A joint design research project (HES-SO) between ECAL, HEAD, EPFL-ECAL Lab & EPFL
The website presenting the downloadable results of the joint design and ethnographic research Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s) is now online.
Web design by Eurostandard; Photography of the final artifacts by Daniela & Tonatiuh.
Project developed by Christian Babski (fabric | ch)
Cloud of Cards Processing Library consists in the unification of three different API dedicated to online files and folders manipulation and the development of an additional fourth one specific to the needs of the Cloud of Cards kit and the Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s) research project. The overall final package has been adapted to the Processing development language and linked to the open-source cloud software ownCloud.
Additional behaviors are included that can also be used in relation to ownCloud (or Nextcloud), for both its server and clients. These additional functions are the implemented results of the design research process, linked to an ethnographic study about the cloud user experience.
Through the use of this new library written in Processing and linked to other open-source tools, it is now easier for a wider public to experiment, sketch and develop alternative interfaces, visual or physical applications for the cloud. In particular, the communities of designers and makers that are used to the Processing language.
Please find below the necessary recipes, blueprints and information for the Cloud of Cards Processing Library project.
Download Cloud of Cards Processing Library manual (PDF).
Download Cloud of Cards Processing Library on Github. Codes, recipes, how-to, instructions & forks.
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You can also:
Install ownCloud server (for Linux) & client (or Nextcloud, optional).
Note: “I&IC OwnCloud Core Processing Library” (working title) is part of a home cloud kit, which was described in a previous post and that will be composed by four various artifacts, both physical and digital.
The kit will be distributed freely at the end of the project.
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One processing project with one cloud, while the server (OwnCloud) can still be accessed by a regular interface (OwnCloud client). The upper part (white) is the “network/server side” of the project (OwnCloud), hosted on a Linux server, while the bottom (grey dots) is user or “client side”. It can consists in connected objects or environments, interfaces, visualizations of different sorts.
The I&IC’s Owncloud Core Processing Library is now composed of a “client side” component and “server side” component (IICloud’s Addon).
The “client side” part of the library (“user side” vs. “network/server side” in the illustrations above and below) can be used from Processing, in order to get access to OwnCloud server(s) and manipulate files. The benefit of the core library resides in the fact that it mashups all together a set of heterogeneous functionalities in one single library (it has been therefore renamed I&IC OwnCloud Core Processing Library as it is more closely related to our research).
We’re entering the final straight of the research project Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s) and we can give at this point a first glimpse of the four design artifacts we are working on at the moment. They will constitute the main outcomes of our joint experimental effort (ECAL, HEAD, EPFL-ECAL Lab) and a kind of “personal cloud kit” (explained below). These creations will be accompanied by two books: one will present the results of the ethnographic research about “the cloud”, the other will present the design research process and its results – both in pod/pdf.
We already pointed out in the recent post “Updated Design Scenario” where we were heading. Since then, the different projects were better identified and started to get shaped. Some got eliminated. Prototyping and further technical tests are running in parallel at the moment.
From the original “final scenario” sketch to …
… a “Personal Cloud Kit”, composed of various physical and digital modular artifacts.
What emerged reinforced from the main design scenario is that we seek to deliver four artifacts (some physical, some digital, some combined) which themselves will constitute the building blocks of what we’ll call “A Personal Cloud Kit”. All four parts of this kit will be openly accessible on a dedicated website (e.g. in a similar way to what OpenDesk is doing).
The purpose of this “home kit” is to empower designers, makers and citizens at large who would be interested to start develop their own cloud projects, manage or interact with their data or even to set up small scale personal data centers at their places (homes, offices, garages …)
Beside the reflection produced by the overall Inhabiting & Interfacing the Cloud(s) project and the related necessity to provide “access to tools” to a larger community (largely described in the founding document of the project and in a former post about the setting up of this library), new paradigms may arise in the global organization of servers farms. These new paradigms may in return generate new ways to organize files on cloud servers (by a different control of the redundancy principle for example, or a different use of file’s duplication, etc.), allowing for new projects.
In order to answer the stakes of the I&IC design research and to prepare such output/proposals, we have developed the OwnCloud Core Processing Library that will allow to setup a software layer on top of the hardware layer.
We will describe how to use the OwnCloud Core Processing Library within the Processing framework, starting from a blank sketch. Library’s functions will be refined and new ones may be developped, some additional libraries will be added as well in order to propose high level functions deeper linked to the IICloud(s) project.
... Along the design research, we are going through many different types of references that we don't necessarily post or document ...
The website presenting the downloadable results of the joint design and ethnographic research Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s) is now ...