In a contemporary context where technology is used mostly to solve practical issues, from medical robots to architectural mechanisms, or to optimized communication, the emotions and senses of the individual are put aside.
Even in the interactive design field, when the body is not excluded from the experience through a screen or any kind of interface, often, the interactive experience is limited to a quick, simple action and does not reply to any level of sophistication.

The interactive object can certainly trigger different kind of reactions, or raise awareness or questions in the mind of the user, but the loop of interaction stays limited, and the object stays therefore disconnected from the space around, from the context in general, and once the experience is finished, from the user him/herself. In an era where the body is being fragmented rather than multiple, disconnected rather than sensitive, it is the responsability of artists/designers/architects to try to use interaction to reconciliate the human with his body, to give back their place to senses and emotions.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

dezeen_Sou-Fujimoto Serpentine-Gallery-Pavilion-2013

Space As Data:

With all the performing measuring tools available today, defining a space through the different data that constitute it, not only becomes more and more easy but also turns into an ultimate tool for the architect in order to better understand the environment and design a dynamic architecture accordingly.

Gradation:

When all these collected data are interpreted as indicators of a certain condition in a specific time and space, they help getting a clear idea of how a context is continuously changing. Sou Fujimoto tries to use this approach for the  conception of the spaces he designs. His architecture becomes like a buffer zone rather than like rigid frontiers.  More than an integration, it is the merging of the different layers of space within one another. Gradation naturally offers different degrees of intimacy and exposure, exterior and interior etc…

Based on the two notions we talked about, can we design with things that can be counted but do not count (data)

something that counts but cannot be counted (an atmosphere, a mood, through gradation)?

5 cm per second by Makoto Shinkai

5 cm Per Second:

5 cm per second is a japanese anime by Makoto Shinkai. It has been a source of inspiration to me through the process of design because it tackles these same notions of data and atmosphere.  It is enough to know that 5 cm per second is the speed at which a cherry leaf falls from its tree to suddenly see this information in a very different way. Although the story in this anime happens mostly in an urban context, one always feels in a sort of dream while looking at it. To make these layers of space that are of different nature coexist, Shinkai uses very specific strategies. We can notice the emphasis he puts in the contrast between the light and the shadows, but also the way he increases the pastel colors in the drawings. He also includes cloud-like effects that give an intentional bluriness to the visuals and the story in general.

Placa Universitat and its surrounding

THE SITE

A Dominant Layer:

Placa Universitat in Barcelona is an example that illustrates well how one can feel the juxtaposition of different spatial layers. This placa is like an island in the middle of the city. A very dynamic island which atmosphere varies tremendously from one hour to another according to the different actvities happening there, the quality of light, the season, the temperature etc…I noticed there, two main kinds of users: the watchers, mostly individuals or old people from the neighborhood and who have their habits. They go to the placa and just sit. And what I would call “the performers”, passers by who go out of the metro station and just cross the placa, skaters who literally perform in front of an audience and the groups of students and young people who always sit on the same long tall benches that allow for groups to sit all together.

For once, I decided to be a watcher, so I chose a small one-place bench under the trees and sat there, trying to understand what is the pleasure of sitting in such a noisy and crowdy place. Surprisingly, and after a moment of adaptation, I found it quite entertaining, it was agreable to have both the trees as shelter and the crowd as spectacle, and yet, everytime I felt this place was confortable enough for me to relax or concentrate on a book,  the noise and the movements around drove me back to reality.

A Shy Layer:

In placa Universitat,  and in one particular spot, one can find birds and trees, sometimes one can feel the breeze, and in the middle of this noisy place, one can from time to time hear an unexpected silence. In this spot, the pace is completely different, everything seems to suddenly slow down. This is where the old people prefer to sit, far from the very crowded benches invaded by the students. This is where you might feel connected to a spatial layer of different nature, and this is where I imagined the installation I was trying to design could perfectly fit.

Measuring Decibels on the Placa

The Site Through Data:

The main parameters that seem to dominate the space are the noise, the density of people and how much they spend time on the placa.  With an Iphone app, I tried to map the different amplitudes on the placa at different hours of the day. It was interesting to see that the sound map had a relation with the trajectories that people take to cross the placa. In fact the noisiest places where the exit of the metro station, the passage in front of the group benches and the passage that links the pedestrian crossings. I also noticed that while the “students” benches witnessed a lot of changes in users throughout the day, the old people sitting on the benches under the trees tend to spend more time there and be less active.

THE INSTALLATION

The Intention:

Placa Universitat

The intention of this project is to create a buffer zone or “cloud” in a public space,  in order to give to the user the chance to enjoy existing layers of space that are being dominated by a strong urban context, but also to allow him/her to enjoy his/her own pace without being disconnected from the direct context. The main goal is to use the data provided by the public space to aliment a layer of space that will be created in response to the need of the user . This installation aims at allowing the user to preserve his/her personal space in a minimum distance around him/her, and to absorb what he/she might percieve as “agressions” from the dominant context. In this particular case of Placa Universitat, the installation could allow the user to enjoy the spectacle offered by the crowd while at the same time, have the feeling of being in a more intimate space.  The installation consists of a bench surrounded by inflatable bags. when the user sits on the bench, he/she triggers the activation of the installation. The more time the user spends in the installation, the more bags will inflate, creating a buffer zone between the user and the rest of the environment.

Inputs and Outputs Diagram

Inputs And Outputs:

The most important parameter taken into consideration is the time. the degree of enclosure of the installation depends on the time spent by the user on the bench. An infrared sensor detects when the user sits on the bench and trigger the activation of two air pumps situated inside the bench. The first pump is programmed through a blink code on arduino, to get active as soon as a detection occurs. The air is not pumped continuously and in one shot but rather through different regular intervals of time. The second pump is activated 20 minutes after the first one and works simirlarly. Small holes in the bags allow the air to go out slowly, and thus the bags to deflate when the user leaves the bench and the pumps stop sending air.  Ideally, the installation would only consist of condensed air. Unfortunately dealing with only elements such as water and air to shape a space is quite challenging. The bags here do not play the role of a frontier or of a partition, they merely act as a skin that contain the air for a moment of time, in order to give shape to this ephemeral but continuously revived space.

A fog machine running under the same code as the pumps, liberate smoke from time to time amd as long as the user is on the bench. The intention here is to help the installation dilute in the environment, and to emphasis on the quality of buffer space. Leds placed inside the bags lit the installation in different pastel tones, participating in the creation of different mood. The main inputs used for the lights, are the contextual noise frequencies. A grasshopper definition analyses the noise percieved through a microphone and assigns pink to the lowest frequencies, blue to the highest frequencies and different tonalities of purple to the frequencies in between.
Finally speakers in the installation emit white noise. The white noise is a typical noise where all the frequencies have the same amplitude, it can be compared to the sound of the falling rain. The white noise is created through a max patch and its amplitude is controlled by the amplitude of noise around.

Grasshopper Code for The Lighting

Photomontage of The Installation on Site

Multiplication:

This installation would ideally be multiplied all over the placa to form a giant cloud which different parts will appear or disappear according to the occupancy of the different benches, which lights would be changing in real-time according to the surrounding noise frequencies and which smoke would expand beyond the limit of the placa. The cloud would be like a living buffer space in the middle of the city.

Multiplication of The Installation on Placa Universitat

]]> http://legacy.iaacblog.com/maa2013-2014-advanced-interaction/2014/07/5-cm-per-second-2/feed/ 0 http://legacy.iaacblog.com/maa2013-2014-advanced-interaction/2014/07/hyportraits-a-social-creation-experiment/ http://legacy.iaacblog.com/maa2013-2014-advanced-interaction/2014/07/hyportraits-a-social-creation-experiment/#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2014 15:58:59 +0000 JGiraldo http://legacy.iaacblog.com/maa2013-2014-advanced-interaction/?p=285 Advanced Interaction Research Studio Final Presentation – IAAC 2014 Barcelona

Since we have memory, we have been fascinated with the image, it has the power to last in time, create identity and find a perfect spot in our collective imagination as society. Portrait is a complex visual exercise with huge impact in the visual culture development of our society. We have seen that trough history , and that is why we are so attracted to explore it from the perspective of new technologies and new challenges as creators of the information age.

In one hand, as humans and digital citizens we are in constant evolution, so our visual representation need to have the same attribute: be evolutive, able to change in real time and offer infinite possibilities; and that is possible with the actual tools that we have now days. We can put together very complex process in simple functions to obtain unpredictable results.

On the other side, take a look at the process of visual creation, where there is always two roles:  be observed and be the observer. At the end a collective exercise. Based on that we decide to create an installation were the portrait an exercise of mutual creation, where two strangers meet in a moment and work together to create an unexpected visual result. As interaction students we were very interested in do an experiment and a research into the phenomena of collective reaction, finding an excuse to connect our identities and create something together. At the end is the representation of how we act as society: we work together to evolve. 

Portrait Evolution

Portrait evolution – from matter to pixel

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer.

Matter evolution

The portrait evolution in a social context is nothing else than project our physical being for the eternity, maybe the generic idea of the visual power is just an endless amount of images accumulated one on top of another with out representing any identity in the virtual reality, a reality filled by the excessive powers of photo-manipulation, a reality in which the real time and the purity of a portrait is lost and doesn’t represent at all the possibilities of the new digital era. Taking a look into the new technologies involved in the creation of the portrait now days, is when we can see the real qualities that define a portrait in our age. If we look back we can analyze how we play with matter is an evolutive experiment. Oleo, Stone and Pixel are a clear visualization of a civilization mutating to a systematic virtual reality.

