Hybrid Media Systems _ Art Center MFA Blog

The Cronotope is a working prototype evolved from a methodology of thinking and design research which builds upon the book experience and ecology of book culture. 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.

Reading is uniquely a singular interaction but knowledge and comprehension are communal. The Cronotope is a system and design platform that incorporates the communal aspects of reflection, knowledge, and comprehension into the experience of the individual act of reading. As a system, the Cronotope will engage the social interaction and ecology of book clubs, study clubs, and educational groups. Through giving interaction to the physical pages of a book and building shared spaces for reflection, the engagement of comprehension becomes a shared event.  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 Cronotope is an outcome of seeing print material replaced and disregarded by its technological brethren.  Print material including books, magazines, periodicals, newspapers, and comics have all come under the treat 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?  The Cronotope is a system that uses prototyped conductive inks along with networking capabilities to explore and engage the experience of literature and its physicality as essential to its media type.

The Cronotope is named from the concept developed by Russian philologist and literary philosopher M.M. Bakhtin who used the term to designate the spatio-temporal matrix, which governs the base condition of all narratives and other linguistic acts. The term itself can be literally translated as “time-space.” The term is developed in Bakhtin’s essay published in English as “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel.”

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

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

Immaterials: the ghost in the field from timo on Vimeo.

Touch is a research project that investigates Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that enables connections between mobile phones and physical things. We are developing applications and services that enable people to interact with everyday objects and situations through their mobile devices. http://www.nearfield.org

As invisible technologies including WiFi, RFid, Satellite Communications, Cellular Communication, radar, sonar, IR, UVA, UVB, etc infiltrate consumer markets, questions about the physical understanding and representation of these fields has designer, and consumers worried about their power. Currently with in cellular communication, the connection bar has been a stand in for the the quality of connection a user will receive on that device. The indication of service bars is an abstract representation of the potential invisible field for that device. The abstract representation does not take into account bandwidth, number or callers with in the area or amount of traffic a particular for this case a cell tower is handling. I may be so bold to say the my cell phone calls have been dropped on occasion due to traffic not potential connection.

The issue of field representation takes on a different role when individual consumer devices are communicating independent of their service providers. The implementation of RFid technologies has many consumers, and technology producers skeptical of its use and abuse.  RFid takes invisible field communications from the macro world of cell towers and nation wide coverage to the micro of near field communication (NFC) which is a couple of inches to a couple feet from a reader. The fear vetted by many consumers is a level of control and protection. When a user can just walk through a door and be charged for items with out interaction of purpose the implementation of intent has many saying RFid will be the new treat to consumer fraud and identity theft.

Desigers at nearfield.org and many of the experiments I am engaging in within my own work is attempting to challenge and educate consumers, designer, producers, and industries that the technologies can make really engaging experiences but only when there is a intrinsic understanding of operation space. Educate consumers and teach them that communication can be done through proximity and habits and interactions will follow that will engage there interactions with purchasing connection and understands in trans-formative ways.

http://berglondon.com/blog/2009/10/12/the-ghost-in-the-field/

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

The thesis direction that I am exploring builds on the ideas of The New Ecology of Things (http://www.newecologyofthings.net/). The methodology is attempting to pull from a number of different influences that over the next year will shape and inform the ideas that are being explored.

3 Main bounding areas have immerged

1.) Tangible Systems : the notion that products, artifacts, areas of attachment to media and content are enhanced by the physicality and tactility of the item.

2. ) Narrative / Storytelling : Design has a rich background in conveying messages in narrative form. As interaction and multimedia becomes involved narrative mediums, the ability of an artist / designer to tell a story about the content becomes more relevant in a dynamic world of branding and systems design.

3.) Circuits : The ability to build and make functioning technologies that push at the ideas of interaction with tangible, physical connections to data, content, and design.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

Multimedia: media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun (a medium with multiple content forms) or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which only use traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactive content forms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia

Multimedia has become a popularized notion for aspect of what designers make. The nomenclature for our craft exists in the many rather then the specific. A designer who applies their craft to a variety of mediums may it be print and animation, photography and interaction, etc etc. could be considered a multimedia designer. The ability for a designer to call themselves multimedia was a distinguishing aspect at one time, this distinction has now become less relevant in a world of ubiquitous computing and homogenized tools for design and media making. A designers ability to use the tools, not the it is not important, becomes background chatter in the face of design thinking, methodology, and creative problem solving. Multimedia has then been wrapped up in design and the distinction of the new role of designer is left open. The question is: what is a designer when everyone knows how to use Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Quark, AfterEffects, Final Cut, etc?

Ubiquitous computing and the rise of the personal computer has dropped the level of entry for design so low that anyone who can buy a computer and software can say they  are designers.  The creation of the distention of a multimedia designer was to emphasize the ability to perform on multiple platforms of making. The new designer has to be able to move beyond the aspects of designs current roles and place their thinking and process in new and innovative aspects. Designer as curator?, Designer as futurist?, Designer as hybrid-maker? Designer as Creative? Designer as Systems thinker? maybe there isn’t a distinction yet but if multimedia designers continue to see their value as the tools they can access and use they will relegate their role to the spit and polish of industry rather then the innovator of new forms of media and design.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

Screen printing has been an Art Form and Industry process for many years. Screen printing is extremely useful for artifacts of print nature from posters to t-shirts to business cards. Screen printing as an art form has been used from as far back as Chinese textiles, the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD).

The process of using a screen to pull ink puts the maker in control of the printed output rather then a machine in form of a digital printer. The physical nature of applying ink has given arts and designers inspiration and a style that can exist outside newly conventional means of digital printing or offset lithography.

The physical affordance of screen printing allows the maker to thinking differently about the process of production. Screen printing has more steps in the production run then just asking a machine to print but also includes a aura of craft, value and specialty that is missing in the digital output. The production process for screen printing invites the idea of multiplicity. Where a digital printer can make just one,  screen printing just one would be entirely to much set up and work.

Hybrid Media Systems is an idea that takes the craft and unique nature of printmaking and blends it with technology to give the artifact an experience aspect, mediated by the dynamic affordance of screen based media and enhanced by the uniqueness of artifacts.

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook

Hybrid Media Systems

A methodology of researching, making, and experimenting that drives at the concept of media that is neither a screen or a printed artifact but rather a combination of the two. Technology seems to take the role of replacing older media ie the kindle for the book, but what if thinking, design, and prototyping concentrated more on the affordance of both screen and cloud computation and the affordance of print artifacts? Could a poster be more engaging through computation? Can embedding functionality and technology allow the artifact to take on an extended experience beyond the visual and into the interactive?

The notion that a designer is a visual problem solver is not hard to dispute, but what if being a media designer is about asking questions and not just solving specific problems? The role is switched and the designer becomes the question and problem maker and not just the solver. The media designer is then responsible for answering their own questions. The ownership of the ideas and the possible solutions are then responsible to the designer. I see the media designer’s role as a methodology of making and thinking that drives not singularly at a problem but more at understanding the problem. Through asking questions around, in, and through the existing problem, the media designer utilizes the skills of experimentation, prototyping and analysis to generate new understanding and insight into otherwise unexplored areas with in design, culture, and business. Questions are posed outward while solutions are inward. A media designer should be able to do both with out getting dizzy from all the round and round. The ability to research and parse out specific questions allows for media designers to challenge the larger questions. Christopher Reid Becker

check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook