4th Round of Activities

A fourth call of proposals for DC inter-project collaboration activities was launched on 20/09/2002. 10 proposals were submitted under the headings of Disappearing Days, Troubadour Grants, and Research Ateliers, all of which were accepted for funding.

• DD11: "FamilyNet"
  (30-31/10/2002, Paris)
  Proposed by: Prof. Yngve Sundblad;
  Abstract (Excerpt): The InterLiving project has identified a need for families to be able to create and manage small, secure, closed, overlapping networks with other family members. It is critical that the interface to such a network management be simple, give a sense of trust to the users, and yet addresses the above issues. We believe that a tangible interface could solve the problem.
  Associated projects:ACCORD, PAPER++, SHAPE, and SMART-ITS;
  
  
  
• DD12: "New Hardware Technologies for the Disappearing Computer"
  (10-11/04/2003, London)
  Proposed by: Dr. Eric Yeatman;
  Abstract (Excerpt):Many of the possibilities explored in the EDC initiative for new systems and applications are either dependent on, or would benefit greatly from, advances in the relevant hardware. In particular, the embedding of intelligence in a wide variety of conventional objects, as well as the development of new autonomous intelligent artefacts, requires solutions for information gathering, processing, storage and transmission that do not over burden their host artefact in terms of power consumption, size and weight, ruggedness and cost.
  
  While most DC projects are not primarily focused on hardware technology interests, a number include such issues in a significant way, and most others have at least an interest in the outcomes of such work. In order to bring together these efforts and interests across the DC community, we propose a Disappearing Days workshop entitled New Hardware Technologies for the Disappearing Computer.
  Associated projects:SMART-ITS, FICOM, and PAPER++;
  
  
  
• DD13: "Public and Personal Artefacts in Ubiquitous Computing Environments"
  (**/01/2003, *)
  Proposed by : Thorsten Prante, Carsten Röcker, Peter Tandler;
  Abstract (Excerpt):In ubiquitous computing environments, users will interact with a broad variety of smart artefacts over time. Some of these artefacts are strictly personal (e.g., PDAs) while others are accessible by multiple persons (e.g., public displays). Since most activities imply a permanent shift between individual and cooperative work, smooth transitions between different situations are essential. In this context, the main constituents of a situation are information, people, and devices. A change of situation occurs as soon as one parameter is altered. For example, a small group of people working on a certain document transits from one situation into another as soon as they change the set of artefacts. This workshop addresses the associated issues.
  Associated projects:AMBIENT AGORAS, WORKSPACE, and FEEL;
  

• TR08: "SOb with SHAPE at the 2nd 'Living Exhibition' at the Hunt Museum in Limerick "
  (9-19/06/2003, Limeric)
  Proposed by : Laura Ottaviani;
  Abstract (Excerpt):  The main idea is to contribute with Sounding Objects to the scenarios designed by the SHAPE project, in order to augment the interaction with sounds that are not static, but that can change in real time according to the actions and movements of the museum's visitors. In this way, the visitors will be able to interact completely with the environment, not only using sight, but also through hearing.
  
  During the SOHO atelier, held in Mestre, Centro Culturale Candiani (June 10-21, 2002) an initial collaboration between the SOb and SHAPE project was conducted. Further collaborative work has been conducted at the IDC, University of Limerick, from September 2002 toward the integration of the Sounding Objects in the SHAPE scenarios. This visit would be a continuation of these experiences, applied in a real context, with pedagogical and design goals.
  Associated projects: SHAPE;
  

• TR09: "SObs for the people"
  (**/01/2003, Stockholm)
  Proposed by : Matthias Rath;
  Abstract (Excerpt): To allow further practical exploitation of this rather “fundamental research” work, in particular in the context of other DC projects, the SOb project has requested a 6-month extension with no additional funding. A collaboration with the SHAPE project has already been proposed and planned since several months --- the SOHO research atelier in Mestre (June 10-21, 2002, Centro Culturale Candiani) served as an occasion for ideas of usage of our sound models in a SHAPE context --- and is already fixed and scheduled. Other DC partners that might benefit from SOb work and experience are FEEL and INTERLIVING, both having a partner based in Stockholm as well, and a specific presentation of the theory and praxis of our developed Sounding objects could be the starting point of a fruitful exchange.
  
