process2017-blog

[process2017-blog]

Autoethnography of a day translated into colour and sound

“The space of moods is an atmospheric space–that is, a certain mental or emotive tone permeating a particular environment–and it is also the atmosphere spreading spatially around me, in which I participate through my mood.” [1]

As a continuum from the previous post “Self as ambience”, I will here briefly describe my project for the Aalto Media Lab course Topics in Visualization and Cultural Analytics. For its 2017 edition, the theme was “visualizing self and human agency in the era of ubiquitous computing.” The main task was to create an interpretive visualization based on data from an autoethnographic narrative.

My project takes as its starting point that the “self” is primarily a dynamic fluctuation of moods and atmospheres. For me, an atmosphere is not something that can be represented in a static graph, it has to be time-based and immersive. Hence, I decided to frame the data-gathering time into just one day, from wake up until going back to sleep,  and translate it into a medium that can be equally experienced as a time-based phenomenon. In practice, I use two sources of data: My heart rate measured with a Fitbit Charge HR device and an autoethnographic narrative of my mood variations mapped into the SOM tool.  

Using the DiMe server, the heartbeat data is translated into color temperatures, which dynamically evolve according to variations over a day. Measurements are taken every minute. Once the browser page is loaded, the whole day is “rewinded” from 5am to 11pm. As the cursor moves on the timeline, the background changes  color accordingly – the slower the pulse, the bluer (and darker) the background.

While the visualization shows basic patterns of activity based on exact measurements, the information remains distant. In other words, it doesn’t tell much about the reason for high or low heart rate – whether the change was caused by mind or body, positive or negative emotions, or overall, how it felt. Hence, I decided to complement the color visualization with a soundscape informed by my subjective evaluation of my mood (or “atmosphere”) variations over the day. I had prepared a semantic differential rating scale with opposing, personally meaningful adjectives (such as playful–serious, present-unpresent) on a scale of 1-5. As it unfolded, I divided the day into different “scenes” and rated each with the scale. I then used the SOM tool to generate a visualization which clustered different scenes based on their similarity “in terms of moods”. With this information, I created a soundscape with four types of basic sound frequencies oscillating between each other.

Full-screen here.

The visualization is intended to be brought into a physical space through the aid of a screen or a video projector and speakers. It is not a surface to be looked at but an atmosphere to be embodied within. The aim is not to communicate semantic information but rather a peripheral awareness of a remote person’s activities and emotional states over a period of time.  

Hence, I filmed the color projections in different physical- and social contexts  in which such “ambient awareness systems” (and remotely located people’s “presence”) could be found - for example, my parent’s home and a the shared apartment of a close friend.

Each space is seen from an entrance - a door or a window – and hence the camera can’t see the source, only the overall changes of the color temperature in that space. This is to put emphasis on the general atmosphere instead of a “product” or object. The video recording itself is static, as if the viewer’s browser was a window to that other reality. In theory, one’s abstract, real-time representation could materialize in real time in multiple places, even simultaneously.

Full screen here.

References

[1] Böhme, Gernot. "26 The Space of Bodily Presence and Space as a Medium of Representation." Throughout: Art and Culture Emerging with Ubiquitous Computing (2013): p.461

[process2017-blog]

You are what you attend to - about the “ambient”

“For just as ubiquitous computing introduces flexibility in the coupling of human and computer, so does it abandon the object-centered model of media in favour of an environmental one.  [...] Media becomes an environment that we experience simply by being and acting in space and time. [1]

More than ubiquitous computing, I’m interested in the ambient. While “ubiquitous communication technologies” can nowadays point to almost any networked object that is not-a-desktop-computer, ambient communication media – especially situated technologies – present a more narrowly defined, fascinating area of research.

In order to open up the topic, I’m going to draw mainly from two sources: the essay Ambience and Ubiquity by Ulrik Schmidt [2] and the book Ambient Commons by Malcolm McCullough [3]. Besides, in order to illustrate these abstract ideas and generally inspire the creative process, I will include a few works of art loosely related to ambient aesthetics.

Let us begin by elaborating on the different meanings and connotations of the “ambient”. Ulrik Schmidt traces its etymology to the latin word ambire, which literally means “to go around”. Hence, ambience could be described as “the production of a distinctive effect characterized by an intensification of the experience of being surrounded” (p.176).

Schmidt writes that “An ambient phenomenon is not experienced as an object or a group of interrelated objects, but rather as a field. [...] Ambient phenomena are experienced as open, formless fields where such distinctions are no longer possible or relevant “ (p.177).

He continues that “The elements are “all over”, “all around” and “everywhere” in the field. Hence, there is a close relation between ambience and ubiquity in the sense that ambient fields are experienced as “total fields”, all over and ubiquitous” (p.177). McCullough expresses the same idea in other words: the ambient “suggests some recognition of the whole, like noticing the forest and not just trees” (p.17).

In his essay, Schmidt writes that there is currently a tendency to move toward an ambient aestheticization of digital media and information tools. Besides ubiquitous computing, he links the phenomenon to also “ambient intelligence” or “ambient informatics”. In a few words, ambient intelligence (AmI) refers to electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people [5].  Ambient informatics includes both the collection of real-time information with the use of sensors, as well as the (dynamic) organization, design and display of this information [5].

Ambient awareness While these terms mainly point to the nature of computation, the word “ambient” is becoming more popular for describing the aesthetics of human experience in information societies. Just a few days ago I googled “ambient awareness”, which seems to be an already established term in social sciences for explaining a new form of peripheral social awareness, made possible only recently through perpetual, machine (-and internet-) mediated contact with one’s friends and colleagues. While today technologies linked to “ambient awareness” mainly refer to social networking sites and the internet, the basic principles can be applied to a whole new range of new media.

According to Andreas Kaplan, ambient awareness is made possible by constant reception, and/ or exchange of information fragments [6]. Clive Thompson of the New York Times describes ambient awareness as "very much like being physically near someone and picking up on mood through the little things; body language, sighs, stray comments..." [7] In the context of social media, this refers to a constant feed of twitter updates, instagram pictures, and other symbols of being “online” or active”, which, according to McCullough, can build a detailed portrait, even an imagined presence, of a friend (p.12). In other words, these bits and pieces allow for an awareness of that person’s activities and hence, existence.