The Concept

Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves, while attributing them to others.For example, a person who is rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude. A great part of this subconscious identity that defines our personality influences drastically in our capacity to associate our deepest desires to images in which we found our darkest and also beautiful desires.

It is know that our mind project visual ideas about everything is around us, we are not sure if what we see is identical to what the others see, but we are sure that what we can imagine, is really what we desire. The term Hypocresy reveals true or lie, everything depends on the suject’s point of view. Any behavior or action or fact could be involved into the idea creation process, in this case a portrait, which is the hypocresy projection of new individual that can change infinite times and has the ability to answer to its environment in real time.

Psychological Projection – Hyper Reality

Hyperreality is a term used in semiotics and postmodern philosophy to describe an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies. Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins. It allows the commingling of physical reality with virtual reality (VR) and human intelligence with artificial intelligence (AI).Individuals may find themselves for different reasons, more in tune or involved with the hyperreal world and less with the physical real world.

The Information Society

An information society is a society where the creation, distribution, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. The aim of the information society is to gain competitive advantage internationally, through using information technology (IT) in a creative and productive way. The knowledge economy is its economic counterpart, whereby wealth is created through the economic exploitation of understanding. People who have the means to partake in this form of society are sometimes called digital citizens. This is one of many dozen labels that have been identified to suggest that humans are entering a new phase of society. The markers of this rapid change may be technological, economic, occupational, spatial, cultural, or some combination of all of these. Information society is seen as the successor to industrial society. Closely related concepts are the post-industrial society (Daniel Bell), post-fordism, post-modern society, knowledge society, telematic society, Information Revolution, liquid modernity, and network society (Manuel Castells). The information society is a necessary concept to contextualize a new individual that grows from the data, evolve as a machine that portraits our identity, transform ourselves into real digital citizens and has a purpose produce and protect us in the virtual world.

Digital Citizen

A digital citizen refers to a person utilizing/using information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government participation. K. Mossberger, et define digital citizens as “those who use the Internet regularly and effectively.” In qualifying as a digital citizen, a person generally must have extensive skills, knowledge, and access of using the Internet through computers, mobile phones, and web-ready devices to interact with private and public organizations. (These factors naturally preclude many from becoming fully realized as ‘digital citizens’ such as people who are illiterate and those who have no viable way of accessing the Internet). People characterizing themselves as digital citizens often use IT extensively, creating blogs, using social networks, and participating in web journalism sites. Although digital citizenship potentially begins when any child, teen, and/or adult signs up for an email address, posts pictures online, uses e-commerce to buy merchandise online, and/or participates in any electronic function that is B2C or B2B, the process of becoming a digital citizen goes beyond simple Internet activity. In the framework of T.H. Marshall’s perspective on citizenship’s three traditions (liberalism, republicanism, and ascriptive hierarchy), digital citizenry can occur alongside the promotion of equal economic opportunity, as well as increased political participation and civic duty. Digital citizenship eliminates exclusionary elements of ascriptive hierarchy in that the Internet does not exclude those wish to participate in its realm based on race, religion, or class – elements previously used to exclude people from even becoming traditional citizens.

The digital citizen is the main ingredient of this new image, the creation of visual information in real time is vital for this new individual existence. We can define our levels of codification and be visibles or invisibles, transform our visual appearance second to second, or be many versions of ourselves, explore our limits with out knowing how other see us. A self-portrait that can define our identity infinitely.

From Multi-Personality to Privacy

information society evolution

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), or multiple personality disorder (MPD), is a mental disorder on the dissociative spectrum characterized by at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality states that alternately control a person’s behavior, and is accompanied by memory impairment for important information not explained by ordinary forgetfulness. These symptoms are not accounted for by substance abuse, seizures, other medical conditions, nor by imaginative play in children. Diagnosis is often difficult as there is considerable comorbidity with other mental disorders. Malingering should be considered if there is possible financial or forensic gain, as well as factitious disorder if help-seeking behavior is prominent. In our context, multi-personality has evolved from be a disease to a more light adapted concept: New identities in the virtual reality, impersonation, deception, cheat to name the most common; open possibilities of world where you can be anybody. With that in mind we can think from the other side and understand that maybe this is a new tool that is interested in protect the virtual enviroment to evolve with the data and the individuals we meet everyday.

Privacy changed, it has evolved from being a window to a button. Now we can have a superficial read of any person even if we dont have exact details. We can identify a person through its face between millions of tags, this is how our portrait define the first approach to our data. Millions of bits can be encrypted and used to protect our identity.

Endless Portrait

Multi – Personality in real time

An infinite world of possibilities, multi visual-personalities, that can define moods, intellectual positions, feelings and ideas that we haven’t thought before.

Multi-personality is not a disease from the modern society, is a defensive mechanism and a tool that we use to our daily live. We talk about beauty on the virtuality, we can talk about, millions of pixels, points or moving particles in a 3d space, endless possibilities to perceive our digital nature.

Data Face

Collaborative Portrait

A facial recognition system is a computer application for automatically identifying or verifying a person from a digital image or a video frame from a video source. One of the ways to do this is by comparing selected facial features from the image and a facial database. It is typically used in security systems and can be compared to other biometrics such as fingerprint or eye iris recognition systems.

Some facial recognition algorithms identify facial features by extracting landmarks, or features, from an image of the subject’s face. For example, an algorithm may analyze the relative position, size, and/or shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw.These features are then used to search for other images with matching features.Other algorithms normalize a gallery of face images and then compress the face data, only saving the data in the image that is useful for face recognition. A probe image is then compared with the face data. One of the earliest successful systems is based on template matching techniques applied to a set of salient facial features, providing a sort of compressed face representation.

Generative Process

Recognition algorithms can be divided into two main approaches, geometric, which looks at distinguishing features, or photometric, which is a statistical approach that distills an image into values and compares the values with templates to eliminate variances. Another emerging trend uses the visual details of the skin, as captured in standard digital or scanned images. This technique, called skin texture analysis, turns the unique lines, patterns, and spots apparent in a person’s skin into a mathematical space.

Delaunay Process

Generative Delaunay

A Delaunay triangulation for a set P of points in a plane is a triangulation DT(P) such that no point in P is inside the circumcircle of any triangle in DT(P). Delaunay triangulations maximize the minimum angle of all the angles of the triangles in the triangulation; they tend to avoid skinny triangles. The triangulation is named after Boris Delaunay for his work on this topic from 1934. For a set of points on the same line there is no Delaunay

triangulation (the notion of triangulation is degenerate for this case). For four or more points on the same circle (e.g., the vertices of a rectangle) the Delaunay triangulation is not unique: each of the two possible triangulations that split the quadrangle into two triangles satisfies the “Delaunay condition”, i.e., the requirement that the circumcircles of all triangles have empty interiors. By considering circumscribed spheres, the notion of Delaunay triangulation extends to three and higher dimensions. Generalizations are possible to metrics other than Euclidean. However in these cases a Delaunay triangulation is not guaranteed to exist or be unique. Thanks to the creation of a new encrypted identity with multiple virtual features, we can think of a new virtual form of life in which humans can adapt and respond in real time to its informatic enviroment.

The New Human Encrypted (Merge Portrait)

The multimedia evolves day by day in terms of aesthetics and techniques, that is why we are very concern about the creation of a more advanced and updated visual identity able to answer the needs of a technological society.

Interaction Social Creation

The project focus in the social creation experiment of a portrait between two or more individuals, also search the meaning of a portrait in a digital era and how this is changing the way we percieve our identity. A new identity with the power of being adaptable and evolutive. This new experiment allows us to project thousands of variations in the virtual world, many configurations that lead us close to a more sensible portrait.

Interaction System

The installation starts wih a facial recognition process of two people. The system recognize them, compute the capture a produce 3 simple results: first, a merged portrait representing a new identity. Second multiple configurations based on that captured face, it allows to transform the visual configuration of the same face in real time. And third, complex series of data that can be encrypted in this visual representation. Then we create an interface to storage all portraits into libraries. This libraries are conected to an uploading system that share the images on the internet. Our vision is to create one of the biggest libraries of portraits in the virtual world.

Step by Step

The aim of this performance is to create a more artistic and emotional scene, where the user is in front of a mirror question its identity to then be reflected in a merged result with the other user. The performance starts wit two people standing in front of two mirrors located side by side next to the central frame, there the system captures their faces through webcams hidden on the frames.

Performance Social Creation

Creating a new virtual identity

The data is recorded and is loaded by a set of rules in Processing, where and algorithm tranforms the points into a merged triangulation based on delanuay process trying to find the right match between the points read from two faces. A projection show in the central frame the result through a growing animation until creates the new virtual identity.

 Is a new collective experience where the user is integrated into the process of virtual identities generation and understand the visual possibilities of its identity on the virtuality.

Engaging

The aim is to communicate a clear and simple idea so any individual can be part of this revolution, that is why we decide to create a portrait cloud with all the portraits generated everytime the installation runs. Then we can share the results and the big scope of the project, so people can feel related with the concept and understand  the possibilities of multi-creation in real time. Inside the stage we can find a section where people can see all the portraits uploaded to instagram and facebook accounts, so they can share their creations with other users through social networks.

Installation set up

Then the idea of digital fabrication comes to live, we can use this digital information and extract it to create 3d printed models of the faces, presenting new possibilites of this experiement, where we can touch what we create on the virtual reality.

Hyportraits Performance

Performance a Social Creation

The experiment saw the light for the first time at Sonar+D Market Lab at 2014 Edition of Sonar Festival, an international advanced music and new media art festival based on Barcelona between June 12.13.14. During the 3 days the installation creates more than 200 hyportraits, meaning that more that 400 people participate in the experience. The project also had a lot of exposure on diffretent medias, tv, magazines, news papers. Followers on the social networks and sharing of the creations. Here some of the results:

Please follow the project at:

Our body is the result of thousands of generations of intense evolution. When we use modern technologies, our bodies are reduced to a chair and a finger click. Design creates behaviors. A new approach is needed to develop the technologies of the future, starting from our physical reality, giving emergent technologies a human shape.

Prototype Ginga is an experiment conceived in Capoeira, the Brazilian dance/martial art. The “players” dance to the typical Capoeira music, and using a set of sensors in the arms and legs, they will change the music as they dance. ‘‘Ginga’’ is the name of the basic movement of Capoeira. The concept of the project is to read the body movement and establish new relations between our natural behaviours and future technology. People recognize music instinctively and we can easily assign movement to rhythm. With this project, the relation between music and dancer is reverted as the movement is now generating the sounds. The set of sensors amplify the human output, entering a loop in which the output of the body movement becomes a new input for the dancer, in the form of sound and music. This results in an interaction that adds complexity to the experience.

The experiences we share determine the value we give them. Technology is as good as how it make human experiences more complex, letting us communicate in new ways, generating questions and curiosity.

Sensor Setup
The device works by attaching a flex sensor in the elbow to detect the extension of the arm and the act of opening the body. An accelerometer in the wrist registers the beginning and end of any of it´s displacement in space. It registers the movement in the x,y,z axes.

The sensors send those inputs to an arduino board and turns it into numbers. The data is sent via xbee radios to a computer. The numbers are put into a programming language for music called max/msp, which creates several frequencies with each input. The real achievement of the prototype was to turn the body movement into data that can be used, remapped and modified as parameters for computer applications. This means that these kind of devices could be used in several fields such as music composition, music performance, dance performance, medical uses, virtual reality interfaces, and sports.
All the technologies used to develop this prototype are open source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy-xn4TVEbE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCDAtjkv7MQ

HYPORTRAITS  is an interactive installation and a collaborative project that explore the portrait’s role in our society, its importance as a pure visual representations of ourselves and how this is evolving to represent our faces in the future.

Future Face Concept

The new social behaviors proposed by the digital era and new technologies allow humans to create new or different versions of ourselves, to change the way other humans look us. If we look at devices such as Google Glass, those,  will allow us to have in real time any digital face or representation of it, we will be creating new skins, new mask to represent our emotions, our interest or even to create a version of ourselves that we are not capable to achieve; at the end, a new concept of Portrait.

With that in mind we are looking to explore concepts of collaborative descriptions a NEW psychological hypocrisy as a rule to move in the new world. Because every time  we simulate to show what we want and dissimulate to hide what we don’t want to show of ourselves, this will allows to be new individuals in the virtuality.

This installation will be a tool to look at this phenomenon, together we’ll create new portraits, new versions of ourselves.

Source:

5 cm per second @www.zerochan.net

“5 cm per second” is the name of a Japanese animated feature film by Makoto Shinkai. It is also the speed at which a cherry leaf falls from its tree. It says it all. It evokes evanescence, time, movement, sensitivity, and awareness about nature.

In the context of globalization, technology has reduced distances but also added dimensions and new realities. It also brought a different perception of the notion of time. Because through the new tools of communication, changes are happening so fast, we tend to project ourselves into the future and forget about the present.

We are more and more pushed to live realities that are not in direct relation with all of our senses, there is always an interface, a screen, an obstacle that separates our body from this reality  hence provoking a rupture between our mind and our body. Our mind is able to cross the interface, to inhabit the reality that is beyond the screen, while our body is stuck in a different reality. We are becoming fragmented pieces of a dislocated whole.

How can technology be used to anchor us in the present rather than lead us to get lost in other dimensions? How to bring awareness and re-position our body in the direct context, while establishing a relation with other contexts?

How to understand the multiplicity of the body rather than its fragmentation? – and by body I don’t only mean the physical body but also our implication, our presence.

And finally how to bring awareness about nature,earth and the different cultures? how to feel this network other than through the reality of the internet web, but through space?

