In-eye display active contact lens interface

LED array within a contact lens signals the coming of in-eye display.  Developed by engineers at the University of Washington this technology has enormous potential for reshaping our experience of real and virtual space.

"Constructing a focused image on the surface of cornea is definitely challenging, nobody has tried it or demonstrated it before," Parviz told Electronics Weekly. "We are looking into two ways of doing this: integrated a micro lens with each pixel, or using small ultra-low power lasers for each pixel."

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2008/01/30/43036/contact-lens-led-array-aims-for-in-eye-display.htm

Ian Pearson, (Futurologist) forecasted such a 'device' in 2002.

http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.pearson/web/future/contactlens.htm

The Network

Rather than designing the network perhaps our project assumes a networked life layered over the city’s physical life.  Our protocological approach plugs in to that network at strategic or tactical points with a view to exploring alternative uses to public space both physical and virtual.

 

This allows us to acknowledge that the ‘network’ is not absolutely controlled (by government or corporation) but is ‘distributed’.  Parts of it will be controlled but most of the network wont be or at least not by a singular entity.  Control points may occur at the device end and provider end but even at these points the ‘net’ works most successfully, even for business, when access is free.

 

Our project reveals the complexity of the ‘public realm’.  Experience is not limited to the Gehl postcard.

 

Do we need to reconsider the device or level of technology expected in 2030 to help shape this new understanding of how physical and communal space might operate?

 

Eg – The device shrinks to a contact lens.  Thoughts trigger searches and are displayed in front of our eyes.  Marketers hack access to our visual space to promote their services, shops, events.  Searching on line becomes a day-dream.

 

Protocols develop in public space to try to prevent people playing a game as they walk through a public space eg. Martin Place – ‘Gaming Police’ – to monitor appropriate levels of soial behaviour….

 

Scenarios could be individual narratives that hint at the everyday negotiation between the real and virtual space.

 

Could look at social scenario, work scenario, entertainment scenario, homeless scenario.

Design Meeting notes 22.04.08

What is the ‘network’?

 What are the activities that the ‘network’ facilitates?

 Discussed the project taking on the following forms

 

1. System Diagram

 

2. Virtual City – entered via a web-site

 

3. The intersection of the virtual city with the real city – how the virtual affects the real city of the 2030 plan

 

Note:

What are the protocols managing the events?

How does the event / scenario relate to the objectives of the design studio?

 

Protocol Layers

 

Application Layer

 Social

Transport Layer         

Connection  

Internet Layer       

Movement

Physical Layer

Material

 

Initial ideas for what the system might encompass:

 

1. Testing system – test outcomes in the virtual city via protocols and different data input sets

 

2. Political system – who controls ‘the system’ who owns it, operates it, how do you access it, who is left out of it?

 

3. Active system – scenario 1 – Protocol City

How the public realm can be reprogrammed given protocol management – protocols adapt to different data sets to give many possible results for singular spaces.

 

4. Active system – scenario 2 – Democratic City

Citizens vote on issues affecting their environment – perhaps more than voting – they suggest – they design?

 

5. Active System – scenario 3 – Sustainable City

How the system deals with the issues of sustainability behaviour. What sort of sustainable system does it promote?

 

6. Active System – scenario 4 – Social city

City of virtual connections – system to facilitate real space physical interactions

Project Overview : Login 2030

Key Concepts

 

When Clover Moore introduced the Sustainable Sydney vision last week at the City Talk event she stated that the Sydney of the future would be ‘a city for people not for machines’.

 

While this statement no doubt refered primarily to the binary of pedestrians vs vehicles it none-the-less establishes an uneasy vision about technology and the future city.  Again and again the focus of ‘Sustainable Sydney’ is on the physical.  Physical spaces for people, physical connections to and around the city, even the ‘urban villages’ strategy is about defining a place in which a ‘community spirit’ will be physically manifested. A space where a resident’s needs will be totally catered for.  People will be able to live, work, be entertained and socialise in the defined space of their ‘village’. But does this really account for the way in which we have grown accustomed to living?  Is our sense of connection and community also now forged in virtual space?

 

Sydney 2030 will not just be a physical place connected by roadways, boulevardes and parks.  It will be overlaid with other networks, digital networks, enabling other connectons and defined by other sets of protocols.  Our project could look at the language of networks and how that effects our experiences and perceptions of the spaces in which we live.

 

Presentation form

Perhaps the presentation of our ‘protocological city’ is in the form of a web-site that navigates (pans) across the city highlighting activation points that zoom in to deliver a ‘narrative’ of life in 2030.  The objective is to place physical sydney in the realm of the digital life of the city and it’s citizens. Some zooms could be close up and abstract, others could be newsbulletin style, some could be webcam views or CCTV views, some could be over-run by a glitch.  Some could be funny, some serious, some scary, some sad, some absurd.