Nevertheless, why couldn’t this flow of information (bound to screens and other computer-related activity) be replaced by sensor-tracking activities in the real world? And why couldn’t it be projected and mediated to our living environments instead of apps bound to pocket-size screens? 

New sensibilities Malcolm McCullough elaborates on ambient awareness as something that can reflect a more general mindfulness; “Almost any use of the word ambient suggests some aspect of sensibility”(p.13). While my first impulse was to connect this sensibility to the surrounding environment, why couldn’t it relate to a social sensibilities as well? When you sit across another person, it is not for granted that you are really present for them, or that they are conversely present for you. But, according to my intuitive judgement, only through mutual awareness can one achieve a sense of social connectedness.

Embodied interfaces What I very much enjoyed in McCullough’s book was his emphasis on situated technologies and embodied information, which helps to emphasize that not all computing is mobile (p.14) and promises a departure from –or co-existing alternatives to– all-powerful handheld gadgets. “In the meeting of architecture and interface, attention and situation technology, or cognition and environment, embodiment has long been a unifying theme” (p.280). While reading Dourish & Bell, I struggled accepting that ubiquitous computing may be simply rendered to the emergence and new usages of smartphones, this emphasis on ambiently embodied interfaces was very welcome for framing and motivating my thesis project.

Attention Another theme in Ambient Common by McCullough is information processing and attention. In the context of societies where its  citizens are increasingly bombarded with information, ambient media is seen as even necessity. Again, while small and singularly irrelevant social media notifications might overall create a sense of ambient awareness, each and every one of them grabs your attention for the moment you receive it; most of the time they require your focused vision and some form of semantic processing.

It might have also unwanted consequences: “As ever more diverse media cut ever deeper into everyday life with links and portals to someplace else, people may not suspend only disbelief about where they are at the moment, but eventually also a more general sensibility to surroundings” (p.96). This is certainly related to the phenomenon of “...a blaze outlook [that] has been the norm among city dwellers” (p.23). Perhaps too pointedly, he talks about people who “...tolerated in-your-face media, assured needs for pervasive entertainment, lazily consumed whatever was playing, and generally turned out of shared space (p.276) – and yet, there might be a seed of truth here too. A very powerful statement in the last chapter “Silent Commons” went as follows:

“Little is more dumbfounding than to lose control of your attention. Perhaps texting has become so popular because it requires no listening.”

Yet, as McCullough usefully points out, “once you assume that most information is semantic, you can more easily identify its opposite–non-semantic information” p.35). He takes as example light coming from the east; it has a natural meaning which one might perceive intrinsically, without any encoding or human agency. Instead of the centre of attention, the information resides in the periphery, which, on the other hand, we are aware through embodiment.

The same way, we are aware of each other when we spend time in the same space. You might hear the other washing dishes round the corner, see them walking by in the corner of your eye, feel their body sitting side by side while performing a different task. Occasionally, you might glance towards each other, say a word or tap on the shoulder as an attempt to confirm that yes, I’m aware of you right now (and I care about you too). On top of general (ambient) awareness, this establishes a sense of mutual awareness, which furthermore allows the experiences of connectedness and togetherness. (note to myself: another essay about these themes! Using definitions by Rettie…)

Application / speculation So how does this translate to ambient communication media? Although this topic might have been touched on already a few times in previous posts, here is the summary in a few sentences:

Taking as a starting point some recent technological trends and possibilities (which are the catalyst for but not the focus of this inquiry), for example embedded sensors (ex. biosensors, movement tracking, gesture recognition), different combinations of actuators as ambient displays, and the Internet of Things – we can now input non-verbal or even non-semantic activities taking place in the “real-world” – beyond the graphical user interface – and mediate it back to the physical reality in another remote location.

A useful definition by William Washington [8], “Ambient media systems“ display abstracted information in a space occupied by the user of the system using light, sound, movement of mechanical objects, or temperature changes that is mapped to the information.  A user receives information in the periphery of his/her awareness. Because they provide abstracted information, ambient media are not transparent in their immediacy. Instead they are opaque; they rely on the user to make the connection between the ambient signal and the information associated with it.”

Furthermore, “Whereas ambient media provide all types of information in abstracted form, “awareness” systems provide awareness information about other people. Ambient media awareness systems map presence information associated with other people to ambient media. In that does not force the psychic split that a GUI does. Instead of the GUI paradigm where we are looking into a window–into another world, ambient media allows others’ presence to appear as light, sound, movement, or temperature changes in our environment. We become aware of the presence information as it exists in our space.”

The information of interest here is related, on the one hand, to mundane everyday activities (such as walking around the home), environmental information (the noise level of the room) and social or affective information (changes in emotional states, or socially meaningful gestures). Furthermore, the form that we give to this information can be ambient, peripheral, even poetic, made for background processing or aesthetic contemplation instead of active information processing.

In other words, the aim here is to create a sense of togetherness that draws from our co-located social experiences. Yet this new kind of mediated communication can go beyond what we have in the same space since technology can read us, and engage us, in new, pervasive ways. 

Currently in the “real world” you can’t see inside the other person’s mind nor perceive their real-time breathing patterns. Nor are we yet used to receiving constant, non-semantic information through these multimodal mediums. Although it’s already another topic, McCullough mentions neuroplasticity (which “exists, makes use of embodiment cognition, and is worth knowing and debating more often” p.281). Could we acquire new social sensibilities or “true” telepathy? How would these capabilities change the way how we perceive and inhabit the world? How do these new abstract or ambient representations of human (activities) change our idea of the self or the other, in particular when it concerns those people whom we are the closest to?

Sources

[1] Hansen, Mark BN. "Ubiquitous sensation: Toward an atmospheric, collective, and microtemporal model of media." Throughout: Art and culture emerging with ubiquitous computing (2013): p.74.

[2] Schmidt, Ulrik. "Ambience and Ubiquity." Throughout: Art and Culture Emerging with Ubiquitous Computing (2013): 176-187.

[3] McCullough, Malcolm. Ambient commons: Attention in the age of embodied information. MIT Press, 2013.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_intelligence

[5] http://ambientinformatics.com/

[6]  Andreas Kaplan (2012) If you love something, let it go mobile: Mobile marketing and mobile social media 4x4 Found, Business Horizons, 55(2), 129-139 p. 132.

[7] Thompson, Clive (09-07-2008). "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy". NY Times. Retrieved 16 December 2011.