Of all the energy produced by petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear, and renewable sources, only 42.8% of it gets used. The rest is lost in inefficiencies. 38% of the total energy produced goes toward generating electricity for our buildings, but only 32.78% makes it to our outlets and devices. The other 67.21% of electricity generated for our buildings is lost in conversion and distribution. (Derived from 2011 data, Harvard University)

WHERE SOME OF THE 67.21% GOES

I add DC{Direct Current}-producing solar panels to the roof of my building. I switch out my lights for low-voltage DC-consuming LEDs{Light Emitting Diodes}. But, because of the hardware in my building, the low-voltage DC electricity coming out of my PV{Photo-Voltaic} panel cannot go directly and seamlessly to my LEDs. First it must go through a series of changes that drain energy. Before entering the infrastructure of my building, the PV’s output enters a battery (so that a constant supply can be given to the power inverter), then the battery’s 12-volt DC energy is boosted to higher-voltage, and translated to AC{Alternating Current} in a power inverter. This step cuts out ~25% of the original source energy. The high-voltage AC then travels through my building’s wiring, until it gets to my LED lamp. At the lamp, it gets transformed and rectified back down to that 12-volt DC (like it was when it was on my roof). This step cuts out another ~10%. Then the DC electricity finally lights my LED.

Currently, solar panels (DC) supply us with only a tiny fraction of our total energy. But hydrogen batteries and fuel cells, widely hailed as the storage solution for advancing renewable energy paradigms, output DC. Diode technologies, computational devices, and an increasing number of low-voltage domestic appliances run on DC. As we continually switch both our sources and our consumption to low-voltage DC electricity, it becomes less and less sensible to invert to AC for delivery.

ENERGY v. EXERGY  &  QUANTITY v. QUALITY

In typical building infrastructures, AC is the supply standard, because it can be used for all energy needs. It is the highest-grade energy. Not only can it be used to power any typology of building system, from mechanical compressors to space-heating, it can undergo the most conversions before it is entirely dissipated into its final form: heat. During a time with less sophisticated technologies and methods of computation, it was important to simplify the transportation of energy into one common denominator. Conversion was substantively more attainable than any other solution. But now, abilities to calculate, generate, and organize types of energy have caught up, and the paradigmatic reliance on conversion is no longer necessary. Energy infrastructure has the opportunity to customize to specific productions and consumptions.

Why is infrastructure customization a more beneficial solution than mass-conversion? Not all types of energy have the same level of exergy—the amount of energy that can be used. AC electricity, for instance, has a much higher exergy than heat, for equal units of energy. They are not of the same quality. High-grade energy has the benefit of being able to meet both low-grade and high-grade needs, but it is created by converging lower-grade forms—a process that includes gross loss of energy to inefficiencies. {A typical kWh of AC electricity is created by focalizing three kWh-worth of low-grade heat energy.} Thus, we should avoid using downgraded AC for heating or DC lighting, when we could circumvent the associated energy losses by simply matching type to need.

EXISTING STRATEGIES FOR “SOFTENING” GRIDS 

Infrastructure that delivers energy and/or data is comprised of two categorical systems: 1) molecular actions along waves or paths and 2) the physical hardware that transports these actions. The vast majority of existent electricity and internet infrastructures are organized in a stable, centralized grid. Arguments to decentralize the internet “utility” are common, citing both technological and social incentives.

Decentralizing internet infrastructure can be accomplished by modifying only the flows of data and the storage hardware. The hardware responsible for transportation of the data (including public or corporation infrastructure) does not require substantive alterations.

-electricity doesn’t work like internet data, because there are fundamentally different types: differences in direction, grounding, data delivery

-non-gridded paradigms: different because of resources involved

-in a new, ideal development, there would be the following infrastructural changes: {1.Standardize all electronics to run on the same voltage of DC, relieving the need for voltage conversion at outlets. 2.Develop a standard wall outlet for DC. 3. Add a separate DC grid to all buildings. 4. Reduce the standard AC grid to only a few outlets per building, for the occasional appliance that requires intensive mechanical action (vacuums, washing machines). 5. Link DC building grids into community-scale infrastructure that connects directly to production sources. 6. Integrate community-scale non-chemical storage of DC electricity. 7. Eliminate water heating and space conditioning via electricity, by linking heat needs directly to heat sources, reusing heat sinks as new sources, and introducing passive heat boundaries. 8. Reduce space heating/conditioning to micro-climates rather than building envelopes.}

-so, that’s what the ideal would look like, but what about the existing, where we have already invested so much of our energy and resources? how do we adopt a mindset of malleability towards these structures?

