fields

From Wolpertingers to Co-Things

This presentation will use case studies from recent RCUK funded projects to explore the shifting role of artefacts within social networks. These include: collaborative tools developed for the Sixth Sense Transport project; the Shared Distance exhibition that projects GPS relations onto material objects; and artefacts that emerged from the Shaping Things participatory design workshops at the Edinburgh International Festival. The design case studies will support a narrative that re-casts objects that are traditionally understood within linear value-chains to their role within data-value-constellations.

Chris Speed is Chair of Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh where his research focuses upon the Network Society, Digital Art and Technology, and The Internet of Things. Chris has sustained a critical enquiry into how network technology can engage with the fields of art, design and social experience through a variety of international digital art exhibitions, funded research projects, books journals and conferences. At present Chris is working on funded projects that engage with the flow of food across cities, an internet of cars, turning printers into clocks and a persistent argument that chickens are actually robots. Chris is a co-organiser and compere for the Edinburgh ThisHappened events and is co-editor of the journal Ubiquity.

Poster available here