[8] Washington, William. "Exploring ambient media presence awareness." Masters Degree Project Report. Department of Technical Communication, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA (2001). (p.17-18)

Picture credits

I Chapel of St. Lawrence in Vantaa by Avanto Architects

II Pinterest / unknown 

III Skater shadow / (c) Emilia Tapprest

IV Ville in the kitchen / (c) Emilia Tapprest

V Daniel Rozin, “Wooden Mirror,” 2014

VI Pinterest / unknown source

VII Kitchen moment / (c) Emilia Tapprest

VIII Half portrait / (c) Emilia Tapprest

IX Anna / (c) Emilia Tapprest

X James Turrell / Gathered Light http-//jamesturrell.com/work/gathered-light/

XI Olafur Eliasson / Your double Lighthouse projection http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/olafureliasson.net/objektimages_final/IMG_MDA114052_1600px.jpg

[process2017-blog]

Ubicomp is now - contesting standard visions of digital futures

“Ubiquitous computing is already here; it simply has not taken the form that we originally envisaged”

Every now and then, it’ refreshing that someone pulls the rug from under your feet. During the past few weeks I have been reading articles by Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell, which have achieved to quite thoroughly shake my understanding of the current meaning and actualization of ubiquitous computing.

Dourish and Bell take as a starting point that technology is in practice as much a sociocultural phenomenon as it is a technological one. In their relatively recent book Divining a Digital Future [1] they explore different ways how ubiquitous computing has been imagined and instantiated over the last quarter century (p.187). The first insight is that it's an already existing object embedded in our social and cultural practices. This view challenges the fixation that Ubicomp is a yet-to emerge phenomenon in the image of Mark Weiser's (and his colleagues') visioning in the end of the 1990s.

According to the authors’ detailed analysis, Weiser's foundational articles still strongly influence academia (particularly HCI) and its collective imagining of how UbiComp will eventually materialize. It is not to say that Weiser's definition of Ubicomp as sensor technology, embedded computational power and the general dematerialization of devices wouldn’t be more and more actual. Nevertheless, his focus on form rather than use has prevented for the vision to adapt to the rapidly evolving landscape of technological developments.

Dourish and Bell are especially critical towards Weiser’s belief that ubicomp will rely on large, fixed infrastructure investments. As I understand it, this is related to the idea of responsive, context aware spaces and calm ambient displays designed to specific spaces. But this thinking fails to take into account that the discussed phenomenon and their structures are not pristine– old infrastructures remain and new layers are added on top of the other through a “process of bricolage”.  

In other words, technological environments are rarely designed top-down from the designer’s desk to the perfect (western) home (or office) where “things just work”. "In the rush to sell the vision of the home as a site which experiences could be enhanced through technology, the messiness of daily life was replaced with a vision of technological order” (P.166). Audiences are neither entirely passive, but rather “actively appropriate and re-interpret the media products that they consume“(P.55).

Furthermore, new technological applications are often paired with stereotypical use scenarios and personas draws from the researchers' own academic bubble. “While homogeneity and an erasure of differentiation is a community feature of future environments, the practice is inevitably considerably messier(...)” Only through a focus on the diversity of settings, can we avoid misguided visions.

Beyond electronic toilet doors, smart sports bra and networked gym equipment (- in white, middle-class nuclear families, to put it very bluntly), how else might ubiquity developments take form? How about real-time traffic monitoring in Singapore, challenges of multigenerational housing in India, a single city-wide call to prayer in Cairo, or the casual use of microcontrollers and sensors in a Finnish high school? (Note to myself: this insight will be a useful starting point for discussing scenarios in another essay.)

I was also inspired by the authors’ call to imagine ubicomp “as a collective practice as opposed to a set of discrete individual actions”. “The focus here is not on a personal experience; it concerns how social groups can share not only an experience but also a meaning for it”(p. 193). Also according to my observations, research in HCI tends to focus on the effects of new technologies on individual users, over a short period of time. This is only natural since the research process usually proceeds from the building of proof-of-concept prototypes to user testings in lab or home environments. Nevertheless, the understanding yielded from this kind of user testing can’t take into account the meanings and impacts that similar artifacts would acquire if they were truly domesticated in an entire community or society – what is currently happening with smartphones and social media for example.

To close this essay, I would like to draw from another writing by Dourish & Bell [2]. In it, the authors bring visions of ubiquitous computing into alignment with a related phenomenon, science fiction. They state that design-oriented research is first of all an act of collective imagining - a way in which we work together to bring about a future that lies slightly out of grasp. This way, like science fiction, also design-oriented research is grounded in expectations, frustrations, and understanding of the present. In short, any description of a technology is already social and cultural. Perhaps I should be even more explicit about my personal starting points and background in engaging with this topic in my thesis…

Notes

[1] Dourish, Paul, and Genevieve Bell. Divining a digital future: Mess and mythology in ubiquitous computing. Mit Press, 2011.

[2] Dourish, Paul, and Genevieve Bell. "“Resistance is futile”: reading science fiction alongside ubiquitous computing." Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 18.4 (2014): 769-778.

Picture credits

http://www.architectural-lighting.co.uk/my_documents/my_pictures/A8F_113A0020.jpg 

http://pureleveragegvo.com/smart-home-design.html

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153795071159068&set=a.10153663629259068.1073741831.626954067&type=3&theater

[process2017-blog]

The self as “ambience”

After a three-week-journey in India, last week I began the course “Topics in Visualization and Cultural Analytics” in the Aalto Media Lab. As homework, we were given the task to visualize ourselves – to somehow convey a perception of who we are through other-than-verbal means.

As a result of a brief afternoon meditation, my  main insight (which is strictly non-scientific) is the following: One’s identity is a (primarily social) construct which differs from the momentary experience of one’s ��bodily” self. Going a few steps back, I try and explain how I came to this provisional conclusion:

I don’t know about you, but personally I have always enjoyed filling different personality-related questionnaires – as a child mostly “friend books” and later tests such as Meyers Briggs, Enneagrams and the likes. Why? Perhaps they give you the freedom to define yourself as you wish, or an excuse to contemplate yourself, just as narcissus did when admiring his reflection in the water. Nowadays social media profiles seem to fill the same purpose through arranging information (ex. groups, educational status, daily activities) into “coherent” identities.

When I was a teenager, I thought that my answers somehow reflected who I am – a sum of all those opinions, experiences, achievements, social entourage and other events that I have accumulated during my life. When meeting new people, I struggled in conveying this mental archive so they could form an accurate opinion of who I am.

