Hybrid Media Systems _ Art Center MFA Blog

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admin — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 22:21:39 +0000

Tools ‹ Hybrid Media Systems — WordPress.

5 Steps : Thesis Review

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:16:12 +0000

The Hardcore critique was an opportunity to get some great feedback on my experiments and process, along with an opportunity to gauge what needs to be completed and flushed out before graduation. There were many informative aspects to take away from the review and here are the productive 5.

1.) Prototype! Prototype! Prototype!

The ideas of combining print and screen need to manifest themselves in a way that it is possible to see how a user will engage in such process. Speaking about the ideas is all good an well but unless you can show anyone and engage the opportunity space in a meaningful way it’s just a lot of words.

2.) Focused Scenario

Classroom and product scenario video needs refinement, focusing, and shortening that drives at the ideas that will be shown in the prototype. The prototype comes first and need to complement the opportunity space set up through the video

3.) A New title

Hybrid Media Systems is generic and the title should get at the premise of the experimentation right away. Marginalia seems to hit at the production space so now it is just what the by line and how the supporting language starts to complete itself.

4.) Premise contextualization

I need to get to the idea of print and screen being linked quicker. The premise shouldn’t linger too long on the refuting of physical books but rather dilineate the advantages of combining the affordances of each. Prototype should have examples where actual marginalia was collected but also show how the new form of reading and writing is used, and possible misused. The interface of the prototype should capitalize on the engagement with a classroom and be part of the conversation.

5.) Narrow and Deep

The context and scenario of it existing for a classroom and an educational experience is a rich space but it needs to explored deeper through posing the possibility to teachers and be less about something that can be generalized for all print material.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

Refuting the screen

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:35:58 +0000

Paper Value

A Norwegian researcher, Anne Mangen, wrote an interesting paper in the Journal of Research in Reading, asserting that screen reading and page reading are radically different. “The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions – clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or scrolling with keys or on touch pads – take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book, or the mobile phone,’’ Mangen writes.

Her conclusion: “Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a shallower, less focused way.’’

http://www.boston.com/ae/media/articles/2009/06/19/paper_vs_computer_screen/

The materiality of paper takes on a extended meaning due to its experience. The knowledge that is contained with in a book is not singularly wrapped up in the words on the page. From psychology class in college at Colorado State University, I remember my teacher telling us that our brains formulate knowledge and recall through repeating similar experiences under which that knowledge was learned. For example if you are juiced up on coffee while you study for a test you should be juiced up on coffee during the test because the brain associates the experience of the learning along with the recall of that information. Similarly you might be able to recall a story in a book more vividly when the same circumstances are repeated. The engagement of content influences our learning and subsequent recall. Therefore the reading of a book is learned through the experience of the pages. Knowledge that is engaged in the physicality of pages is then linked with that experience. Pages then become essential to formulation of knowledge within a book.

Media critic William Powers wrote a defense of physical bound literature in his essay, “Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal,’’ Mr. Paper – he not dead, Powers wrote: “There are cognitive, cultural, and social dimensions to the human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-It note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve, or store information.’’

Paper will never die, Powers concluded: “It becomes a still point, an anchor for the consciousness. It’s a trick the digital medium hasn’t mastered – not yet.’’

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3562724/Hamlets-Blackberry-Why-Paper-Is-Eternal

The digital medium has been attempting to replace the piece of paper and it has been around the corner in terms of technology since technology began. Now what if the digital medium and the physical medium where equal? When paper and computer work together seamlessly then paper takes on an added functionality with the computer.

The digital textbook?

