It is evident in dreams, pretend play and reveries and in the fantasies and delusions of the schizophrenic. It is a mode of thought dominated by free association and wishful thinking. In logical and realistic thinking, affective and emotional considerations are tempered by what is recognized as faisible. Then sometimes autistic thinking override logical thinking in normal adults. In Bleuler, at the difference of Freud, the ability to conceive of alternatives to reality is not a primitive process but something relatively sophisticated. For Bleuler, reality-directed thinking comes first and autistic thinking comes later.

For Piaget, autistic thinking is suppressed with the development of logic and the child becomes more rational and objective. Children early on speak from their inner world and this is not yet adjusted to the external world, to the need of their listener. Vygotsky tried to analyze and compare Bleuler and Piaget’s theories and explained that a child learns to make a clean separation between speech for communicating and speech for the service of thinking. It does not mean th