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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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I&IC Workshop #2 with James Auger at HEAD, brief: “Cloudy”

By Monday, November 3, 2014 Ethnography, Interaction Design, Schools, Workshops Tags: 0060, Behavior, Data, Designers, Designers (interaction), Documentation, HEAD, Ideas, Internet, Teaching Permalink 0

At HEAD – Genève today, we started the first workshop of the research project with James Auger (from Auger-Loizeau design studio and the Royal College of Arts in London). We’re going to spend this week with the first year students of the Media Design MA exploring cloud computing, personal cloud systems, objects and user interfaces.

In order to address this, the workshop started with a background description of the project’s purposes, the evolution of computers and network infrastructures, as well as an introduction to the current state of design objects and architectures related to cloud Computing: NAS systems, servers combined with heater, speculative projects related to such technologies. From this broad list of material we wondered about the lack of artefacts that go beyond purely functionalists goals. Cloud computing systems, especially in the context of people’s context is generally a commodity… hence a need for design interventions to re-open this black box.

Following Eames’ quote “A plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose” (as a definition of design), we asked students to start with a basic activity: to create a map of “elements” related to cloud computing. They had to choose a domain of everyday life (cooking, communication, etc.), begin by compiling “their” elements (material scale, cultural, historical, list people’s motivations, objects used to achieve it, situations, behaviors, etc.), sub-themes.

From this we discussed this ecology of elements and what aspects or user contexts they could focus on. Interestingly, students chose very broad topics: religion, communication, cooking, art performances, animal-computer relationships or music-making.   Based on this map, we then asked students to explore the role of cloud computing into these elements by looking at these questions:

  • How elements of the diagram might work with the cloud? How the cloud may influence each of these elements/the relationships between two of these elements?
  • How relationships between the elements on these maps may evolve with cloud computing?
  • What are the new situations/problems that may arise with the cloud? Implications?
  • What kind of objects will be linked to the cloud? Why? (From products to the role of the product and situations that arise)

The (many) answers to these questions led the groups to highlighting design opportunities to be discussed tomorrow.

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

By Monday, November 3, 2014 Projects, Resources, Sciences & Technology, X-Posts Tags: 0057, B, C, Clouds, Data, Datacenter, Infrastructure, Sharing, Software, Tools Permalink 0

Following Patrick’s post about our different options for choosing a “Cloud” software and the one that we finally made by choosing ownCloud. Here are a few related comments that develop our point of view and technical choices.

ArkOs, Openstack and RiakCS all take the hand over an entire server/system/computer, offering a kind of embedded linux system within a human-friendly interface, the kind of mechanism one can find on ready-to-use NAS (Network Attached Storage) hardware.

Basically, it transforms any regular computer into a NAS device. One of the key points about the structure we are trying to setup is to be able to host anything we would like/need or may appear interesting to probe. That includes our own website(s), web services in order to feed projects with data and any kind of applications that may be useful to try and develop within the frame of this research.

We do need therefore to keep the research server as generic as possible by using a normal linux distribution, which we can then enhance by any set of additional services. While ArkOS, Openstack and RiakCS are of course interesting projects, at some point, it may become already too specific for our goals.

 

iic_server_05m

 

Owncloud appears to be a simple web site structure dedicated to file sharing. As mentioned in my previous post, Owncloud proposes a set of APIs that allow the access to Owncloud features while being able to develop our own applications. Thus, these applications can rely on Owncloud while being hosted on a heterogeneous set of devices, network connected.

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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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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Reblog > Into the Cloud (with zombies)

By Wednesday, September 17, 2014 Design, Resources Tags: 0030, Data, Datacenter, Designers, Energy Permalink 0

Note: Published almost two years ago, this interesting post by Kazys Varnelis

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Via varnelis.net

Today’s New York Times carries a front-page piece by James Glanz on the massive energy waste and pollution produced by data centers. The lovely cloud that we’ve all been seeing icons for lately, turns out is not made of data, but rather of smog.

The basics here aren’t very new. Already six years ago, we heard the apocryphal story of a Second Life avatar consuming as much energy as the average Brazilian. That data centers consume huge amounts of energy and contribute to pollution is well known.

On the other hand, Glanz does make a few critical observations. First, much of this energy use and pollution comes from our need to have data instantly accessible. Underscoring this, the article ends with the following quote:

“That’s what’s driving that massive growth — the end-user expectation of anything, anytime, anywhere,” said David Cappuccio, a managing vice president and chief of research at Gartner, the technology research firm. “We’re what’s causing the problem.”

Second, much of this data is rarely, if ever used, residing on unused, “zombie” servers. Back to our Second Life avatars, like many of my readers, I created a few avatars a half decade ago and haven’t been back since. Do these avatars continue consuming energy, making Second Life an Internet version of the Zombie Apocalypse?

 

 

So the ideology of automobliity—that freedom consists of the ability to go anywhere at anytime—is now reborn, in zombie form, on the Net. Of course it also exists in terms of global travel. I’ve previously mentioned the incongruity between individuals proudly declaring that they live in the city so they don’t drive yet bragging about how much they fly.

For the 5% or so that comprise world’s jet-setting, cloud-dwelling élite, gratification is as much the rule as it ever was for the much-condemned postwar suburbanites, only now it has to be instantaneous and has to demonstrate their ever-more total power. To mix my pop culture references, perhaps that is the lesson we can take away from Mad Men. As Don Draper moves from the suburb to the city, his life loses its trappings of familial responsibility, damaged and conflicted though they may have been, in favor of a designed lifestyle, unbridled sexuality, and his position at a creative workplace. Ever upwards with gratification, ever downwards with responsibility, ever upwards with existential risk.

Survival depends on us ditching this model once and for all.