Later, through many influences, especially buddhism, I have begun to think that this image of the self is no more than an (addictive) illusion, and besides, not what (socially or personally) matters in the first place. Instead, it has been more useful to think of myself as a verb (1): Rather than a fixed entity (a noun), I like to think of ourselves as dynamic “bundles of energies” (2), which keep on emerging and dissolving every moment. One’s past experiences, including the image of the self, merely provide a lens, or “starting point” for this manifestation.

In other words, what lies beneath, we are mainly feelings or atmospheres radiating into our surroundings, and which others subconsciously sense in addition to the the more explicit messages that we send about ourselves. (3) Although this “flow of energy”(4) constantly evolves , I have an intuitive feeling that within,  there are certain atmospheres (or experiences of the self) that are more likely to  repeat in certain situations. Hence, for the exercise I thought of a few scenes in my life (list below) in which I could identify recurring patterns of these atmospheres.

In the middle of an Aikido class (focused, tranquil, elevated, lured)

Going late to school (Early winter morning, half-running, jacket open, feeling a little bit cold, submerged in trivial thoughts and generally body-less.)

In the midst of an interesting but challenging discussion where someone explains you a complex concept (overtly focused, thinking analytically, not much emotions)

Skating home after a night out (strong feelings, energetic, melancholic, serene beneath the chaos)

Meditating (secure, asserted, peaceful, with occasional thoughts passing by)

As the visualization, I created a simple soundscape for each:  

After the class, I began thinking how these kinds of visualizations could be harnessed in remote communication. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if there was a way to translate these states of mind into dynamic audiovisual media,  in real time? My first thought was to assign different mental atmospheres into certain EEG frequencies. If there are brainwave patterns associated with all sorts of emotional and neurological conditions (5), keeping a diary of feelings in those specific moments could act as a starting point.

Notes

(1) very assertively derived from the grand insight that God is a verb

(2) *without a new age glow

(3) A useful tip that I wish to have given for my teenage-self: Don’t try to convey any of that social information. You don’t need to say a word about your past if it doesn’t come up in the discussion. Rather, be present, curious about the other, and trust that exercising benevolence and positive energy are enough to make this person feel good, no matter whether they link it to yourself or not.

(4) Please e-mail me if you find a better term! :-)

[process2017-blog]

Being in (un)sync with the world

Both academia and popular media [1] have long been preoccupied by virtual reality, or more broadly put, virtuality. According to my humble observations, recurrent concerns have included the “disembodiment” of humans and implications of accessing other realities through different graphical user interfaces, such as desktop computers, smartphones and virtual reality glasses. Yet, while virtuality might have been a key concept in the 1990s, the 2000s are again more and more oriented towards  exploring digital information embedded into our tangible environments  [2].

This reflects also my personal relation to technology, which until recent times has been either disinterested or resistant. I often feel that after engaging with people (or other information) through these devices, it might take several hours, even days, to “ground” myself back to my body and the surrounding reality.

In this vein, I can well relate with Kenneth Gergen’s idea of “Absent Presence” where a person who is physically present in one space is mentally somewhere else, in a “virtual space”. I have frequently seen situations where groups of people sit together in a coffee shop, none of them aware of what is happening around them, not to mention each other. It’s an evident remark when people are staring at their screens, yet it’s even more creepy when the person (myself included) pretends to talk to someone, yet stares somewhere past with an empty look.

Lightbound project (2015)

If these are effects of absent presence, what is the meaning of present absence, then? In a few words, here lies the very core of this thesis project. For me, present absence is very close to the notion ghostly presence; the feeling that someone or something is present with you in a physical space while the material or body is invisible or located somewhere else. Technology-wise, this becomes possible when some aspects of the remote person’s bodily existence are sensed with sensors and mediated to another location through ambient mediums taking form in that physical space.

Moving to another chapter of Throughout: “Transmateriality: Presence Aesthetics and the Media Arts”, Mitchell Whitelaw continues with the topic: “If there is a tendency or desire at work here to materialize media technologies, emphasizing their presence-with-us, it runs against a view of media and technoculture that has become dominant during the past few decades.” Along these lines, he proposes a “presence aesthetics” in the media arts and argues that “media technologies can elicit moments of intensified being-in-the-world despite their more familiar role in distancing that world from us”.

The first time this happened to me was on a late winter night at the Aalto Media factory. Some colleagues of mine invited me to try an EEG headset while joining their hangout (not a Google Hangout, but an actual one). I remember it as a very empowering feeling to receive visual feedback about the workings of the mind, usually invisible and intangible, all the more as this visualization dynamically evolved while the social situation took place. [2]

This desire to sensitize with the body drove me to try also other forms of “biofeedback”: For example, together with engineer Jani Kalasniemi in 2014, we prototyped a simple game targeted towards autistic children, which visualizes real-time heartbeat in the form of a pulsating circle, turning into blue while the pulse is slow and shifting back to red when the speed goes up. (The original version also included feedback from an EEG headset, yet at the end, we decided to simplifying the system by concentrating on the heartbeat.)

The idea was to alternately calm down or get back excited, with the aim to learn to sensitize to one’s mental states and gain confidence of being able to have control over them. For me it was also a very rewarding experience to observe the teachers’ reactions, exclaiming afterwards that they had never imagined receiving such tangible feedback about the children’s mental activity. In this way, the feedback wasn’t useful only for the interacting user, but also for the observer of this situation as a way to empathize with the other.

As another example, last year I dedicated my personal project to breathing, using XeThru’s radar to sense real-time respiration and translate it into light. Again, I was curious to see the effects of augmenting this kind of information while an social encounter took place.

While this encounter was admittedly quite unnatural, what if this kind of augmentation was perfectly normal during daily situations? After all, there are already many wearable products (for example OmSignal) which can unobtrusively measure respiration and send it to the cloud. At the same time, this information could be reflected through different context aware ambient displays — from a networked led lamp to speakers or other actuators embedded into the built environment.

While I was building the prototype I also spent time breathing on my own. I noticed that the way how the technology was designed had a clear impact on my experience. For example, if the visual output was on the other side of the room, if felt much less related with my own breathing, compared to another version where the light would surround me. As another example, if the radar was badly configured, measuring respiration from my upper chest instead of the lower stomach, I tended to exaggerate and breath “badly”, resulting in winding up. For me this showed just how any well-intended technology can, poorly designed, have undesirable consequences.