  A visit in Stockholm at the beginning of the elongation period of the SOb project, January 2003, would enable us to demonstrate the background, potential and the practical access of our sound models to interested parties in an individual dialog. Further ideas of applications would be collected and concretised (together with already focused tasks), thus enabling us to customize our objects and firmly support concrete practical usage. The latter activity of “customer support” particularly of specific SHAPE implementations can thus be started, to facilitate successful realizations until the end of the aspired elongation period.
  Associated projects: SHAPE, FEEL, and INTERLIVING;
  

• AT12: "Creativity - II"
  (29/07/2002-01/08/2002, Lancaster)
  Proposed by :Monika Büscher;
  Abstract (Excerpt):During our first round of visits and workshops with ATELIER, SOB, SHAPE, and AMBIENT AGORAS (also attended by a member of FEEL) we experimented with a set of design strategies and approaches that foster interdisciplinarity, learning-by-doing, cross-project, and cross-domain design collaboration. These visits have provided an enjoyable experience and some very interesting results. Two additional visits, one to Stockholm (INTERLIVING and FEEL) and one to Paris (INTERLIVING) will allow us to pursue the theme of ‘creativity2n’ further. In particular, work with INTERLIVING and FEEL will focus on ways of creatively exploiting and integrating insights from the analysis of ethnographic data in the design process and new design ideas.
  Associated projects:WORKSPACE, INTERLIVING, and FEEL
  
  

• AT13: "MATTER – Materials, objects and spaces augmented to support creativity, learning, knowledge work and play"
  Proposed by : Monika Büscher;
  (02/2003-03/2003, Aarhus)
  Abstract (Excerpt) : This research atelier seeks to draw together a cross-project team of aesthetic designers, work analysts, practitioners, and system designers from PAPER++, SHAPE, and WorkSPACE. The aim is to develop ideas for, and prototypes of, computationally augmented materials, objects and spaces. Varying in their degree of completion from mock-ups to working augmentations, these prototypes will be designed to extend people’s scope for creativity, learning, exploiting, making sense of, and playful engagement with, information in a range of situations that involve objects, spaces and materials (e.g. paper; samples; modelling materials; collectional artefacts like folders, binders, staples; art or historical objects), and information captured in other formats.
  Over the course of three months, these prototypes will be invented, mocked-up or built and evaluated in all three project contexts through group workshops, work at individual project sites, and remote collaboration. Our prototyping process will be highly interdisciplinary, creative, and firmly grounded in practice. We have begun to develop (and would like to experiment with) a toolkit of methods for interdisciplinary design practice that allows us to merge expertise from five different perspectives – work analysis, aesthetic design, interaction design, praxis, and system design. These methods go beyond ‘informing’ the design and move towards a shared interdisciplinary design practice to ensure that we can be hands-on, creative and at the vanguard of technological innovation whilst grounding our ideas firmly in analyses of ethnographic observations and user participation.
  Associated projects:SHAPE, WORKSPACE, and PAPER++;
  
  
• AT14: "Networking Technologies for Distributed Systems in Ubicomp"
  Proposed by : Michael Beigl;
  (**??**, Karlsruhe)
  Abstract:The aim of the proposed research atelier is to bring together researchers from different projects of the DC framework, who are interested in technologies for efficient networking in distributed information systems for ubiquitous computing environments (University of Karlsruhe, ETH Zürich, ICS/FORTH; Smart-Its, 2-Wear). This atelier will provide the opportunity for an in-depth analysis of various hardware and software issues in ad hoc distributed networking, that are part of the research focus of the participants. The target outcome of this atelier is a first model for a better understanding of the special requirements of embedded ad hoc networking for distributed and operating systems in ubiquitous computing environments. It should also evaluate and show how technologies from different projects can be integrated.
  Associated projects: SMART-ITS, and 2WEAR;

• AT15: "SUE (Scalability, Unity, Emergence)"
  Proposed by : Achilles Kameas;
  (February 2003, *)
  Abstract: The aim of the atelier is to investigate the ways that scalability of concepts and technology, unity and uniqueness of perception and emergence of behaviour affect each other. The objectives are:
  -    to determine the abstract factors that describe the concepts of “scalability”, “unity” and “emergence” and to create mappings of these into the realms of architectures, designs and models
  -    to define scalable artefact architectures that support unity of perception at different levels of visibility and emergent behaviour according to context. Different architectures may have to be defined for different aspects of the system (i.e. networking, operating system, interaction etc)
  -    to describe scenarios in order to analyze the effects of different aspects of scalability (i.e. in people, use, place etc). The role of context will be investigated, as well as the ways that “qualitative” aspects (i.e. trust, intimacy etc) affect scalability
  -    to provide the basis for formal modelling of the behaviour of collections of artefacts. The models have to be scalable and capable of describing dynamic behaviour. There must be a direct interpretation of architectures using the models
  Associated projects: SMART-ITS, ORESTEIA, 2WEAR, ACCORD, INTERLIVING, and WORKSPACE;