“There should be more to Gov 2.0 than Web 2.0. Without understanding that, web and mobile services simply skate over the veneer of big, ugly problems like the city, without genuinely engaging. Or, as my colleague Bryan Boyer and I have taken to saying, ‘matter matters’.” (Hill)

MALLEABLE ENERGY: MATCHING SOURCES TO CONSUMPTION

“If we could begin to think of these environments at the small scale – what the body needs – and not at the large scale – the building space – we could dramatically reduce the energy and material investment of the large systems while providing better conditions for the human occupants.” (Smart Materials)

-additive systems with embodied interaction are well-posed for this problem

-soften the infrastructure so that it is adaptable — optimize energy systems to the user rather than to the building — most energy systems are better suited to the sub- or supra- scales anyway

-collapse electricity distribution

-transfer of heat: micro-climates & heat sources and sinks

MALLEABLE ENERGY: ADAPTABLE, VISIBLE, OCCUPIABLE

-visibility is also good for reduction of energy consumption

-if we reduce consumption and reduce waste, must be mindful of economic rebound effect. in this case, positive impact on the system comes not just from visibility, but from true agency and feedback, making the user part of an energy ecosystem. (just as human is a heat source)

-beautiful seams: opportunity for energy to become something spatial; something occupied

-intersects well with a reconceptualization of “boundary” and materials modified by energy (Addington)

-construct the energy ecosystem in such a way that the seams can be understood and leveraged, making the seams submissive to the agency of the user in the continually updating energy ecology

-{ecology = how a unit interacts with other units of its own kind, and how it interacts with separate types or species in its environment. e.g. how individual energy forces interact with other energy forces and how they all interact with users}

-high-tech, low-tech? careful-tech.

_____________

CONSTRAINTS & PARAMETERS FRAMING THE PROJECT (bibliography)

HEAT

Addington, D. Michelle. Boundary Layer Control of Heat Transfer in Buildings. Diss. Harvard University, 1997.

Brohus, Henrik, Peter V. Nielsen and Michael Tøgersen. Thermal Interaction of Closely Spaced Persons. Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.

Heschong, Lisa. Thermal Delight in Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1979. Print.

Myer, John. Representation of Thermal Energy in the Design Process. Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1995. N.p.: n.p., n.d.

ENERGY (EFFICIENCY/SUSTAINABILITY)

Addington, D. Michelle. “No Building is an Island.” Harvard Design Magazine Spring/Summer 2007.Number 26 (2007): n. pag.

Herrmann, Lesley, Michael Deru, and John Zhai. Evaluating Energy Performance and Improvement Potential of China Office Buildings in the Hot Humid Climate
against U.S. Reference Buildings. Rep. West Lafayette, Indiana: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2010.

Mau, Bruce, and Jennifer Leonard. Massive Change. London: Phaidon, 2004. Print.

Messenger, Roger, and Jerry Ventre. Photovoltaic Systems Engineering. Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 2000.

Phinyawatana, Naree. Urban Canyon Design: Evaluating the Impacts of the Radiative Material Properties and Spatial Configuration on Urban Heat Island. Diss.
Harvard University, 2006.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. International Energy Outlook 2013. Tech. Washington DC: DOE/EIA, 2013.

Wang, Yiping, Bing Yuan, Li Zhu, Jianbo Ren, Yonghui Liu, and Jinli Zhang. “Interactions between Building Integrated Photovoltaics and Microclimate in Urban
Environments.” J. Solar Energy Engineering 128.2 (2005): 168-72.

Yadama, Gautam N. Fires, Fuel, and the Fate of 3 Billion: The State of the Energy Impoverished. USA: Oxford, 2013. Print.

ECONOMIC REBOUNDS

Murray, Cameron K. “What If Consumers Decided to All ‘go Green’? Environmental Rebound Effects from Consumption Decisions.” Energy Policy 54 (2013): 240-56.

Alcott, Blake. “Jevons’ Paradox.” Ecological Economics 54.1 (2005): 9-21.

Select Committee on Science and Technology, House of Lords, UK. The Economics of Energy Efficiency, Chapter 3. Rep. no. 2. N.p.: Parliament, UK, n.d.

SMART SYSTEMS

Addington, D. Michelle, and Daniel L. Schodek. Smart Materials and New Technologies: For the Architecture and Design Professions. Amsterdam: Architectural,
2005.

Beesley, Philip. Responsive Architectures: Subtle Technologies 2006. Cambridge, Ont.: Riverside Architectural, 2006. Print.

Moloney, Jules. Designing Kinetics for Architectural Facades: State Change. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011.

GRIDS

Alfaro, Jose, and Shelie Miller. “Sastisfying the Rural Residential Demand in Liberia with Decentralized Renewable Energy Schemes.” Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Reviews 30 (2014): 903-11. Elsevier B.V. Web. 11 Jan. 2014.