With students doing so much of their reading assignments through the screen instead of on book or paper formats, it’s important for educators to determine how the shift is altering their habits and learning. The research is just beginning, but it’s getting deeper, an article in the Journal of Research in Reading (2008, pp. 404-419) by Anne Mangen, “Hypertext fiction reading: haptics and immersion.” Mangen notes the growing sub-field of screen reading studies, but finds that the “intangibility and volatility of the digital text” remain under-examined. She focuses first, then, on the material nature of digital and non-digital reading experiences. “Unlike print texts,” she writes, “digital texts are ontologically intangible and detached from the physical and mechanical dimension of their material support, namely, their computer or e-book (or other devices, such as the PDA, the iPod or the mobile phone” (405).

This is important, she argues, because “materiality matters.” The reading experience includes manual activities and haptic perceptions (what the skin and muscles and joints register), and so as activities and perceptions of that kind are changed from one kind of reading experience to another because of the object, the reading experience, too, will change.

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Screen-ReadingPrint-Re/8551/

So if materiality matters in the delivery of content especially reading material, then it would be arguable that to remove the materiality of paper from the reading experience would fundamentally alter that exchange. Screen engagement has become a reality in modern times but the advantages of the screen have forced its usability right next to the book forcing them to go head to head. I have chosen to regard these experience as different and explore a way to bridge the difference between experiences. As use of screen based devices increases, the need for physical interaction with objects like books will become essential in the recombination of content delivery. I believe users should not have to exchange one experience for the other in order to engage in the content the way they would like. Many things in this world have multiple experiences and with the linking physical and digital is opens up a strategy and platform for making printed content and digital content work together.

John Locke said, “reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” Thinking can be greatly enhanced through digital means of networking so making paper and computer work together will greatly enhance the opportunity to make reading our again.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

Reading Facts

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:57:03 +0000

Seeing the letters is just the start of the reading process. Although our eyes are focused on the letters, we learn to ignore them. Instead, we perceive whole words, chunks of meaning. Once we become proficient at reading, the precise shape of the letters — not to mention the arbitrariness of the spelling — doesn’t even matter, which is why we read word, WORD, and WoRd the same way.
Until now most assumed that when we read both eyes look at the same letter of a word concurrently. But it was found that our eyes look at different letters in the same word and then combine the different images through a process known as fusion. We were able to clearly show that we experience a single, very clear and crisp visual representation due to the merging of the two different images from each eye.
Language tends to be stored in the brain to be processed in audio format, so besides reading the text we automatically convert it to speech in our own heads. After that the process of making sense takes place.
Studies have shown that when a word is checked against the storehouse of words in the brain – whether it is a written word or a word-sound – only the main part of the word is checked first, and then the ending is processed separately. For example, ‘sing’, ‘singing’ and ‘singer’ would all be checked against the base word ‘sing’.
Once we recognized the printed words we need to make sense out of them. Understanding how meaning arises from those words is of the most challenging tasks in cognitive sciences.
More on making sense and meanings can be found here and here.
There is an ongoing debate whether the new kind of reading experience provided by internet is beneficial or not. Some interesting articles are worth exploring: Is Google making us stupid and How is Google making us smarter. It would be interesting to incorporate the last scientific findings about how or brain reads in order to draw new and more accurate conclusions.

http://spacecollective.org/MarianaSoffer/5595/Reading-process

The “is google making us stupid” article starts to articulate the difference between “hyper attention” (the attention that occurs through the web) and “deep attention” which is obtained through large novels. http://media08.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/my-article-on-hyper-and-deep-attention/

“Deep Attention” is characterized by the ability to concentrate on a single object for long periods of time. While “Hyper Attention” is the ability to focus on multiple tasks switching between each with relative ease and speed. Each style is considered a cognitive mode and is fostered and afforded by the media which gave rise to its birth. “Deep attention” can be attributed to the book while “Hyper Attention” is equated with the internet. These cognitive modes are looked at as being diabolically opposed similarly to the discussion that a rises around print vs screen techonologies. However what if these cognitive modes could be gaped? How could hyper attention assist deep attention and vice versa? What would this media start to look like?

I believe that cognitive modes of attention should be versale like that of leonardo device as a renessance man. The educational and pedigogical stance should embrace the two parts of congnition and build services and tools that enable the ability and affordance of each. When knowledge is not valued over its ability to be fast or slow what does is become?

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods

Reading Future

admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:41:28 +0000

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/09/technolog/tablet_ebooks_media.fortune/index.htm

The Fortune Article ” the Future of Reading” poses some relevant questions?

Question 1: Will anyone be willing to pay for content delivered to a tablet when they can get information for free on the web?

Question 2: But aren’t tablets just a better way to browse the web?

Question 3: Reading? Reading is dead.

Question 4: How will tablet-based ads work better than the web?

Question 5: Can traditional publishing companies reorganize and move fast enough to embrace and serve new platforms?

these questions all poise the options as if the book and the screen are binary. Print media is looked as a being obsolete due to the advancement of screen based tablets. Granted the pervasive nature of digitized content will have a large impact on printed materials. This effect has already stated to take its toll when it comes to newspaper media. How ever like Red heads in America, their kind is not going to dissappear. Book and printed material might start to diminish but then is begs the question just as the question poised above, what is a book when it can exist on a screen?

This question requires going back to the nuanced history of printed material in bound and sequenced form and taking note of its ability to become ubiquitous and why? The screen and the book will never be the same thing as one is fundamentally material based ie pages and ink while the other is silicon driven ie the screen. Each of these forms is a media delivery device and technology. (Although many might not consider books a technology when compared to a computer) Each media format has its own place, use factors, acceptance, penetration into society, and distribution. Each is equally unique to its time and space and each is locked in a continuum that links the two in weave of consumerism, knowledge, and social contextuality. The screen experience would not be capable without the book, and the book would not be producible in contemporary terms with out a computer.

I have asked my self through out this process, why do we consider physical books and digital book and being so different. Why when you buy a physical book do you not receive the digital part also? It seems to me that if you could link the physical with the digital it would allow each of there forms strenghts and affordances to work together rather then in opposition. The simplicity of sequential pages bound together has a unique experience that can only be mimicked by the screen and the social and networking capabilities of a screen require the dynamics of that different system. What are the implications of making print and screen work together, well hopefully it will lead to more productive use of materials and a platform for a larger connection of information directed at specific context.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

One to One Education Relationship

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:22:52 +0000

Isaac Asimov in 1988 spoke with Bill Moyer and starts to discuss the importance of learning and the power the internet and networked computers can have on the ability to impact learning. At 1:23 sec of the conversation video from youtube.com.

“through this machine, for the first time we can have a one to one relationship between information source and information consumer.” – Issac Asimov

This ability opens up the curious mind to explore its own path and suggests that the separation between knowledge and consumption is null. Learning becomes less about the hoops that are jumped through and more about the enjoying of discovering truths on an individual achievement. The machine (computer) and its networking ability has fundamentally challenged the pedagogical structure. Therefore is education really just they ability to engage enticement? a place where you learn to be curious? Or can it continue to establish the carrot and stick mentality of achievement via grades?

If the computer opens up a one to one relationship, what is the responsibility of the objects and services that provide that communication space? the idea that questions lead not to answers but a path of inquiry. A location space to which an individual can challenge a system and explore the possibilities. Is the level of conversation then the metric for which to judge success? The ability to broadcast and engage inquiry and learning beyond the carrot and stick look at my grades, my merits, my achievements but rather look at my connections, my influence, my conversations. Knowledge is contained in groups, societies, and social structures and ways at which to engage communication about knowledge could become the new metric for advancement, innovation or achievement.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

Evolution

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:39:23 +0000

Computation seems to be in a second stage of evolution. As we move into a world where computation power is compact and millions of people are carrying super computers in there pockets, the computer has started to remove us from behind a desk. The potential of mobile computing has started to engage the user and the the physical world in exciting possiblities. If the purpose of computation at our fingertips is to allow us connection to the information cloud, then what is the form that that connection should take? Mark Weiser famouly quoted in his essay : The Computer For the 21st Century

“the most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”

The interesting part is technologies start to change everyday life. Cell phones are no longer just phones but their ability to be that mode of communication has allowed the access of other interventions and introductions of computers into the hand and away from behind a desk.