To close this short reflection, what are the effects of mediating this kind of real-time bodily information into remote places? How could an “awareness of the other person’s existence” shift into a strong “feeling of his or her presence”? (Hypotheses: awareness has to be mutual + the remote person must receive some information of the context where she or he is projected into). Can this kind of depiction be very vivid and “real”? How does it alter our interpretation an image of the other? How about ourselves? I stop here for today, yet these are the kind of questions where I would like to get back later during this spring. 

Notes

[1] With academia I refer mainly to the research field of Human Computer Interaction. What it comes to popular media, think of the current phenomenon around virtual reality headsets such as Oculus rift and Veeso, or science fiction movies from the Lawnmower man to Inception and the Congress more recently.

[2] At least according to Lev Manocitch, whom Ulrik Ekman cites in his Introduction chapter of Throughout. 

[3] Also I recently discovered the project NeurotiQ by Sensoree, brain animating fashion that illuminates and maps brain states with color, and their new-age:y spa assuming that this kind of feedback could be deeply encalming.

[process2017-blog]

Current shape of the matrix

As outlined in the research plan, I begin the research process by mapping a matrix consisting of interlinked 1) technologies, 2) applications 3) scenarios and 4) issues. Work in progress available here.

The main intention of this matrix is to delineate a design space – or “brief” – for the development of ambient media for the communication of non-verbal affective information between remote partners. In other words, what kind of visions are both plausible and interesting from the point of view of their social and psychological implications.

Since it’s impossible to make a thorough mapping (1. It’s not in this scope 2. It’s a subjective opinion) it could be useful to define what kind of selection criteria I will use.

For example, the technical mapping has to be plausible, yet doesn’t need to be precise as the visions are in any case future-oriented and speculative. Furthermore, since the final aim of this project is to come up with interesting stories to fuel discussion, I will orientate towards concepts and ideas which I intuitively believe to have interesting results.

The first “technologies” section consists of a list of sensing capabilities and output media. At this stage of the process I have tentatively divided sensing capabilities into the sections “biosensing”, “facial expressions”, “gesture recognition”, “movement/presence”, “audio”, “manipulation of objects” and “online activity”, with their own sub-categories. The outputs are currently categorized under media such as “ambient sound”, “haptic feedback”, “olfactory” etc.

The second “applications” section is composed of different concepts which harness these technological components for mediating presence. Subcategories include “emotional tracking”, “intentional gestures” and “background awareness / daily activities”. 

In order to get a sense of the material with a glance, I tagged each item with colour codes and stroke patterns. So far I have mostly mapped research papers, yet I will next look into other sources such as artworks. 

The third “scenarios” section will include a list of stories and context related to selected applications. The fourth “issues” section links each of these scenarios with potential questions and implications. 

Nevertheless, it is possible that the content and form of this matrix will be questioned and flipped around during the process...

Ps. The full reference list can be found here.

[process2017-blog]

About haunted machines

“If women do it, it's witchcraft. If black people do it, it's voodoo. If white men do it, it's magic…” - Michel Erler

The issue No. 36 of the Uncube Magazine turned out to be very inspirational for this research project. It takes as a starting point the “Uncanny Valley”, which according to MacDorman et al. (2006) refers to the hypothesis that “human replicas that appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit feelings of eeriness and revulsion among some observers”.

By Smurrayinchester - self-made, based on image by Masahiro Mori and Karl MacDorman Link

In particular, the essay "A Kind of Magic" (p.30 onwards) by Crystal Bennes caught my attention. In it, she discusses the cost of “magic” – a tradeoff between an everyday life with enchanted objects and giving away control over the technology we use. I found it particularly interesting how Bennes proposed to extend the definition of the Uncanny Valley from 'robots that look too much like humans' to smart homes that pretend to be homes.

A few weeks ago at the Aalto Design Factory I discussed with a student who was developing invisible light switches. Why? For beauty? Or just because it's possible and a fun technological challenge? It's more and more difficult to tell which wall or ordinary object is embedded with networked sensors. What do they measure and where does that information go? What are the objects discussing between each other? “That becomes deeply uncanny, because you’re then deeply suspicious of your own home” (Tobias Revell cited in Bennes’ article)

Talking about the relation between magic and technology, an acquaintance of mine recently gave me a tip for checking his professor’s project “Haunted Machines”. In its description section the authors describe the context of the project as follows:

“The continued proliferation of connected devices and the narratives driving them forward has been running parallel to stories of surveillance, hacking and black boxes. While designers and technologists talk about 'magic' and 'enchantment' in regard to these devices, we forget that magic is a form of deception; a sleight of hand. Thinkers, writers, designers and artists are beginning to refer more and more to a new time of hauntings and the supernatural in respect of this new technological climate. Haunted Machines aims to explore these debates through writing, discussion, exhibition and interventions.”

Image from a Project About Breathing which I conducted in 2016

Reading the article “Towards a (Re)Constructed Endosemiotics?” by Jacob Wamberg in the book Throughout echoed the previous with the following paragraph: “The question I raise in conclusion is whether augmented reality can in certain ways be seen as a fulfillment of the utopian desire connected with these magical aspects of religious images [...] This fulfillment would be in line with science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke´s Third Law preduction that ‘[a]ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ (1973)”.

As a sidenote to Haunted Machines, the “library of relevant texts” is a goldmine. I particularly enjoyed reading “Static and noise about bodies and play”. The article’s discussion about the soul (or “ghost”) of the machine and the mind-body dualism for humans brought to my mind a moment a few years ago - during a course in CERN, when one researcher-teacher declared that the only purpose for his body was to transport his brain from one place to another. This brings me to the next topic of “Absent presence” or “Present absence” of which I’ll write about in the next post.

References

MacDorman, K. F., & Ishiguro, H. (2006). The uncanny advantage of using androids in social and cognitive science research. Interaction Studies, 7(3), 297–337. doi:10.1075/is.7.3.03

[process2017-blog]

Home delivery of sensory overload

“I do not know whether a philosopher has ever dreamed of a company engaged in the home delivery of Sensory Reality.” (Paul Valery)

The tradeoff between “calmness” and “control” seems to be one of the recurring topics in ubiquitous computing. As becomes clear from the history of ubicomp and Mark Weiser’s definition of “calm computing”, one of the central motivations behind the need for ambient and polite information technology is the conquest of information- or sensory overload prevalent in information societies. Yet as noted by Kristin Veel in her Throughout chapter, the ability of technology to operate unnoticed lies in the very heart of envisaging the implications of ubiquitous computing.

