Tattoos of Ships & Tattoos of Tears from Chris R Becker on Vimeo.
An Interactive poster using conductive ink with a five color print (edition of 12) serigraphed artifact. Functionality of poster is activated through the user touching the conductive ink switches on the poster which both activate a LED light and a canon sound. Image inspired by a CocoRosie song.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Conductive Marginalia from Chris R Becker on Vimeo.
The video prototype concept utilizes the conductive inks I have been experimenting with to generate interactive switches that are designed with in the margins of the narrative. The conductive switches illicit the context of the footnote for the narrative. The switch both lights up an embedded LED in the page and also triggers a screen / projection / smart phone message that could be accessed simultaneously through out the narrative. The content is a short story from David Foster Wallace’s Interviews with Hideous Men : Suicide as a Sort of Present. David Foster Wallace is an author the has utilized the footnote context annotation through out his body of work especially Infinite Jest
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Engaging users with an interaction is a difficult process. I am attempting to engage users in natural mapped interactions through iconography the associats a particular action of touch. Natural mapping is a term for the proper and natural arrangements for the relations between controls and their movements to the outcome from such action into the world. Like that of a door knob or a book.The real function of natural mappings is to reduce the need for any information from a user’s memory to perform a task. This term is widely used in the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI) and interactive design discussed in Donald Norman’s book : The design of Everyday Things.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Through out my experimentation with conductive inks and screen printing, I have started to try and engage the user in interaction with the tangible printed artifact. Paper and ephemeral material is inherently tangible and physical you can bend it, tear it, crinkle it, touch it plus it has a texture a quality and a materiality very unique to its form. Unique to the conductive inks is there ability to engage a user. The current experiment is a test to see if certain form structures are inherently engage-able. With out any signage does a user know to touch the paper and interact with the strips. This experiment utilizes the nature the higher contact equals a brighter light.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Now the conductive inks that I have made work, I have started to dive into breaking the perception of what a circuit should be and should look like. With the addition of user interaction, turning a light on becomes more interesting and engaging. The earlier experiments are mostly a process of seeing and thinking about paper differently, this is a experiment into giving paper an added interaction through the conductive ink and the simple switches. The form of the conductive lines are skewing the efficiency ideas associated with circuit board design, and the interaction allows the user to piece together the shapes of both the form and of the shape the lights make.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Now that I have gotten an ink that can conduct an current over a relatively decient distance, I have started to play with the notion of what can a circuit look like. Can it be anything you want it to be as long as there is a positive and negative in and out. Can the form start to speak about it functionality, can the forms be unique and artistic rather than function based. Most circuitry disappears and becomes invisible. To most who use electronics and understanding of the work, skill, craft, and planning that has gone into a majority of the things they operate on a daily basis is pretty minimal. Electronics work and we rarely pay attention until they stop working. An interest in involving conductive ink is to challenge the expectation and visibility of otherwise invisible things. The mixed media piece of conductive ink, copper tape on paper is an experiment into changing and evaluating the expectations of electronic conductivity and use.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
I finally have had some success with screen printing conductive ink or my own concoction. The image is a picture of a mixed media experiment with screen printed graphite based conductive ink and copper tape for power and light source. The form of the line printed in the conductive ink is the shape of a book spine based RFid. The RFid market is one of the largest outcomes of printed circuitry but the implications of “big brother” tools leaves the novice and consumer out of the loop. My experimentation into conductive inks has not been rooted in invention but rather in the exploration space and thinking that I have now started to give paper. The question of networked, self aware and linked paper artifacts could be a possibility through RFid or other circuitry based functionality. My ability to get a screen printed line to be reactive to electricity has helped my pursuit into thinking about paper in a new and unique ways. The ability to make paper an interface is now a distinct possibility.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
The experimentation process with making my own conductive ink has been a process of thinking about what paper + ink could be when given conductive attributes? The power of giving ink conductivity to me is starting to be interesting when I start to use in as a mode of communicating its function. The ephemeral nature of paper and printed object start to change and become more interesting when digital affordances of awareness, networking, communication and delivery system come into play.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
As I research and explore the ideas of conductive circuitry that could start to engage print media as a platform for interactive based computational experiences, I have started to explore the ideas of interactivity and affordance.
Interaction is based on the assumption that a user understands the applied action to accomplish a task. Something as simple as turning a light on can be made incredible complex by not hinting at learned and understood experiences. In Donald Norman’s book – “the design of everyday things” http://www.jnd.org/ he talks at length about the importance of visible interfaces and interaction parts know as natural mapping which comes from proper and natural arrangements for the relations between controls and their movements to the outcome from such action into the world. The real function of natural mapping is to reduce the need for any information from a user’s memory to perform a task. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_mapping) Essentially when a user participates in a task that action is the out come of a plethora of learned, cultural and socio-economic process that have been ingrained into the users understanding. The idea of natural mapping techniques allow things to be perceived as being intuitive. Objects that need no prior instruction. With contemporary electronics the cultural and social economic inundation of computation has started to become learned and performed by cultures at an extremely high rate and at younger and younger ages. The importance of this technology revolution is that artifacts like the cell phone etc have started to be perceived as naturally mapped artifacts with interactions not that unfamiliar to a user than the interaction of a door or a tea kettle.
The question is are the interactions that we engage with our computational electronics the right interactions? Can we engage naturally mapped ideas from culture to engage new and innovative products that rather than force the user learn a new system, are engaged to the perceived natural mapped system?
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
As I continue to do experiments with giving paper and artifacts computational affordances in a world of networked computation, a number of questions arise from the formal, and informal making pursuits.
1.) Can electronics and circuitry be as ephemeral as paper?
2.) What is the possibility of printed material when it is used as an interaction interface for content that extends the ideas contained with in the print material.
3.) Artifacts contain memories of events for attendees ie a t-shirt or poster from a music concert. What if a attendee of that concert instead of buying just a piece of print material purchased an artifact that embodied and contained the music from the experience.
4.) When computational affordances are added to paper, ie RFid, what does that paper artifact become? does the paper engage that user in a more meaningful experience?
5. ) When meaning is attached to an object the owner of that object makes mental connections to memories and experiences, what are ways computational affordance can assist in the memory retention.
6.) When ubi-comp illuminates the need for the possession of physical data storage, ie every piece of data is no longer on our physical persons, what does data representation look like when it is no longer a CD, DVD, thumbdrive, or portable drive? Data could be represented by paper artifacts again as the access to data is only a access point no the actual data.
7.) Can paper become the new screen through access points of computation?
8.) Will printed material have more of an experience when it is physically needed to interact with its screen counterpart?
9.) Can embedding RFid’s in paper engage the user to interface with the artifact differently?
10.) Can experiences be embodied in artifacts through technology?
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook