The good enough revolution—the role of aesthetics in user experiences with digital artefacts

Technological development takes place at a rapid pace, and in recent years it has led to a growing output of artefacts and services with digital content, where availability and low price seem to be the main parameters for success. This trend has been labelled the ‘good enough’ revolution and has highlighted contemporary parameters for technological development. The present article presents this trend as a design movement that is characterised by introducing a new functionalism and challenging common perceptions that have emerged as a result of the twentieth-century design story about ‘high quality’ and ‘added value’ in product development. In addition, the article introduces the concept of aesthetics as the basis for a discussion about user experiences in contemporary digital artefacts, and argues that the good enough movement calls for a new understanding of aesthetics that springs from the role of digital artefacts in the user's social life and plays a role in relation to technologically oriented design development.     

Wearable performance

Wearable computing devices worn on the body provide the potential for digital interaction in the world. A new stage of computing technology at the beginning of the 21st Century links the personal and the pervasive through mobile wearables. The convergence between the miniaturisation of microchips (nanotechnology), intelligent textile or interfacial materials production, advances in biotechnology and the growth of wireless, ubiquitous computing emphasises not only mobility but integration into clothing or the human body. In artistic contexts one expects such integrated wearable devices to have the two-way function of interface instruments (e.g. sensor data acquisition and exchange) worn for particular purposes, either for communication with the environment or various aesthetic and compositional expressions. ‘Wearable performance’ briefly surveys the context for wearables in the performance arts and distinguishes display and performative/interfacial garments. It then focuses on the authors' experiments with ‘design in motion’ and digital performance, examining prototyping at the DAP-Lab which involves transdisciplinary convergences between fashion and dance, interactive system architecture, electronic textiles, wearable technologies and digital animation. The concept of an ‘evolving’ garment design that is materialised (mobilised) in live performance between partners originates from DAP Lab's work with telepresence and distributed media addressing the ‘connective tissues’ and ‘wearabilities’ of projected bodies through a study of shared embodiment and perception/proprioception in the wearer (tactile sensory processing). Such notions of wearability are applied both to the immediate sensory processing on the performer's body and to the processing of the responsive, animate environment.     

Making the connection: Lev Manovich's Texas and the challenges of interactive new media narrative

This article proposes the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative as a tool for telling dramatically compelling interactive new media stories. In doing so it validates the crucial elements of cinematic storytelling in the digital medium, which due to its fragmentary, variable and re-combinatory nature, affords the opportunity for audience interaction. In particular it focuses on the theory and practice of the prominent new media theorist, Lev Manovich, as a means of investigating and creating a practical poetics. The key element of the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is the expansion of the previously forgotten and undeveloped Russian formalist concept of cinematurgy. This concept, as originally proposed but not elaborated by Kazansky, encompasses the notion of the creation of cinematic new media narrative as a mosaic—integrally driven by the narrative systems of plot, as well as the cinematic systems of visual style created by the techniques of cinema—montage, cinematography and mise-en-scene.     

What chess games and chess problems tell us about digital games and art

This article examines the relationship between chess games and chess problems (‘compositions’) in order to describe the chess problem as art. Arguing that the chess problem is a manipulation of game form guided by human aesthetic principles (e.g. Schiller's ‘beauty’ and Wimsatt's ‘human condition’), the article draws a parallel between art derived from games and art derived from nature. This parallel has important implications in circumstances where a natural world is replaced by a virtual world and nature is, in some sense, ‘lost’ to the artist. The article argues that, in such circumstances, the interactive and ‘concreative’ nature of digital media – particularly digital games – allows for unabated aesthetic production.     

Trailfinders—curating an interactive city promenade experience with mobile phones

Abstract

With a growing number of embedded digital experiences in arts and heritage settings, creating a broad global field, this article focuses on the use of mobile phones in the engagement of humans with the cultural heritage of public spaces, specifically those that require a promenade from one outdoor space to another. This article discusses findings from a recent promenade initiative, commissioned for a UK arts festival, along with a review of literature, to critically engage with growing evidence of the diverse ways in which technology is integrated at direct user level. Concepts of ‘hybrid spaces’ and ‘user agency’ are discussed, along with the ‘performativity’ of spaces. Central to the discussion is the function of narrative in engaging the participant to construct new perspectives, which are facilitated by the mediating role of personal media devices between subject, narrative, space and community.     

Algorithms or advocacy: does the legal profession have a future in a digital world?

Much of the focus on the impact of new technology on employment has been on work which is regarded as repetitive and requiring minimal skills. For the most part it seems that professional occupations have been assumed to be relatively immune to the effects of ‘digital disruption’. However, there are now suggestions that this is altering as new software programs have been developed that can undertake at least some of the functions of various professions, including the legal profession. This article seeks to add to the evolving conversation of how new technologies might transform the legal profession as we know it. Beyond this, it also seeks to ask how the content of the law and legal education might also be affected by ‘digital disruption’, and explore the opportunities such unravelling of the legal profession might present.     

Hybrid crafting: towards an integrated practice of crafting with physical and digital components

With current digital technologies, people have large archives of digital media, such as images and audio files, but there are only limited means to include these media in creative practices of crafting and making. Nevertheless, studies have shown that crafting with digital media often makes these media more cherished and that people enjoy being creative with their digital media. This paper aims to open up the way for novel means for crafting, which include digital media in integrations with physical construction, here called ‘hybrid crafting’. Notions of hybrid crafting were explored to inform the design of products or systems that may support these new crafting practices. We designed ‘Materialise’—a building set that allows for the inclusion of digital images and audio files in physical constructions by using tangible building blocks that can display images or play audio files, alongside a variety of other physical components—and used this set in four hands-on creative workshops to gain insight into how people go about doing hybrid crafting; whether hybrid crafting is desirable; what the characteristics of hybrid crafting are; and how we may design to support these practices. By reflecting on the findings from these workshops, we provide concrete guidelines for the design of novel hybrid crafting products or systems that address craft context, process and result. We aim to open up the design space to designing for hybrid crafting because these new practices provide interesting new challenges and opportunities for future crafting that can lead to novel forms of creative expression.     

Debunking the ‘digital native’: beyond digital apartheid,towards digital democracy

This paper interrogates the currently pervasive discourse of the ‘net generation’ finding the concept of the ‘digital native’ especially problematic, both empirically and conceptually. We draw on a research project of South African higher education students' access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to show that age is not a determining factor in students' digital lives; rather, their familiarity and experience using ICTs is more relevant. We also demonstrate that the notion of a generation of ‘digital natives’ is inaccurate: those with such attributes are effectively a digital elite. Instead of a new net generation growing up to replace an older analogue generation, there is a deepening digital divide in South Africa characterized not by age but by access and opportunity; indeed, digital apartheid is alive and well. We suggest that the possibility for digital democracy does exist in the form of a mobile society which is not age specific, and which is ubiquitous. Finally, we propose redefining the concepts ‘digital’, ‘net’, ‘native’, and ‘generation’ in favour of reclaiming the term ‘digitizen’.     

There is no dome?

Fulldome is slowly emerging from its planetarium shaped incubator into a brave new world of digital projectors, real-time visualisation software, independent content producers and transdisciplinary collaborations. This article takes a slow zoom through the evolution of fulldome. It reflects on the technologies and institutions that have shaped the fulldome orthodoxy and the recent emergence of a digital framework where all the different kinds of technologies, disciplines and media forms fit together. The fulldome may no longer be full of stars, but the emptiness that lies beyond its domed surface offers new imaginings of a ‘future in space’.     

Design thinking and imitatio in an educational setting

Schools are expected to prepare students for the future, providing them with methods for dealing with the emergent world. This article considers how teachers can work with digital productions at primary schools even when they are not acquainted with the new production genres. We propose a methodological framework to assist students and teachers in their exploration of unknown media genres based on a case study. We revive the ancient concept of imitatio and integrate it with contemporary design thinking to support production dynamics that lead to increased digital literacy.     

Kissing and making up: time,space and locative media

This article explores the temporal phenomena associated with networked and locative media. Whilst many of the practical opportunities of locative media are biased toward space and place, the author introduces the importance of time. The article explores the loss of time from space that was compounded during the age of Enlightenment, and how many locative media platforms rely heavily upon the traditional articulation of space without time. However, as a form of recovery, the author suggests that since maps have become handheld and are able to locate us ‘upon’ them in ‘real-time’, time has once again began to feature as a characteristic of experience.

The author compares our temporal consciousness with the development of representation of space to describe how time and space were once intimately linked, became separated through the Enlightenment project and modernity, but are recently showing signs of a renewed connection in locative media.     

Nomadic Work: Romance and Reality. A Response to Barbara Czarniawska’s ‘Nomadic Work as Life-Story Plot’

This article takes departure in Barbara Czarniawska’s discussion of ‘Nomadic Work as Life-Story Plot’. It contextualises her analysis of actors’ interpretations of nomadic work with a bi-focal review of the ambiguous realities of these phenomena. Firstly, an examination of key aspects of the socio-economic and political context of nomadic work in global neoliberal economies reveals precarious conditions that cloud romantic interpretations of nomadicity. Secondly, a review of studies of everyday practices of nomadic work shows how neoliberal, but also alternative futures are enacted through creative appropriation of collaborative technologies. One example is the work of digital ‘disaster deck’ volunteers and its potential for the mobilization of ‘rapid, highly localized assistance’ through closer collaboration between a distributed crowd, local communities, and official emergency responders (Starbird and Palen 2013). This and other examples suggest emergent new practices and politics of dwelling in mobility that are focused on sociality and collaboration, straddling virtual and physical commons. The twin critique developed in this response can augment narrative analysis to inform more integrated CSCW innovation that challenges the ‘brave new world of work’.     

Smart cities in the new service economy: building platforms for smart services

Recent changes in service environments have changed the preconditions of their production and consumption. These changes include unbundling services from production processes, growth of the information-rich economy and society, the search for creativity in service production and consumption and continuing growth of digital technologies. These contextual changes affect city governments because they provide a range of infrastructure and welfare services to citizens. Concepts such as ‘smart city’, ‘intelligent city’ and ‘knowledge city’ build new horizons for cities in undertaking their challenging service functions in an increasingly cost-conscious, competitive and environmentally oriented setting. What is essential in practically all of them is that they paint a picture of cities with smooth information processes, facilitation of creativity and innovativeness, and smart and sustainable solutions promoted through service platforms. This article discusses this topic, starting from the nature of services and the new service economy as the context of smart local public services. On this basis, we build an overall framework for understanding the basic forms and dimensions of smart public services. The focus is on conceptual systematisation of the key dimensions of smart services and the conceptual modelling of smart service platforms through which digital technology is increasingly embedded in social creativity. We provide examples of real-life smart service applications within the European context.     

Beyond ‘mobility’: A new understanding of moving with technology

We report a surprising experience with mobile technology: the lead author found herself seeing and acting differently while running over part of her usual running track with the exercise‐tracking application ‘Strava’ on her phone, even without focal attention to the app. We apply the method of problematization to a detailed empirical account of this experience, in conjunction with a literature analysis of taken‐for‐granted assumptions underpinning research on ‘mobile technology use’. This reveals that, while the relationship of attention, perception, movement and technology was a key element of the surprise, these themes are not well accounted for in current IS literature. In response, we employ William Gibson's ecological theory of visual perception to reinterpret the empirical account and thereby build a new understanding of the human plus mobile technology that we term moving‐with‐technology. We introduce to IS: moving‐with‐technology as a new analytical perspective; the new phenomena of digital sub‐species, digital‐niches and asynchronous co‐location; and stimulus for new ecologically oriented ‘mobile methods’. Moving‐with‐technology also has practical implications for urban planners who are using data from digital trace‐making tools such as Strava in their decision‐making, thereby generating what we call ecological feedback loops.     

Semantic-based framework for personalised ambient media

The paper proposes a semantic-based metadata framework for personalised interaction with TV media in a connected home context. Our approach allows the current home media centres to go beyond the simple concept of electronic programme guides and to offer the users a personalised media experience in an ambient home environment. The user’s characteristics, preferences and context are used to personalise the user’s experience of viewing and interacting with multimedia content on different heterogeneous devices. The TV-Anytime specification provides the basis for the metadata framework for handling content from IP, digital broadcast, and Blu-ray disc sources.     