When stumbling across the papers “The Coming Age of Calm Technology” and “Designing Calm Technology” by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown, I had no idea how influential their ideas had been for the tech community, almost every ubicomp-related article beginning by recounting these historical premises (or citing “Dangling String” by Natalie Jeremijenko as an example of a peripheral information display). Although I might have to do the same work for the thesis, I will here jump directly to my current thoughts.

Although I have been very inspired by these ideas (Vertical Interfaces as an example of a school project) reading the book “Everyware” by Adam Greenfield (2006) among other lectures this fall made me look at the topic from more critical angles: 

If we take as a starting point that 1) technology is not value-free and 2) the more pervasively it is embedded into our lives, the bigger impact it is likely to exercise on our behavior and thinking, then calmness and invisibility might be problematic as it can take away control from people who are (unknowingly) in contact with numerous embedded, connected systems all at once. One notion where I will get back later on is that of “beautiful seams”: Instead of completely seamless interaction where the underlying technology completely invisible, beautiful seams allow users to reach into and configure the systems they encounter.

Besides HCI, the topic of calmness and control is also discussed in art. Veel uses the artwork Sorting Daemon by David Rokeby (2003) as an example for challenging the seamless integration of technology and environment. The system looks out onto the street, panning, tilting and zooming, searching for moving things that might be people. Then the software extracts these characters and re-arranges them based on different characteristics such as skin colour.

According to Veel, the work “[…] points to the sensation that something to which we perhaps ought to be paying attention is glossed over in the aim to reduce complexity and implement ubiquitous computing as smoothly as possible, and it seems to suggest that other complexities are arising in the wake of this reduction.” In Rokeby’s own words, the piece was triggered by his concerns about the increasing use of automated systems for profiling people.

As a final note, I would like to discuss the need of calmness in the first place. As an interesting point, the sheer volume and intensity of information (Times Square as an extreme example) are not the only causes for the sense of overload, which has as much to do with the unfamiliarity of the sensory and cognitive inputs that need to be processed. Reading another chapter of Throughout, “Infinite Availability — about Hypercommunication (and Old Age)” by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht made me wonder about the effects of constant bombing of social information. Like Gumbrecht notes, most of the machine-mediated messages simply replace interactions that used to take place face to face.

While the symbolic value of the message is familiar (ex. a smiley face pointing towards a positive undertone of the message), the medium is relatively new — sound effects and pixel symbols conveyed through a small, faceless portable device. Yet, it’s quite impressive how quickly we seem to appropriate these new kinds of information flows as an almost natural part of everyday interactions. Against this, I would assume that ambient awareness systems won’t take long before they become as familiar as any other communication medium. 

[process2017-blog]

A few words on UbiComp

Writing from the French countryside over Christmas holidays, I’m currently reading the book “Throughout” where leading new media writers discuss the complex and still underexplored topic of “ubiquitous-” or “pervasive” computing. Since I set to explore future scenarios and implications of technology-mediated communication from the point of view of this third wave of computing, I will first attempt to share some thoughts on the phenomenon in a simplified fashion:

Nowadays, computers are mostly seen as finite entities located in a specific place, enclosed in boxes made of plastic and steel. While such machines can indeed get information from the outside world through different inputs such as the keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, mic and camera, most of these interactions are intentional and initiated by human-users for performing specific tasks. The mode for getting information from the computer is through visual and aural means, most often through staring at the screen.

Nevertheless, there is seemingly taking place a techno-cultural shift towards embedding “context aware” computation into our everyday environments. In the introduction chapter of Throughout, Ulrik Ekman describes this new paradigm comprising of “[…]remarkably complex assemblages of […] sensor networks and actuators, digital profiling and behavioral-recognition programs, as well as biometrics and digital identity systems”(p.4). And the whole is vastly more complex than the sum of its parts, not least because many of the applications will consist of stackings and combinations of different systems in unexpected ways and the simultaneous use and effects of multiple computers.

A few weeks ago, while I was preparing for my thesis plan presentation, I thought of more playful metaphors for describing the emerging paradigm:

1) Think of the computer as a living body in the scale of the planet earth. The sensors embedded in billions all around our everyday environments could be thought as the nervous system of this megastructure; the “cloud” (in terms of the Internet of Things) is the brain, receiving information from all different parts of the body. We (humans) are like small ants walking on the surface of this enormous megastructure. It knows where we are, what we do, and even anticipates what we might attempt next.

2) When thinking about the “feeling” [2] of interacting with computers (or simply being-in-the-world) under this new paradigm, I propose the metaphor of pantheism: Instead of representing a definite entity, it–be it god or sensing technology with (nonconscious) cognition–pervades everything from everyday objects, floors, ceilings, building, cities, our bodies, to even nature. Instead of addressing an object, you talk to the room or the space where you are, and it talks back to you. 

Mostly you don’t even realize that it’s listening, and you have no idea how it’s manipulating your environment based on your identity and behaviour. While it’s mostly invisible, sometimes it performs supernatural tricks which might initially feel like magic [1], yet it won’t take long until we take it for granted, as something natural. Automatically opening doors are mundane now, and so could be said in the future about spaces which reflect your current thinking (and generally appear attentively oriented towards us) or ghostly presence of remotely located people, taking over the whole place.

Interestingly, as speculated by Ekman in his chapter, “the closer and more intimate this human-centred computing becomes, in its abstract top down programming and in its concrete bottom-up embodiments, the more it raises the question of the in- or ahuman, the question of our inexistence.” These types of philosophical questions concerning the nature of being human, as well as our experience about it and how it might change, is at the core of what most interests me about ubiquitous computing, specifically in relarion to interpersonal communication.

Yet, as Ekman notes, we are “dealing with quite complex emergent phenomena”, mildly put. “[…] this out-of-the-box physical turn of computing towards integration in a context of live embodiment […] demands the articulation of an incredibly intelligent, intimate and robust knowledge of our life forms and everyday culture.” Yet, drawing from another introduction chapter written by Ulrik Ekman for “Ubiquitous Computing, Complexity and Culture” (2015), “We are perhaps only in the early stages of articulating the issues to be debated, a task made more demanding because cultural practices and forms of life are to a large extent habitual and tacit knowledge, and because the technologies may appear “ubiquitous,” “pervasive,” or “ambient” but most often do so inconspicuously and invisibly.”

