More info about the meetup on the Make blog and on Robo’s blog.

I continued to briefly talk about ubi.ach (the email doll) and ubiidu (physical emoticons) as another project exploring the physical manifestation of remote presence. As both of these projects related to person-2-person communications, I ended the presentation with a person-2-place display, kotel. This display extracts live webcam feeds from the wailing wall in Jerusalem, places them within a 3d space which is controllable through touching rocks – a display highlighting an intimate connection to a remote location through a haptic interface.

At the end of the talk I was asked if while showing imPulse around we noticed a difference between users who knew each other and were already intimate, and those who did not. I realized that especially during the crazy two year period that was ITP, we rarely had time to actually research and understand people’s behaviours with our projects. We were lucky with imPulse as we had several iterations to test and redo according to user input, but still, we had barely enough time to make it work. Would be extremely interesting to have that project setup somewhere and document different users, their behaviors and feedback after sharing heartbeats!

Here are the other presenters from the meetup:

= Thomas Edwards =
http://www.t11s.com
http://phy2phy.wikidot.com/
Thomas Edwards is a technology artist who is a recent transplant from Washington, DC (where he co-founded Dorkbot DC). He will be presenting “Phy2Phy”, his campaign to link physical objects to other physical objects using the Interent. Phy2Phy concentrates on de-localization of interaction through the use of affordable hardware devices, and parallels the displacement of his own recent transcontinental journey. I was truly impressed by Thomas’s live demo (always a crowd pleaser!). He setup his ‘touch’ object to communicate through IP (using an Xport) to a fellow device in Wash. DC. We watched the remote touch happen live through a simple webcam chat window.

= Make:Way Design Briefing =
The Make Magazine 24 Hours of LeMons race car project gave a presentation describing their project, Make:Way, which is Make Magazine’s entry into the 2008 24 Hours of LeMons race — an endurance race where each car must be $500 or less. The Make:Way team is in the midst of transforming a $300 1993 Ford Escort LX into a screaming brute of a racecar.

Project photos: http://flickr.com/photos/makeway/
Project blog: http://www.makewayracing.com
Race info: http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/

= Damon Seeley =
http://electroland.net/
Damon Seeley and partner Cameron McNall are Electroland, a team that creates large-scale public art projects and electronic installations. Each project is site-specific and may employ a broad range of media, including light, sound, images, motion, architecture and interactivity. Electroland is working at the forefront of new technologies to create interactive experiences where visitors can interact with buildings, spaces and each other in new and exciting
ways. Damon presented some gorgeous projects. I especially liked the ‘Target’ space (below) equipped with spatial scanning technology that creates a complete 3d reconstruction of the space and all people moving inside (real-time SEER TrackCam).

[tags]interactive,art,dorkbotsocal,diy[/tags]

Sam described some of the issues Witness deals with, working with online video, and introduced their recent web-video platform, the hub. Sam’s vision of video, is a tool for change. He mentioned the importance of smart narrowcasting rather than the usual broadcasting. When Narrowcasting, one concentrating on a smaller audience, to which the content is more relevant, rather than trying to produce content that speaks to a larger crowd (which is *usually* much more difficult to create). He stresses the importance of video having a reason and speaking directly to a particular audience. Some of the challenges Witness is currently facing deals with creating effective content used in courts discussions on human rights in Africa. How can you capture someone’s testimony effectively abd then project it directly within a judicial discussion?

The Hub is Witness’s solution, a site that provides the context that youtube lacks. Whenever a video on a “different topic” ( for instance human rights issues…) is uploaded to youtube, it is usually followed by a trail of nasty comments. When taken out of context and placed in the generic pool of youtube videos, a social activism clip does poorly, both in hits and in sparking conversation (Sam gave statistics for this – something like 10 times less views on average). I don’t fully agree with this statement, although it might work out when looking at the average. From my perspective it is a matter of production and knowing how to create and enticing narrative that will grab a wide audience.

Henry Jenkins, in return, talked about the importance of having a site like youtube as point of intersection – this meeting point for diverse communities. He recognizes the potential of change when everyday citizens have the opportunity to participate and create content that is seen by and affects masses. He stresses the importance of achieving diversity, and maintaining it even through the many obstacles that exist. Jenkins is optimistic that we can move from a narcicistic, self-indulging youtube to a group-friendly platform. However there are obstacles along the way:

1) Participation Gap – digital divide, access to using technology. If nowadays anyone can produce media, why don’t they all do it? There is still a lack of access to skills and to educational opportunities. Digital Media Literacy is extremely important.
2) Top videos on sites – everyone voting is a problematic method. What are better ways to present minorities in a participatory culture? Youtube masks minority perspectives.
3) Hate speach that surrounds diversity – you’re made fun of and receive racist comments if you are different, sadly. The web enhances social behavior, from which the nastiness is certainly present in forums and the commenting space of popular sites. On the other hand, if we create safe little enclaves, they will be excluded from the conversation. It is important for human rights videos to stay within the main turf, and bubble up more, even on youtube. Moving sideways, or out is problematic.

I want more talk about production and less about access
Access is pretty much taken care of. The tools exist, they are becoming more and more ubiquitous, and are reaching a wide array of users worldwide. While it is extremely easy to upload a video to the web, it is still very difficult to produce it. To make it good. Making an engaging video is much more difficult that it seems. It is a bottleneck which is not catching up fast enough to the rise of the sheer amounts of raw data. I want to see more tools that help with scripting, framing shots, weaving engaging narratives and editing. That is the part which usually makes video content memorable. We are already in a world overloaded with far too much content. Online production tools like Kaltura, youtube remixer and jumpcut are a good start, but the pressure is on… and it is only growing.

[tags] video247, summit, DIY, video, Jenkins, Henry, Sam, Gregory, youtube[/tags]

What I DO find intriguing is their open source approach to hardware and their future endeavor on a collaborative development environment, what they call BUGnet. I am a big supporter of the open source hardware movement, intrigued by its influences on the design world. This might be a fun tool for the DIY gadget geek crowd, but is not suitable for the majority of users, who do not want to design and reconfigure their products. Most people want a nice package. They want a product to look good and function well.

So again, looks like an interesting project. As a person who works on and develops my own hardware, this *might* be useful for making fast prototypes, but that mostly depends on its price.

BUG helps you explore the realm of personalized devices and applications, and find ways to solve many of the problems current gadgets can’t.

For example, with BUG, you can easily assemble and program a GPS + digital camera device that automatically publishes geo-tagged photos as a web service. Integrating with an online photo-sharing service like Flickr is only a few more lines of code away, and now you have your own real-time, connected traffic-enabled mobile Webcam!

The platform is designed to enable a collaborative development environment. BUGnet (launching soon), our online community, is tied in directly to the BUG SDK, which allows developers to connect with others, share information, and jointly build products or services.