 

The platform could take the form of the detached style of the google earth interface that in 2030 is imagined overlaid by more personal information Eg google earth meets youtube / facebook. Given the co-option of military technologies as devices for social interaction, this is quite plausible.

 

A supporting diagram showing the protocols managing the digitial life of the city could be exhibited alongside the web-site.  Thereby relating the experience of digitally surfing the city to a network managed by points of control and hopefully glitch.

 

This approach to our project would allow us to focus on the structure (or diagram) -  the series of ‘protocols’ -  immediately and leave room for the creation of scenarios or stories that slot into this infrastructure, as a second phase to the design.

 

 

 

This approach also allows us to link issues of place or site with experience and narrative.  It allows us to deal with a proposition of the future that is realised at varying  scales too.  The diagram/network acts on a visionary scale, the narratives could be explored on a community scale (news-story) down to an intimate scale (story of an individual experience).

Urban Projection - Project Development

Our team has worked closely together from the beginning of the semester. Many of the assignments and activities of the group have been workshopped within the group and undertaken together. Through this dialogue, the various activities, readings and personal research, I have developed the following interests.

Wi-fi voids - Access to free wi-fi across the Sydney CBD is currently being developed by the State Government. The potential for this technology to radically re-shape our habits and reorganise work and leisure is significant. It is likely that long before 2030 we will be able to achieve permanent connection all the time within the public realm. Will there be a counter desire to move into connection voids? To escape? Does this offer the potential to design ‘wi-fi free’ environments. (A)voids? Blocking the wi-fi signal can be achieved via a technological disruption of the signal or via material intervention. A UK based military contractor is currently developing a ‘wallpaper’ to block wi-fi signals. This new material is based on the same technology developed to allow the ‘stealth’ bomber’s skin to evade radar detection.

The Glitch - By week 4 our team had begun to investigate the idea of the ‘intervention’ taking the form of a digital game. This opened up a lot of ideas within the group and has been a driving concept. One particular area of interest for me was the idea of the ‘glitch’. A disruption of the game that could be the result of a crossing of the real and the virtual or a slip in the system. Like the ‘a-voids’ the glitch was a way to articulate a form of escape from the rules. This idea was further enriched by the specific use of the term within gaming. Players that seek to take advantage of an error in a program are named by others as ‘glitchers’. Sometimes a glitcher will use the glitch to win, other times they use it to explore beyond the framework, to create new narratives. While Glitches are generally understood to be mistakes there is some speculation that they may be actually programmed into the game to give advanced users an alternative space in which to play.

The Game as mediator – While initial discussion of the game focused on arcade game style scenarios I have explored the idea that the game might instead be the ‘mediator’ or ‘device’ to explore a virtual scenario of the future within the present.

The game then becomes a platform for speculation. How will the citizens of the future use technology? Navigate it, adapt it and corrupt it? How will they negotiate a world that is at once more remotely connected and physically ‘planned’ and idealised? The video game is a virtual world but so perhaps is Sydney of the 2030 plan. Does Sustainable Sydney 2030 sustain a city or an image? What is the imagined real and what is the game?

Repro City – All indications are that the future city will be more virtually connected; that technology will pervade every aspect of our daily lives. While for some this may signal a fear about being ‘controlled’ through a vast array of information sets it may in fact lead to the opposite. Technology will still be used to regulate society, to increase efficiency, to sell stuff, to research the market. But it will equally be used to socially connect, to play, to live a fantasy, to save time to waste time. It may enable us to manage the sustainability of the planet, to move away from objects to digital design and prevent the production of surplus and waste. It may enable everyday citizens to mobilise opinion (quickly) and thereby strengthen the democratic process. What will happen when we have the ability to reprogram overnight rather than rebuild?

Town Hall Virtual / Physical Space Analysis

While the physical fabric of the city remains largely unchanged from 10 years ago our behaviour in physical space has become radically changed by advances in technology, in particular the mobile phone. We now often occupy both a physical and virtual space as we move around the city. With free wi-fi about to be unrolled in the public realm, virtual connection will further define our experiences within the city.

We made an observation of physical and virtual connection of pedestrians crossing at the Town Hall intersection.

One set of lights - Town Hall
Saturday lunch-time

85 people approx at lights
28 people remotely connected:
13 connected to music
9 people talking on mobile
6 people texting on mobile

4 people interviewed:
1 talking to sister in Balmain
1 talking to friend in Bondi
1 talking to friend in Surry Hills
1 talking to retail store in Melbourne

Town Hall Physical Intervention

As a way of testing the public's perception of being 'under surviellence' we devised a physical intervention to be played out in the busy Town Hall precinct.

Members of the team, armoured with digital film cameras positioned themselves on the four corners of the Town Hall intersection underneath the location of CCTV cameras. We recorded simultaneously onto the space, capturing each other filming and 'covering' any action that occurred in the space. Would people be confronted? Would they become aware that they are already under surveillence?