Citing Tchakara in the same introduction, “Trillions of smart tags, sensors, smart materials, connected appliances, wearable computing, and body implants are now being unleashed upon the world all at once. It is by no means clear to what question they are an answer — or who is going to look after them, and how.” Hence, like Ekman notes, it is gradually a more pressing concern to figure out how one is to analyze, evaluate, and perhaps contribute actively to these techno-cultural developments. Finally, “[…] the complexity pertaining to the development of ubicomp cultures and their systems necessarily requires and draws upon thoroughly transdisciplinary modes of work and ongoing transdisciplinary exchanges.”

Notes

[1] As a side-note, for an interesting compilation of texts and talks on the “magical” aspect of ubiquitous technology, I recommend the project Haunted Machines by Natalie Kane and Tobias Revell.

[2] I could have replaced “feeling” with “user-experience”, yet the line between “user” and someone attending or influencing a technological system unknowingly is blurring.

References

Ekman, Ulrik. Throughout: art and culture emerging with ubiquitous computing. MIT Press, 2013.

Ekman, Ulrik, et al., eds. Ubiquitous computing, complexity and culture. Routledge, 2015.

[process2017-blog]

Beginning

“Digital media aren’t saving us or ruining us. They aren’t reinventing us. But they are changing the ways we relate to others and ourselves in countless, pervasive ways.” 

I hereby introduce the topic as written in the thesis plan, starting with a quote by Nancy Baym in her book “Personal Connections in the Digital Age”(2015).

A growing share of our daily interaction with friends and family is mediated through different devices and platforms. Today, this mainly refers to verbal and visual communication delimited to our personal computers. Nevertheless, a paradigm shift in information technologies, generally referred as “the third wave of computing”, or “ubiquitous computing”, is well under its way (Ekman & al 2015). Moving from screens to our surrounding environment, networks of embedded computing, sensors and actuators afford new ways for enriching remote communication over distance.

One type of emerging communication media, in this thesis plan referred as “ambient awareness systems” [1], allow mediating subtle emotional expressions and peripheral awareness between people who are not physically co-present. In the context of close, interpersonal relationships, the aim is to convey a stronger sense of “social presence” and “connectedness” (definitions: Rettie, 2013). Broadly defined, ambient awareness systems take advantage of ubiquitous sensor networks for sensing and analyzing socially meaningful non-verbal information, ranging from unconscious body language and biofeedback to affective gestures and peripheral information of mundane everyday activities. This flow of information is then mediated to the meaningful other(s) through a variety of abstract mediums and subtle interfaces integrated into people’s living environments.

This thesis takes as a starting point that the domestication and normalization of this type of communication media could have deep implications on the way how we interact daily with close people in our lives. At the same time, issues to be debated and taken into account in the development of ambient awareness systems is still difficult to envision and articulate, and hence, take into account in the development of these applications. This is partly because ambient awareness media have yet to emerge as a cultural and technical fact.

While the topic has been researched in major universities and research laboratories for two decades (see for example Strong & Gaver, 1996; Weiser & Brown, 1997; Brave & Dahley, 1997; Tsujita et al., 2008; Kadian et al., 2015), the necessary infrastructure is currently taking shape (Ekman et al., 2015; Dourish & Bell, 2011; Greenfield, 2010), startups have begun embracing the topic with products launching on the market (for example “Pillow Talk”, “Veeso”, and “ORBneXt”) and patents have been filed by multinational corporations (for example, Philips Electronics 2012; Immersion Corporation, 2015), the precise form of these developments is still an open question.

Furthermore, within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), the research on ambient awareness media is often technology-driven, focusing on individual prototypes and small-scale user-testings. At the same time, certain implications become evident only in a larger cultural context where the technologies under study have been domesticated and normalized into people’s everyday lives. Put into other words by Dourish & Bell (2014), “Technological problems […] are problems for today, and problems of cultural context are ones that come into play later, once our technological infrastructure rolls out into the world.”

Objectives

My main objectives consist of 1) identifying relevant issues and questions within the emergence of ambient awareness systems, specifically in the context of affective communication in domestic settings, and 2) communicating these insights through engaging mediums targeted towards people beyond the specialized academic discussion to allow for a discourse to both explore and contest these claims. Hence, the outcomes of this research are bound to be contingent, incomplete, and provisional.

Besides these main objectives, I have identified a list of subtasks. The successive data collection and analysis between the subtasks 1 and 2 each inform and focus the other as the iterative process proceeds.

1. Narrowing down the terrain and devising a design brief / constraints for the plausible developments of ambient awareness systems

Which technological developments are relevant for these kind of applications?

What kind of research has been done so far? What kind of concepts, scenarios and issues have been detected?

What are the opinions of experts from different, related fields?

2. Conceptualizing concrete applications (“diegetic prototypes”) and use-scenarios in a future context

What kind of scenarios exemplify salient issues in ambient communication systems in daily interpersonal interactions?

Which narrative mediums are the most appropriate for communicating these issues within the context of this thesis work?

As the final output, along with the documentation of the whole process, I’m planning to present a tentative set of issues or questions on the sociocultural implications of the domestication of ambient awareness media (along with explanations), and corresponding narrative visualizations. Overall, through this constructive design research I aim to prototype material for a discursive space and furthermore, make a humble contribution to the technocultural developments towards more human-centered (design) applications.

Methods

The methods chosen for this research plan are motivated by two conditions: On the one hand, communication technology derives meaning from human-computer interaction in specific social contexts. According to the social shaping and domestication perspectives, “even if we knew all the factors that influence us at the start (an impossible feat), we would not be able to precisely predict the social interactions, formations, and changes that result from their ongoing interplay as people use technologies in specific situations (Baym 2015).

In HCI and other related fields, a typical way to study implications of communication technologies is through qualitative studies on how people use and experience them, preferably in their everyday life context over an extended period of time. Furthermore, when the question is about social and psychological implications of larger cultural developments (instead of studying an individual prototype), the technologies first need to be domesticated and normalized in society at large. This is problematic under the second condition where ambient awareness media has yet to emerge as a cultural and technical fact and the products are still conceptual or fictional to most people.