A computer can’t be a piece of paper but that doesn’t mean a computer can incorporate paper. If books and print material could be used in the same fashion with their simplicity of interaction ie the turning of pages but have the advantage of a social counterpart, then computing would have the ability to become indistinguishable in everyday use by making the use of the book fit with the use of the computer.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

he most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.

Old Life (Fiction Writing Exercise)

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:07:51 +0000

It has been 5 years now, since the fire that took everything from me and I wonder if a day will pass in which I don’t long for the past. Some days are better than others but days like today where the rain spits on my concrete block of a home leave me wanting my old life back. But “those days are gone” like the last thing the FBI officer said to me after I was informed I am being put into Protective Housing. (HA! They really meant Isolated Housing) FBI Special Investigator Milo Kilowski made it very clear to me that the fire was a decisive message and that the firebomb that destroyed my former life had been linked to 3000 others all at the same time. Who would do such a thing? Its been 5 years and they still haven’t figured it out, and frankly I gave up trying to understand too. So I have been sequestered in this freedom jail ever since because I happened to be the only one of the 3000 who wasn’t burned to a crisp. Lucky? On days like today I think not.
My wall talks to me about my schedule for the day and the smell of the automated coffee dispenser singes my nose hairs but the rain has clouded my ambitions even how meager they might have been. When I was smuggled here five years ago the over polished, glossy brochure Officer Kilowski handed me about this place made it sound impressive.
“A place where technology and living are linked.”
Milo was a very candid stocky man who rarely minced his words. When I gave him a puzzled look upon the examination of the brochure he said
“What did you expect us to put you in a Mansion?”
which was followed up with,
“You will be safe here, I give you my word.”
Protective Housing works on the premise of eminent danger. You accept blindly because there is the illusion that at any moment you could be killed and a person in that circumstance rarely denies the help being offered. But 5 years in I don’t feel so scared and I mostly just agonize over the ridiculous shit box that government has provided. I really just want my stuff back my wife, my dog, my books, my records, my paintings, my drawings, my paintbrushes, my tools, my house. I don’t even know if any thing survived the fire. Upon asking Kilowski just says,
“All items have been logged as evidence and evidence will be
returned to the rightful owner upon completion of the
investigation.”
He sounds like such a robot. I’m surprised he doesn’t list the rule ID number along with his canned answer. At first I pressed for answers but now I just go day to day attempting to forget my memories.
They say memories fade with time, but some memories you never want to forget. My wife had such beautiful handwriting the kind that has those cute little curly cues at the end of some words and she made tiny little circles over her i’s and j’s. It was such a reflection of her patience and style. She use to leave me such beautiful hand written notes for groceries or tasks around the house. On valentines day she would write on the mirror with red lipstick. I loved reading her books because I could get into her head from the margin. The Incident took all that from me except for the last book we read together. As a technology blogger, in my former life, I was always being inundated with waves of technology most of it crap but I usually only was given one to review. However this young rep at Hybrid Plus Pens gave me two pens and said,
“Try it with your wife. it will save all your notes to the cloud for
sharing just get a book that has the hybrid logo”
The drizzle is like salt on a paper cut today. I request the wall to bring up the Hybrid Plus Portal, stats automatically flash about my frequency to the site and ads are directed to my temperament flash in the corners. Lately mostly antidepressants show up and have been for the past 5 years when I think about it. The wall now glows with the last remnants of my wife’s writing. Her questions and sarcasm about my insistence she use the pen. She even hassled me in her notes poking fun at my techy job and rubbing in that this book was her choice. I sit at the edge of my bed and move through the pages like I have hundreds of time before. I close my eyes and flop back on the bed hoping that is this might all be a horrible twisted dream. The door speaks up and announces to my concrete block,
“FBI Special Investigator – is approaching.”
I open my eyes right as he knocks on the door.
I open the door and Kilowski is standing holding a small tattered cardboard box with a tag that says evidence in bright yellow and black tape.
“Evidence? “ I say,
“Does this mean the investigation is over?”
Kilowski gets a slight smile out of the corner of his over stoic face and hands me the box. He turns around and upon exit says,
“Go back to your old life and find someone who you can use that
pen with!”
I just stand in the doorway overlooking the other concrete blocks and get rained on as the premise of my “old life” rings in my ears.