“签名的签名”之实现技术研究

介绍“签名的签名”,即笔迹数字签名的概念,提出直接和需仲裁的“签名的签名”之2种结构模式。针对签名图像的特点,对二值图像水印嵌入方法和灰度图像水印嵌入方法进行研究,建立二值图像的像素可翻转值查找表,给出签名图像的4级灰度表示法。实验结果表明,基于4级灰度的LSB水印嵌入方法具有嵌入容量大、不可见性好、简单易行等特点。     

Reinventing the archive in the age of digital reproduction: Walid Raad’s the Atlas Group*

Taking the Atlas Group (1989–2004) as a case study, this paper examines the aesthetic, political and technological possibilities of the digital archive. The Atlas Group is a fabricated digital archive founded by the Lebanese-American media artist Walid Raad, and it deals with the illusive history of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1991). The digital takes an important role in Raad’s fictional archive, as it creates a tangible indexical fantasy that I would call the para-index. The para-index (an indexical sign without a referent) works to bring back Lebanon’s forgotten past by simulating / prefiguring its sensible form. Critic Rosalind Krauss calls this prefiguration of an aesthetic form within medium’s inherent technical property ‘the reinvention of the medium’ in this post-medium era. This paper aims to articulate how the Atlas Group reinvents the archive in this age of digital reproduction, and how this reinvention illuminate Lebanon’s unknown history.     

基于数字形式的21世纪娱乐发展新趋势

随着新的技术的发展,传统的艺术也在不断的进化中,加入了数字设备和数字技术的新媒体艺术成为当前世界的热点。文章中着重介绍了几种新的艺术形式的案例,比如互动墙面、互动交互装置、手机游戏。这些新的数字艺术创造了新的娱乐方式,丰富的大众的生活。     

The role of digital artefacts on the interactive whiteboard in supporting classroom dialogue

This paper explores how the interactive whiteboard (IWB) might be harnessed to support student learning through classroom dialogue. This powerful and increasingly prevalent technology opens up opportunities for learners to generate, modify, and evaluate new ideas, through multimodal interaction along with talk. Its use can thereby support rich new forms of dialogue that highlight differences between perspectives, and make ideas and reasoning processes more explicit. The emerging account builds upon Bahktin's conception of dialogue and Wegerif's notion of technology ‘opening up a dialogic space for reflection’, but foregrounds the role of mediating artefacts. Classroom dialogue in the context of IWB use is construed as being facilitated by teachers and learners constructing digitally represented knowledge artefacts together. These visible, dynamic, and constantly evolving resources constitute interim records of activity and act as supportive devices for learners' emerging thinking, rather than finished products of dialogue. This primarily theoretical account is illustrated with examples from case studies of UK classroom practice. Analysing lessons in sequence has illuminated how teachers can exploit the IWB through cumulative interaction with a succession of linked digital resources, and through archiving and revisiting earlier artefacts. The tool thereby helps to support the progression of dialogue over time, across settings and even across learner groups. In sum, the article reframes the notion of dialogue for this new context in which students are actively creating and directly manipulating digital artefacts, and offers some practical examples.     

Animistic design: how to reimagine digital interaction between the human and the nonhuman

ABSTRACT

This article puts forward the notion of animistic design as an uncertainty-driven strategy to reimagine human–machine interaction as a milieu of human and nonhuman. Animistic design is suggested as capable of fostering affects, sensibilities and thoughts that capitalize on the uncertain, the unpredictable and the nonlinear, and their capacity to trigger creative pathways. Informed by post-human philosophies, theories of mediation and materiality, as well as by affect, agency and aesthesia, animistic design eschews the anthropomorphic and the cute playfulness often associated with animism. Instead, it proposes a practical–theoretical framework to articulate the nexus of digital innovation, interaction design practices, technical materialities and affective responses already emerging in the digital cohabitation of the human and the nonhuman. Using a ‘research through making’ approach, the article describes in detail a series of animistic design experiments and prototyping methods that explore ways of rethinking interaction as an open-ended and creative enterprise. Animistic design offers an investigative strategy that exploits degrees of collaboratively curated uncertainty and unpredictability to imagine forms of digital interaction, and to engender creative human–nonhuman relationships within a given digital milieu.