Tag Archives

I&IC workshop #5 at ECAL: (esoteric) comments about the cloud (about the brief)

By Wednesday, November 11, 2015 Interaction Design, Schools, Workshops, X-Posts Tags: 0118, Beliefs, Clouds, D, Data, Information, Interface, Interferences, Visualization Permalink 0

Following the publication of Dev Joshi‘s brief on I&IC documentary blog yesterday, I took today the opportunity to briefly introduce it to the interaction design students that will be involved in the workshop next week. Especially, I focused on some points of the brief that were important but possibly quite new concepts for them. I also extended some implicit ideas with images that could obviously bring ideas about devices to build to access some past data, or “shadows” as Dev’s names them.

What comes out in a very interesting way for our research in Dev’s brief is the idea that the data footprints each of us leaves online on a daily basis (while using all type of digital services) could be considered as past entities of ourselves, or trapped, forgotten, hidden, … (online) fragments of our personalities… waiting to be contacted again.

How many different versions of you are there in the cloud? If they could speak, what would they say?

 

Yet, interestingly, if the term “digital footprint” is generally used in English to depict this situation (the data traces each of us leaves behind), we rather use in French the term “ombre numérique”  (literally “digital shadow”). That’s why we’ve decided with Dev that it was preferable to use this term as the title for the workshop (The Everlasting Shadows): it is somehow a more vivid expression that could bring quite direct ideas when it comes to think about designing “devices” to “contact” these “digital entities” or make them visible again in some ways.

 

ph_ramette2_2007

ph_ramette_2007

Philippe Ramette, “L’ombre de celui que j’étais / Shadow of my former self “, 2007. Light installation, mixed media.

Continue Reading…

I&IC Workshop #4 with ALICE at EPFL-ECAL Lab, brief: “Inhabiting the Cloud(s)”

By Saturday, January 24, 2015 Architecture, Schools, Workshops, X-Posts Tags: 0092, A, Architects, Data, Datacenter, Documentation, EPFL, EPFL_ECAL_Lab, Housing, Interferences, Networks, Print, Teaching, Territory, Urbanism Permalink 0

Note: we will start a new I&IC workshop in two weeks (02-06.02) that will be led by the architects of ALICE laboratory (EPFL), under the direction of Prof. Dieter Dietz, doctoral assistant Thomas Favre-Bulle, architect scientist-lecturer Caroline Dionne and architect studio director Rudi Nieveen. During this workshop, we will mainly investigate the territorial dimension(s) of the cloud, so as distributed “domestic” scenarios that will develop symbiosis between small decentralized personal data centers and the act of inhabiting. We will also look toward a possible urban dimension for these data centers. The workshop is open to master and bachelor students of architecture (EPFL), on a voluntary basis (it is not part of the cursus).

A second workshop will also be organized by ALICE during the same week on a related topic (see the downloadable pdf below). Both workshops will take place at the EPFL-ECAL Lab.

I introduce below the brief that has been distributed to the students by ALICE.

 

Inhabiting the Cloud(s)

IMG_9021_m

Wondering about interaction design, architecture and the virtual? Wish to improve your reactivity and design skills?

Cloud interfaces are now part of our daily experience: we use them as storage space for our music, our work, our contacts, and so on. Clouds are intangible, virtual “spaces” and yet, their efficacy relies on humongous data-centres located in remote areas and subjected to strict spatial configurations, climate conditions and access control.
Inhabiting the cloud(s) is a five days exploratory workshop on the theme of cloud interfacing, data-centres and their architectural, urban and territorial manifestations.
Working from the scale of the “shelter” and the (digital) “cabinet”, projects will address issues of inhabited social space, virtualization and urban practices. Cloud(s) and their potential materialization(s) will be explored through “on the spot” models, drawings and 3D printing. The aim is to produce a series of prototypes and user-centered scenarios.

Participation is free and open to all SAR students.

ATTENTION: Places are limited to 10, register now!
Info and registration: caroline.dionne@epfl.ch & thomas.favre-bulle@epfl.ch
www.iiclouds.org

-

Download the two briefs (Inhabiting the Cloud(s) & Montreux Jazz Pavilion)

 

Laboratory profile

The key hypothesis of ALICE’s research and teaching activities places space within the focus of human and technological processes. Can the complex ties between human societies, technology and the environment become tangible once translated into spatial parameters? How can these be reflected in a synthetic design process? ALICE strives for collective, open processes and non-deterministic design methodologies, driven by the will to integrate analytical, data based approaches and design thinking into actual project proposals and holistic scenarios.

 

http://alice.epfl.ch/

 

Donaghy, R. (2011). Co-opting the Cloud: An Architectural Hack of Data Infrastructure. Graduate thesis work.

By Friday, January 23, 2015 Architecture, Resources, X-Posts Tags: 0090, A, Cabinets, Creolized, Datacenter, Infrastructure, Interferences, Research, Territory Permalink 0
dimensions_01 dimensions_02 dimensions_03 dimensions_04 dimensions_05 dimensions_06 dimensions_07 dimensions_08

Part of our bibliography (among different works by architects –K. Varnelis– or about the Internet infrastructure –T. Arnall, A. Blum–) and published in Clog (2012), this thesis work by R. Donaghy presents an interesting hack of the data center infrastructure (centered on the hardware and mostly on the object “data center” in this case).

The work is digital published online on ISUU and can be accessed here (p. 134-150).

Reblog > Deterritorialized House – Inhabiting the data center, sketches…

By Friday, January 23, 2015 Architecture, Resources, X-Posts Tags: 0085, A, Cabinets, Computing, Data, Datacenter, Housing, Infrastructure, Interferences, Landscape, Moire_pattern, Research Permalink 0

By fabric | ch

—–

Along different projects we are undertaking at fabric | ch, we continue to work on self initiated researches and experiments (slowly, way too slowly… Time is of course missing). Deterritorialized House is one of them, introduced below.

 

Continue Reading…

Reblog > Deterritorialized Living, residency, storyboard for workshop and follow-up #1 (open call)

By Thursday, October 2, 2014 Architecture, Interaction Design, Projects Tags: 0035, Architecture, Designers, fabric | ch, Furnitures, Infrastructure, Interferences, Sketches Permalink 0

 

Note: I had the opportunity to lead a workshop last year for fabric | ch at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, for the student of the Tsinghua Art & Sciences Media Laboratory. The workshop took place during a residency at the university and we developed the idea of revisiting the computer cabinet, possibly inhabiting it and developing a symbiotic environment between human and computers. The workshop was short and ideas didn’t have the occasion to unfold very far unfortunately. It even became later an open call during the last Lisbon Architecture Triennale. Yet this workshop undoubtedly constituted the preliminary work before the redaction of this research project and it could continue to be a line of thinking during this project.

Below are the storyboard little sketches I made at that time to introduce this workshop.

 

Via fabric | rblg

—–

 

 

I came back from Beijing more than a month ago now and before Christian Babski will return next week to China for fabric | ch during another month to finish our residency at the Tsinghua University (until mid July), I’m taking a bit of time to write a follow-up about the short workshop/sketch session I headed there with the students of Prof. Zhang Ga, at the Tsinghua Art & Sciences Media Laboratory.

Continue Reading…