Old_life.pdf

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

The Book Metaphor : A Screen Can’t Be a Book

admin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 08:24:21 +0000

With the release of Apple’s iPad (joke with standing) there was the buzz of technological potential all around the interwebs. Apple has the potential to make game changing devices and with a track record of the iPod, iPhone, and iMac it is hard not to argue with their ability to produce and create a mobs of loyal and dedicated fans. The iPad may not be the replacement to the laptop which many in the Nerd-o-sphere hoped it would and a nice review has been posted by Phil Van Allen (http://www.philvanallen.com/news/its-not-a-laptop-what-people-are-missing-about-the-ipad/)

The iPad is a platform system one not to unfamilar to the iPhone, the device becomes a conduit for the apps to which it runs. This is the success model that has produced revolution in mobile communication. As for the types of apps that the iPad will start to inherit, I believe that some will greatly enhance the user and engage at a much differnt experience level that a laptop ever could.

On the other hand, the iPad is still a screen a back lit screen with multitouch software based apps it is not a book, or a news paper, or a manual. Now matter how you cut or change the app it is still a pixel. Not to say that it is not a very effective and useful screen, no but to see or try and utalize it as if it were not a screen is a vast mistake.

Take the book store example that is highlighted in the images with in this post. The metaphor of a books and its physical attributes of paper are being replicated with in the experience of the screen interface. The book application starts to engage the user as if with in that particular app they are interacting with paper; however, this has missed the opportunity to engage the affordance of the screen. A screen is not a book and a book is not a screen. The ironic thing is that technologies as advanced as the iPad are trying to be a book instead of being what they really are, a screen.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

Hybrid Plus: Literature Ecologies and Computation

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:03:22 +0000

Knowledge is embodied in people gathered in communities and networks. The road to knowledge is via people, conversations, connections and relationships. Knowledge surfaces through dialog, all knowledge is socially mediated and access to knowledge is by connecting to people that know or know who to contact.
Denham Grey

Print material including books, magazines, periodicals, newspapers, and comics have all come under the threat of being relegated to the trash due to networked screen technologies. Technologies such as the Kindle, Nook, future tablet PC’s and smart phones have greatly diminished the market share of print material. As technologies move forward and interaction with print material becomes lessened, the question should be how did this happen? it should be why has print material not adapted and become a link between ink and screen?

Reading is a uniquely a singular interaction, but knowledge and comprehension are communal. Hybrid Plus will be a design platform and series of prototypes that incorporate the communal aspects of reflection, knowledge, and comprehension into the experience of the individual act of reading. The prototypes will engage the social interaction and ecology of book clubs, study clubs, and educational groups. Hybrid Plus will give interaction to the physical pages of books and build shared spaces within the margins for reflection, passive communication, and collective comprehension. When the margins of books and literature are shared what does the margin become? a communication space? A passive location to challenge a social exchange? A reflection space for many? A space to engage the content deeper with in a group? The prototypes will engage both built and speculative outcomes. Physicality is an essential experience to books and literature and the prototyping of conductive inks and networked pages builds upon this affordance .

The project rather then replacing the physical book with intangible data, incorporates the technological advances of networked pages, shared margin spaces, and physical interaction into the experience of the printed artifact as a way to explore the space between printed material and the screen.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook