by Patrick Keller

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Recent Posts by Patrick Keller

Thingful, search engine for data

By Thursday, November 13, 2014 Resources, Sciences & Technology Tags: 0067, Data, Mapping, Mining, Tools Permalink 0

Note: Thingful is a “search engine” (beta version) for data and artifacts/sensors that produce data (the coming “Internet of Things” so to say, but also and mainly weather stations, aircrafts and Rastracks at this day). Already quite loaded, the content of the search engine and its map will with no doubt explode in the close future. It is a project by former creators of Pachube (in particular Usman Haque), which was an open webservice to “store, share and discover” data from realtime sensors, now sold and therefore private… It was sold to LogMeIn in 2011 (which is somehow a sad destiny for an open data project, but this is a different story) and became then Xively.

 

thingful

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SQM: The Quantified Home, (2014). Edited by Space Caviar

By Wednesday, November 12, 2014 Architecture, Resources, Thinking, X-Posts Tags: 0064, Books, D, Data, Domestic, Housing, Monitoring Permalink 0

Note: an interesting project /book by Space Caviar about the “house” under the pressure of “multiple of forces - financial, environmental, technological, geopolitical -”, to read in the frame of I&IC. Through its title, the book obviously address the question of domesticity immersed into technologies and the monitoring of its data.

While our project is gravitating around “networked objects/spaces”, the question of their monitoring, so as the production or use of data (“pushed” into to the cloud?) immediately comes into question, of course.

In this context, we must also point out Google and Apple efforts to tap into the “quantified house” with Nest and Homekit.

 

Via Space Caviar

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Setting up our own (small size) personal cloud infrastructure. Part #2, components

By Monday, November 3, 2014 Projects, Resources, Sciences & Technology, X-Posts Tags: 0058, A, C, Cabinets, Climate, Clouds, Datacenter, Domestic, Hardware, Infrastructure, Monitoring, Standards, Tools Permalink 0

While setting up our own small size data center and cloud infrastructure, we’ve tried to exemplify the key constitutive ingredients of this type of computing infrastructure, as of November 2014. But we’ve also tried to maintain them as much open as we could, for further questioning, developments and transformations.

The first key ingredients are software parts and we’ve described them in the previous post about the same topic.

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Setting up our own (small size) personal cloud infrastructure. Part #1, components

By Sunday, November 2, 2014 Projects, Resources, Sciences & Technology, X-Posts Tags: 0056, A, C, Clouds, Data, Datacenter, Infrastructure, Software, Tools Permalink 0

On the way to the development of different artifacts for the design research (Inhabiting & Interfacing the Cloud(s)), we’ll need to work with our own “personal cloud”. The first obvious reason is that we’ll need a common personal platform to exchange research documents, thoughts and work together between the different (geographically distributed) partners involved in the project. We are thus our own first case study. The second one is to exemplify the key components about how a small data center / cloud infrastructure might be assembled today and learn from it.

But then, more importantly, this will become necessary for two other main objectives: first one is that we would like to give access to “cloud” tools to the design, architecture and makers communities, so that they can start play and transform a dedicated infrastructure (and this won’t of course be possible with all type of systems); second one will possibly be for the “hands on” and “prototyping” parts of our research, for which we’ll need an accessible cloud based architecture to modify or customize (this includes both the software and hardware), around which some open developments, networked objects, new interfaces, apps, etc. could be developed.

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From Bergcloud to ?

By Wednesday, October 29, 2014 Design, Projects, Resources Tags: 0052, Clouds, Hardware, Software Permalink 0

Even if unfortunately Bergcloud is a dead project now (and that it sadly brought down the design collective Berg too), I mention it here on our research blog as it probably has some connections with our own research project and what we might try to develop later as tools. The unsuccessful commercial approach of Bergcloud to connected objects should also be taken as a question toward this big “buzz” though.

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Reblog > Internet machine

By Wednesday, October 29, 2014 Interaction Design, Resources, Sciences & Technology Tags: 0051, Conditioning, Data, Datacenter, Designers, Infrastructure, Internet, Networks, Research Permalink 1

Note: an interesting “documentary” project/resource for our project is this recent work by designer and researcher Timo Arnall. It was published last May on his website and on different blogs. The focus is obviously here on the data center as a (fascinating?) contemporary artifact, in which the search for technical efficiency, rationality, security, redundancy, clean air, modularity, etc. leads to a specific spatial aesthetic. It is this aesthetic that seems to become the “main character” for this movie that mixes techniques, even so the idea is to reveal/desacralize the “hidden materiality of our data”. This project is planned to be displayed as a multi-screen installation.

While I didn’t have the occasion to see the movie yet, we should keep it in mind and try to display it in the frame of our own research, in particular to the students that will take part to the different I&IC workshops.

 

Via elasticspace

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Internet machine is a multi-screen film about the invisible infrastructures of the internet. The film reveals the hidden materiality of our data by exploring some of the machines through which ‘the cloud’ is transmitted and transformed.

 

Film: 6 min 40 sec, digital 4K, 25fps, stereo.
Installation: Digital projection, 3 x 16:10 screens, each 4.85m x 2.8m.
Medium: Digital photography, photogrammetry and 3D animation.

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