With the aim to address both of these issues, I’m planning to explore the topic through Design Fiction and other similar approaches using narrative elements to envision and explain possible futures for design. Design Fiction contributes to the field of speculative design methodologies and has much in common with critical design, discursive design and design- and cultural probes (Hales, 2013). As studied by Lindley & Coulton (2015), since the last 10 years, “design fiction has received considerable interest from a range disciplines most notably HCI which increasingly draws upon generative methods and creative practices.”

From the perspective of a designer, the most familiar aspect of Design Fiction lies in the conceptualization of ideas into concrete products and services. Yet, “diegetic prototypes” — as termed in Design Fiction –”only exist in the fictional world […] but they exist as fully functioning objects in that world” (Kirby, 2009). As explained by Wong & al (2016) “The focus is not just creating a single speculative artifact, but embedding that artifact in a broader world, story, or fictional reality”. Hence, diegetic prototypes can be observed embedded in stories of individual people who interact with and through them in particular sociocultural contexts. This furthermore supports the aim of exploring and contesting these visions.

Nevertheless, while as a designer I am trained in creating concepts based on a given design brief — consisting of a set of problems, possibilities and constraints delimiting the design space — and even re-formulating this brief in the first place, it is out of my expertise to make informed, hypothetical extrapolations of 1) people’s actual behavior in the presence of diegetic prototypes in different scenarios and 2) the social- and psychological implications of the use and domestication of these technologies. Hence, I am planning to draw methods from Constructivist Grounded Theory for generating diverse views from experts from different fields (such as media theory and social psychology of ICT) and for rendering a conceptual understanding from the qualitative data. The data gathering process in Constructivist Grounded Theory proceeds iteratively through qualitative interviews and analysis, bound to be inductive, comparative and interpretive (Charmaz & Belgrave, 2002).

In practice, I am planning to begin my research by mapping a matrix consisting of the following categories: 1. relevant existing-, emerging- and future technologies (from the point of view of ambient awareness systems), 2. example applications, 3. different use-scenarios and contexts, and 4. possible implications.

I will base the initial round of mapping on: a. previous academic research on calm technology and ambient media concentrating on the peripheral, non-verbal aspects of interpersonal communication and b. Environmental scanning of general developments and discussions within Ubiquitous Computing

As a next step, I am planning to brainstorm new content through creative combinations and extrapolations of existing content within the matrix. Based on my intuition, I will choose several applications and scenarios which I find interesting or relevant from the point of view of their social / psychological / cultural implications and materialize them through different visual media.

This material will serve as a starting point for the first round of qualitative interviews with experts from different fields. Based on the results, I will modify, fill-in and specify the matrix, elaborating on the most interesting issues and generating new sets of visual (or otherwise non-abstract) material. With new rounds of interviews, I will iteratively continue and correct this process until I have identified a group of recurring issues and grounded my understanding about their nature. I will also recurrently test these hypotheses with the interviewees.

As a final step, I plan to create elaborate communication material to draw attention to these issues. The final forms will be defined during the process, yet example media could consists of short films with design props, an immersive installation with a story, prototypes as part of a performance, or virtual campaigns in the form of interactive websites.

Appendix

[1] Ambient awareness system

Communication-media for close, interpersonal relationships taking advantage of ubiquitous sensor- and computing networks for sensing, analyzing and ‘ambiently’ mediating socially meaningful non-verbal cues, such as peripheral awareness and subtle emotional expressions between people and their remotely located living environments.

The social information can range from unconscious body language and biofeedback to affective gestures and peripheral awareness of mundane everyday activities. This flow of information is mediated to the other location(s) to the meaningful other(s) through a variety of abstract mediums and subtle interfaces integrated into people’s homes.

References

Baym, Nancy K. Personal connections in the digital age. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.

Brave and Dahley, “inTouch: a medium for haptic interpersonal communication”,in CHI’97 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems: looking to the future, p. 364, ACM, 1997.

Charmaz, Kathy, and Liska Belgrave. “Qualitative interviewing and grounded theory analysis.” The SAGE handbook of interview research: The complexity of the craft 2 (2002): 2002.

Davis, Kadian, et al. “Social Hue: A subtle awareness system for connecting the elderly and their caregivers.” Pervasive Computing and Communication Workshops (PerCom Workshops), 2015 IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 2015.

Dourish, Paul, and Genevieve Bell. Divining a digital future: Mess and mythology in ubiquitous computing. MIT Press, 2011.

Ekman, Ulrik, et al., eds. Ubiquitous computing, complexity and culture. Routledge, 2015.

Gergen, Kenneth J. “14 The challenge of absent presence.” Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance (2002): 227.

Greenfield, Adam. Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing. New Riders, 2010.

Hales, Derek. “Design fictions an introduction and provisional taxonomy.” Digital Creativity 24.1 (2013): 1–10.

Immersion Corporation,. System for Haptically Representing Sensor Input. Patent US 9116546 B2. 25 Aug. 2015. Print.

Kirby, David. “The future is now: Diegetic prototypes and the role of popular films in generating real-world technological development.” Social Studies of Science (2009).

Lindley, Joseph, and Paul Coulton. “Back to the future: 10 years of design fiction.” Proceedings of the 2015 British HCI Conference. ACM, 2015.

“ORBneXt — Your World at a Glance. ORBneXt — Your World at a Glance. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.

Philips Electronics,. “Ambient Telephone Communication System, a Movement Member, Method, and Computer Readable Medium Therefor”. Patent US 20120033795 A1. 12 Feb. 2012. Print.

“Pillow Talk.” Little Riot. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.

Rettie, Ruth. “Connectedness, awareness and social presence.” (2003).

Strong, Rob, and Bill Gaver. “Feather, scent and shaker: supporting simple intimacy.” Proceedings of CSCW. Vol. 96. 1996.

Tsujita, Hitomi, Koji Tsukada, and Itiro Siio. “SyncDecor: communication appliances for couples separated by distance.” Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies, 2008. UBICOMM’08. The Second International Conference on. IEEE, 2008.

“Veeso: SDK for Face Tracking in Virtual Reality.” Indiegogo. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.

Weiser, Mark, and John Seely Brown. “The coming age of calm technology.” Beyond calculation. Springer New York, 1997. 75–85.

Wong, Richmond Y., and Deirdre K. Mulligan. “When a Product Is Still Fictional: Anticipating and Speculating Futures through Concept Videos.” Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems. ACM, 2016.