City of New York, The. Road Map for the Digital City: Achieving New York City’s Digital Future. Rep. NY: New York City, 2011.

Sierra Energy Group. Smart Grid Starts with Smart Design: Prepared for Autodesk. Rep. N.p.: Energy Central, n.d.

NEW DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES

Department For International Development. Energy for the Poor: Underpinning the Millennium Development Goals. Rep. N.p.: DFIV, 2002. Print. DFIV Issues.

Easterly, William R. The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Cambridge: MIT, 2002. Print.

Fischer, Brodwyn, Bryan McCann, and Javier Auyero, eds. Cities From Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University,
2014. Print.

International Energy Agency. Energy for All: Financing Access for the Poor. Publication. Paris: OECD/IEA, 2011. Print. Special Early Excerpt of the World Energy
Outlook 2011.

Szabó, S., K. Bódis, T. Huld, and M. Moner-Girona. “Sustainable Energy Planning: Leapfrogging the Energy Poverty Gap in Africa.” Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Reviews 28 (2013): 500-09. Elsevier B.V. Web. 11 Jan. 2014.

United Nations Development Programme. “Universal Access to Modern Energy for the Poor.” UNDP. N.p., 2013. Web. 11 Jan. 2014.

BEHAVIOR / LEARNING / FEEDBACK

Ajzen, Icek. “The Theory of Planned Behavior.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50.2 (1991): 179-211.

Darby, Sarah. “Social Learning and Public Policy: Lessons from an Energy-conscious Village.” Energy Policy 34.17 (2006): 2929-940.

DeWaters, Jan E., and Susan E. Powers. “Energy Literacy of Secondary Students in New York State (USA): A Measure of Knowledge, Affect, and Behavior.” Energy
Policy 39.3 (2011): 1699-710.

Grønhøj, Alice, and John Thøgersen. “Feedback on Household Electricity Consumption: Learning and Social Influence Processes.” International Journal of Consumer
Studies 35.2 (2011): 138-45.

Hargreaves, Tom, Michael Nye, and Jacquelin Burgess. “Making Energy Visible: A Qualitative Field Study of How Householders Interact with Feedback from Smart
Energy Monitors.” Energy Policy 38.10 (2010): 6111-119.

LIGHT

An, John. Evaluation of Assumptions in Building Energy Standards: A Method for Assessing the Lighting Provision. Diss. Harvard University, 2005.

Livingstone, Margaret. Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing. New York: Harry Abrams, 2002.

INTERFACES

Dourish, Paul. Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001.

EXPERTS / TECHNOCRAT

Easterly, William R. The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor. New York: Basic, 2014. Print.

Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity. Berkeley: University of California, 2002. Print.

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon, 2001. Print.

PERCEPTION OF SHELTER BOUNDARIES

Rohles Jr. F.H., Nevins R.G., McNall Jr. P.E., and Springer W.E. 1967. Human physiological responses to shelter environment. Report 2. Institute for Environmental
Research. Kansas University (USA).

Schwartzman, Madeline. See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception. London, UK: Black Dog Pub., 2011.

Smith, Neil. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. New York, NY: Blackwell, 2008. Print.

There is evolution of form in Architecture.

There is evolution of form and intelligence in Nature.

Advanced Architecture is intelligent through interaction and communication. Sound and Light serves several complex organisms to interact.

Language is one of the most important elements of human interaction and intelligence. It could have evolved from music, as espoused by Rousseau, Herder, Humboldt, and Charles Darwin.

Color and sound can be measured, and turned into bits of information. Bits can be transmitted and under a certain code, they can become messages for interaction. This way, color becomes sound and sound becomes color. They are both just channels for information. This can be used to develop Intelligence in Architecture designing lightscapes and soundscapes.

Interaction

Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect. A closely related term is interconnectivity, which deals with the interactions of interactions within systems: combinations of many simple interactions can lead to surprising emergent phenomena. WIKIPEDIA

Interaction is interesting because of the human factor. We people are complex and spontaneous. Technological interfaces are as good as they can potentiate and expand our human interactions.

Technology is not necessary or mandatory for advanced interaction. It is a medium that helps define a frame of behavior. Imagine you are throwing a ball to a dog so it brings it back. The ball is a medium that establishes the kind of interaction between you. The complexity of the interaction comes from the experience you both share. The ball is just a ball, there is nothing special about it. What is shared is the real important factor. It creates emotions and memories.

Interests – Materiality and Perception

Starting from a theory basis about interaction, the final proposal will be based on the research and the inspiration discovered on the way.

There is a special interest of our physical reality in this project. Technology is conceived in this case as a tool between others. This is not a technology development project. It is focused on bringing awareness of our senses and the forces that affect our perception of the material world.