Articles

“Is Your Marmite Watching You?”

“Is Your Marmite Watching You?”

Design Informatics took part in this year’s Edinburgh Fringe with the Beltane Public Engagement Network. It showed a new and improved version of Take Me I’m Yours which we have previosuly shown at the Expanded Narative Symposium and at Ubicomp. Is Your Marmite Watching You? explored what it might be like when all of the […]


Producing Data: Practices, Materialities, Values

Producing Data: Practices, Materialities, Values

An interdisciplinary symposium 3rd – 4th September 2014, University of Edinburgh Hosted by: Design Informatics, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh Organisers: Chris Speed, Gian Marco Campagnolo, Siobhan Magee and New Media Scotland The term ‘data’ is ubiquitous across our homes and workplaces, academic and mainstream media, political discourses and ethical disputes. Sometimes its […]


The Haggle-O-Tron: Design intervention in secondhand retail

The Haggle-O-Tron: Design intervention in secondhand retail

The Haggle-O-Tron: Design intervention in secondhand retail adapted from the DIS workshop by Chris Speed, Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh Mark Hartswood, School of Informatics University of Edinburgh Eric Laurier, School of Geosciences University of Edinburgh Siobhan Magee, Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh Martin de Jode, CASA University College London. Andrew Hudson-Smith, CASA University College […]


CoGet

CoGet

So a brief summary and documentation of the CoGet workshop at Future Everything in March 2014. Across the connected city small things play a large part in sustaining the flow between people and places. Cups of tea, bottles of water, books, four way plug adaptors, bicycles, computers and many more objects are the ‘things’ that […]


CoGet @ Future Everything

CoGet @ Future Everything

We are experimenting with our social logistics software CoGet at Future Everything in March: http://futureeverything.org/events/coget-things-move-people-around/ Based upon the research from the Sixth Sense Transport project that combined social networking with locative media to support collaborative travel practices, CoGet makes a further leap toward a future in which objects borrow our daily routines to move themselves […]


Take Me I’m Yours: Beyond the Supermarket

Take Me I’m Yours: Beyond the Supermarket

Beyond the Supermarket is a show that features supermarket goods as actors. Using the publicly available smart phone app Take Me I’m Yours, a human actor interacts on stage with local products that are usually found in the cupboards and fridges of our kitchens. Beyond the Supermarket was first performed at the Expanded Narrative symposium […]


Co-Things

Co-Things

Way back at the end of July, Jen and I came together to present some of the data portraits that she’d collected from the Comob Net database of groups using the iPhone app. The data portraits were gathered during her residencies at ISIS arts and Pervasive Media Studio. The portraits soon became enduring images of peoples connection to […]


Shaping Things

Shaping Things

Transposition and Mutation During the Edinburgh International Festival, August 2013, we ran two interlinked events to stimulate conversation and practice about the use of 3D printers and the role of digital and social systems. Part 1 consisted of a game of 3D Chinese Whispers that took place over 12 days between students of an Edinburgh […]


Things move people around

Things move people around

So this is interesting for Internet of Things experiences. Objects telling us to where they want to go… Part of the Tourism Work Package led by Janet Dickinson and Julia Hibbert from Bournemouth University has involved working with visitors to the Tom’s Field campsite in Purbeck. The visitors have been using the Sixth Sense Tourism app for iPhones […]


MapLocal Community Mapping

MapLocal Community Mapping

Last year and into this year I was involved in an AHRC Connected Communities project led by  Phil Jones with Colin Lorne and Antonia Layard (University of Birmingham) in which we designed an Android app that allowed residents of communities to gather information about their neighbourhoods. The app was developed by Chris Blunt (Plymouth Software) […]


Patch-Scape; pads, pods, phones and Spatial data

Patch-Scape; pads, pods, phones and Spatial data

Digital Landscape Architecture Workshop, June 2013 This is a chance to show off some of the  fascinating work that Chris Barker and Pierre Forissier developed for the DLA workshop in Bernberg in June. The workshop developed an interesting Patchscape that took live data from a bespoke iOS app, Comob Net and used Processing to manifest […]


Time of the Clock and Time of the Encounter

Time of the Clock and Time of the Encounter

This AHRC funded project investigated the difference between the time of the clock and the lived time of experience. We live in a world dominated by the time of the clock, yet many aspects of life have a different rhythm and temporality. The time of community, especially, is very often more complex and differentiated that standardised […]


Temporal Tactics for Mr. Seel’s Garden

Temporal Tactics for Mr. Seel’s Garden

Time to blog on The Memories of Mr. Seel’s Garden AHRC Connected Communities project… Many of the projects that I get involved in highlight the stress that network media is placing upon a processional model of time in which the present day is somehow at the edge of time, and all that has gone before […]


Territorialising the Cloud

Territorialising the Cloud

This week saw a critical step in some research work that myself and colleagues are involved in around the Wester Hailes community, Edinburgh. For a while now we’ve been waiting for permission to place a totem pole in the ground. The pole is part of two AHRC Connected Community projects that extend our interest in […]


The Impact of the Network Society upon a Social Temporal Consciousness

The Impact of the Network Society upon a Social Temporal Consciousness

Back in June, Larissa Pschetz and I presented a short paper at the Slow Technology workshop at DIS2012. Organised by William Odom, Carnegie Mellon; Richard Banks, Microsoft Research; Abigail Durrant, Culture Lab / Newcastle University; David Kirk Culture Lab / Newcastle University; and J ames Pierce, Carnegie Mellon University, the workshop recovered Hallnäs and Redström’s […]


Imagining Ecologies Panel ISEA

Imagining Ecologies Panel ISEA

I couldn’t make the Imagining Ecologies panel that Mike Phillips had organised along with presenters Jill Scott, Paul Thomas and myself due to family funeral (it’s ok to talk about death). So I sent over a 16 minute movie which largely consisted of portraits of people who have been using our iPhone App Comob Net. Jen […]


Take Me I’m Yours – Ubicomp

Take Me I’m Yours – Ubicomp

  Documentation of Duncan and my workshop / performance / intervention at the DOMe IoT workshop at Ubicomp2012 in Pittsburgh in September. Thanks to all who take part, it was a small part of a small workshop but for Duncan and I proved very successful. Watching the guys listen to the products for what must […]


Casting Time

Casting Time

Working with Margaret Stewart, Jane Macdonald and Jules Rawlinson, we have developed an artwork for the Cast Contemporaries exhibition that is part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. The exhibition provides a response, reinterpreting Edinburgh College of Art’s cast collection – one of the most important in the UK – through the perspective of contemporary works, […]


Take Me I'm Yours – DIS2012 Demo

Take Me I'm Yours – DIS2012 Demo

A month or so ago Duncan, Kristin and I demo’d Take Me I’m Yours at the DIS2012 conference in Newcastle. This demo introduced a smart phone application that was developed during the Heritage Inquiries: A Designerly Approach To Human Values workshop at DIS 2010, organised by Giaccardi and Sejer Iversen. Take Me I’m Yours extends […]


Drawing with Satellites #2

Drawing with Satellites #2

In 2003 a term emerged to encompass technologies and processes that promised to reconfigure our understanding and experiences of space and culture, this term was ‘locative media’. The terminology framed a particular aspect of mobile media and signaled a shift toward a convergence of temporal and cartographic representations of space. Locative media is now synonymous […]


Twittest

Twittest

http://www.twittest.org The Twittest is a playful project for students about intelligence based on the use of the social network application Twitter and making reference to Alan Turing’s ‘Turing Test’. The competition, was developed by ourselves at the University of Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival, and was created to mark the 100th […]


Community Hacking

Community Hacking

Community Web2.0: creative control through hacking Chris Speed, Martin Phillips, Sharon Baurley,  Amadu Khan, Eoghan Howard, Prospect Community Housing Organisation, and Whale Arts. Connected Communities is a cross-Research Council research programme, led by the AHRC, in close partnership with the ESRC, EPSRC, MRC and NERC and a range of other potential stakeholders. http://www.communityhacking.org http://www.facebook.com/FromThereToHereaWesterHailesStory Intro The Community Web2.0: creative control […]


Hacking histories

Hacking histories

Amadu‘s brief history of hacking toward our Community Hacking project – coming soon We would suggest that to enable a systematic debate and understanding of ‘hacking’ as social praxis, we ought to look at the application of the concept in two main domains, namely techno-scientific and socio-political domains. This will enable us to unpack the […]


From RememberMe to Shelflife

From RememberMe to Shelflife

Well here it is… http://shelflife.oxfam.org.uk/ After 18 months since we offered up RememberMe at Future Everything in Manchester the Oxfam App is launched for a ten store pilot in Manchester. The project’s emphasis upon personal stories is an antithetical response to the quantitative data such as price, temperature or other logistical data that reside in […]