Driving setup

We took a 21.2W 156:1 geared DC motor which we’ve had on our shelf for a while and added a T5 timing pulley and belt combination.
One of our aims was to be able to control motor speed and direction. Luckily we already had a PWM motor regulator module which helped to solve variable speed problem.

To be in control of the direction in which the camera moves, we decided to use a ‘DPDT’(ON-OFF-ON) switch and two LEDs indicating direction in which the dolly is moving

PCB Etching

The ferric chloride etching process proved to be quite effective for making a  simple circuit board. After printing out the design, we ironed the transfer toner onto a copper plated board. Then with a fifteen minute ferric chloride bath and a tiny bit of careful drilling, we were left with this:

And here’s how it looks, soldered and boxed up:

We hope to share some more footage soon and get some nice applications out of it.

(Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.)

El Ultimo Grito’s workshop programme Pilots is an undertaking at the Stanley Pickering Gallery that explores new forms of design education. The imperative for this discussion is the changing role of education in an open-data society. If you can learn anything on youtube, what is the role of the educator? Though it’s harder to learn a critical practice with embedded social and system thinking on youtube, it is unclear how long this will remain true. Identifying what institutions and educators roles are now and in the future is key to retaining the viability of a formal education. People are approaching this in variety of ways, a course in Australia recently structured lessons around googleable vs non googleable questions.

It’s a question we explored with Matt last year, and led to us creating a film for the design department at Goldsmiths exploring the value of the University education they offer.

As design becomes less production-focused and increasingly embedded in policy formation and social change, El Ultimo Grito believe design education models will be applicable as new models for education as a whole. You only need to see the quiet, design led revolution happening at gov.uk to know design’s role in society is changing.

Given the increasingly co-designed, agile nature of design practice, what can education learn from industry? Moreover, if we are now regularly seeing flexible, user-lead design processes being put into practice, have we reflected that back on our educational structures?

A defining moment in my university education was a realisation that the teaching I was receiving was as exploratory as my attempts to make sense of it. Our tutors would often acknowledge that lessons were based on a hunch or an experiment. I liked knowing I was both the experiment and the scientist, learning and helping shape my learning. In many ways they are just actions in the same cycle; explaining things helps you understand the gaps in your knowledge. It’s not the only feedback loop inherent in a good design education but I believe it’s the most important. The first time I tried teaching was the moment I realised what I had learned.

Russell talks about the changing relationships with users in his work at GDS:

“But it’s not an agency-type relationship where someone distant and important has to ‘approve’ everything. This is mostly because our chief responsibility is to our users – they approve our decisions by using or not using the services we offer them. Or by complaining about them, which they sometimes do. Also, because you just can’t do agile with a traditional client-approval methodology.”

If all stakeholders in education saw the course as an on-going investigation, with everyone equally responsible, it would increase the sense of ownership for everyone. In primary education the Harris Foundation takes students from around London Boroughs and asks them to design their own education, they call it a step change in student engagement, motivation and learning. The Kunskapsskolan in Sweden also looks at a student lead, deconstructed curriculum and is now the second most popular education provider. The Dirty Art Department at The Sandburg institute looks at an open course model in further education, asking students to define their own ambition and the course. There are plenty of other good examples in this report from Innovation Unit.

Even in the creative sector, it’s surprising how often students feel they are being taught at. As designers, if we are to question how organisations behave, and evangelise a responsive, open process, we need to make sure we’ve checked how we’re engaging our students and teachers in the learning process.

Our session at Pilots was lead by Daniel Charny and we modelled three approaches based around time, place and resources. The project is on going and there’s a really good write up here on the intentions:

EEG

Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain.

More complicated EEGs are widely used in scientific research. Meanwhile simpler research grade product versions are available for anybody, and with a little bit of tinkering, hobbyists are able to repurpose these brain wave readers. The mind controlled helicopter is perhaps one of the more popular hack projects for EEG devices. It’s a great way to familiarise yourself with processes involved and the devices functionality.
 

Potential Uses

We are interested in what experientially rewarding uses there could be for this device and what contexts would benefit from this input? We used a device before for an EEG Controlled Seance at 2011 Winterwell Halloween and perhaps the best known use of an EEG controller is ‘The Ascent’ by Yehuda Duenyas.

We’ve been sharing the helicopter at the Hack the Barbican sessions this weekend, and are keen to use it in other ways, so get in touch if you have something in mind.
 

Instructions

As mentioned before there was a lot information about how to hack into the ‘ syma s107g’ model mini helicopter, however we had the 3 channel ‘9808’ so could not completely rely on the existing libraries, so we mashed a few things together to make this work.

You Will Need:

Hardware:

1x Neurosky, MindWave EEG.

1x 9808 minihelicopter with IR controller (usually comes with helicopter)

1x Arduino Board

1x Bread Board

1x MPC4131 5K Digital Potentiometer

Jump wires

Wire It Up

Unscrew the Helicopter controller casing, the potentiometer on the left controls gas unsolder it, you will be left with two wires, connect them to digital potentiometer pins as shown in the picture.

Set up your EEG headset install software and make sure it is communicating well with USB dongle. Upload the code to arduino board, have your EEG headset on, turn on helicopter, turn on controller start processing. Note: (If helicopter does not reacting you might have to restart it by pluging out red wire from 5V plugging it to GND and back to 5V)
 

Upload the code

Arduino library

And slightly tweaked ‘Arduino’ digital pot library by Tom Igoe:

/*

Digital Pot Control

This example controls an Analog Devices AD5206 digital potentiometer.
The AD5206 has 6 potentiometer channels. Each channel’s pins are labeled
A – connect this to voltage
W – this is the pot’s wiper, which changes when you set it
B – connect this to ground.

The AD5206 is SPI-compatible,and to command it, you send two bytes,
one with the channel number (0 – 5) and one with the resistance value for the
channel (0 – 255).

The circuit:
* All A pins of AD5206 connected to +5V
* All B pins of AD5206 connected to ground
* An LED and a 220-ohm resisor in series connected from each W pin to ground
* CS – to digital pin 10 (SS pin)
* SDI – to digital pin 11 (MOSI pin)
* CLK – to digital pin 13 (SCK pin)

created 10 Aug 2010
by Tom Igoe

Thanks to Heather Dewey-Hagborg for the original tutorial, 2005

*/

// inslude the SPI library:
#include

// set pin 10 as the slave select for the digital pot:
const int slaveSelectPin = 10;

float mylevel=0;
int inbyte;

void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
// set the slaveSelectPin as an output:
pinMode (slaveSelectPin, OUTPUT);

// initialize SPI:
SPI.begin();

}

void loop() {

{ if (Serial.available()>0)
inbyte = Serial.read();

}

// go through the six channels of the digital pot:
for (int channel = 0; channel < 6; channel++) {

//adjust inbyte or map values for individual callibration

if (inbyte < 50){ mylevel = map(inbyte, 0, 50, 20, 32); } else if (inbyte >= 50) {
mylevel = map(inbyte, 50, 100, 34, 36);
}
//mylevel=inbyte;
digitalPotWrite(channel, mylevel);

delay(10);
}

}

int digitalPotWrite(int address, int value) {
// take the SS pin low to select the chip:
digitalWrite(slaveSelectPin,LOW);
// send in the address and value via SPI:
SPI.transfer(address);
SPI.transfer(value);
// take the SS pin high to de-select the chip:
digitalWrite(slaveSelectPin,HIGH);
}

Processing library

We had to tweak a library by Andreas Borg little to our needs:

import netscape.javascript.*;

/*
The NeuroSky MindWave device did not ship with any proper Java bindings.
Jorge C. S. Cardoso has release a processing library for the MindSet device
but that communicates over the serial port. NeuroSky has since release a connector
application that talks JSON over a normal socket.

Using the same API as the previous library this talks directly to the ThinkGear
connector.

Info on this library

http://crea.tion.to/processing/thinkgear-java-socket

Info on ThinkGear

http://developer.neurosky.com/

Info on Cardoso’s API

http://jorgecardoso.eu/processing/MindSetProcessing/

Have fun and get some peace of mind!

xx
Andreas Borg
Jun, 2011
borg@elevated.to
*/

import processing.serial.*;
Serial port;
import neurosky.*;
import org.json.*;
ThinkGearSocket neuroSocket;
int attention=0;
int meditation=0;
PFont font;
void setup() {
size(600,600);
port = new Serial(this, “COM6″, 9600);
ThinkGearSocket neuroSocket = new ThinkGearSocket(this);
try {
neuroSocket.start();
}
catch (ConnectException e) {
println(“Is ThinkGear running??”);
}
smooth();
noFill();
font = createFont(“Verdana”,12);
textFont(font);

}

void draw() {
background(0,0,0,50);
fill(0, 0,0, 255);
noStroke();
rect(0,0,120,80);

fill(0, 0,0, 10);
noStroke();
rect(0,0,width,height);
fill(0, 116, 168);
stroke(0, 116, 168);
text(“Attention: “+attention, 10, 30);
noFill();
ellipse(width/2,height/2,attention*3,attention*3);

//fill(209, 24, 117, 100);
//noFill();
//text(“Meditation: “+meditation, 10, 50);
//stroke(209, 24, 117, 100);
//noFill();
//ellipse(width/2,height/2,meditation*3,meditation*3);
}

void poorSignalEvent(int sig) {
println(“SignalEvent “+sig);
}

public void attentionEvent(int attentionLevel) {
println(“Attention Level: ” + attentionLevel);
attention = attentionLevel;
port.write(attentionLevel);
}

void meditationEvent(int meditationLevel) {
println(“Meditation Level: ” + meditationLevel);
meditation = meditationLevel;
//port.write(meditationLevel);
}

void blinkEvent(int blinkStrength) {

println(“blinkStrength: ” + blinkStrength);
}

public void eegEvent(int delta, int theta, int low_alpha, int high_alpha, int low_beta, int high_beta, int low_gamma, int mid_gamma) {
println(“delta Level: ” + delta);
println(“theta Level: ” + theta);
println(“low_alpha Level: ” + low_alpha);
println(“high_alpha Level: ” + high_alpha);
println(“low_beta Level: ” + low_beta);
println(“high_beta Level: ” + high_beta);
println(“low_gamma Level: ” + low_gamma);
println(“mid_gamma Level: ” + mid_gamma);
}

void rawEvent(int[] raw) {
//println(“rawEvent Level: ” + raw);
}

void stop() {
neuroSocket.stop();
super.stop();
}

At Boring conference this year, Roo Reynolds spoke about collecting things. Among the curiosities one project particularly stood out, Peter Fletcher’s Sneeze Diary, ostensibly a record of every time he sneezes, but as he explains, it’s more than that. My interest centred on a couple of things.

Impartial Record

The sneeze diary creates a random, almost completely impartial record of a daily life. It scoops the mundane, the exceptional and the frustrating up into the same timeline to be reflected on side by side. I did some work on this with the watch camera a few months ago exploring non-partisan interventions that help understand the impact of all experiences, be they strong or weak, positive or negative. Typically we’re only good at capturing the strong positive experiences, it’s hard to critique such a skewed record.

The religious associations with sneezes gives them a resonance the camera doesn’t have, whilst being self-generated seems to makes it less of an imposition. As a caution, I wonder how long it takes before it begins to feel like a voluntary action, a reaction to boredom. In the same vein Peter has ways of managing his sneezes when it’s not convenient, say when he is on the toilet or away from his notebook.

Memento Mori

It’s also a momento mori. Forcing reflection by interjecting into your routine, lifting you from the moment and up into the larger narrative of your life. It asks you to remember both the moment and the journey, like stars on an ocean voyage. As Peter says:

This act of counting, and documenting, not only acts to highlight, intensify and enhance the experiences that accompany a sneeze, but also the events that fall between the sneezes, giving me a more profound understanding, even than I had before, of the simple joy in the passing of time

It’s a beautiful piece of design. Peter talks about how over time, it starts to seem unnatural when he sees someone sneeze and not make a note, and that’s the final proof. It’s a habit changing intervention, that reaches beyond the moment you sneeze and out into an exploration and reflection on what it’s like to be you. It’s an enhancing behaviour.

Once I had been counting sneezes for a short time, I became disturbed when I saw someone sneeze, and then not look closely at their watch or mobile phone and take out and write something illegible in a notebook. Witnessing people sneeze and then not record it has come to feel unsettling and wrong, as if they are losing the sneeze, letting it go to waste. Does this mean I am enhancing my life by counting my sneezes?

My own sneeze diary is an inelegant system, I just make a new evernote note for each sneeze. I have thoroughly enjoyed doing it and can’t imagine ever stopping. I love having this parallel, awkward record of my existence, that captures me next to radiators or at the kitchen sink as often as it finds me doing something memorable in the traditional sense.

As a side note, with evernote you get heaps of meta data, which is a point worth raising. Is adding extra meta data more loaded than an idea this elegant deserves? For the sake of this record I’ve added the date, but suspect it perhaps detracts. This may be the only place I don’t agreed with Peter though, the rest is poetry.

Sneeze Diary: #1-31

---

NOVEMBER

#1 / 25th Double. Central line, just out of Boring. Pizza for dinner?

#2 / 28th Hereford Arms, Gloucester Road. Friend through to the finals of the Game Lab.

#3 / 30th Cold morning at the studio. Working on the advent calendar.

#4 / 30th Just had a peice of chewing gum. Selling my iPhone on the forum.

DECEMBER

#5 / 3rd Double. Exactly midnight, editing Playable Cities document to send to everyone. Bit of a cold.

#6 / 3rd Part cough. Watching David Attenborough in Madagascar, laughing about dating an egg.

#7 / 18th 3 in quick succession. Making Saturday coffee, empty day stretching out before me.

#8 / 24th Double. Walking down stairs past Christmas stockings. Dry warmth and green/grey carpet of my parents house.

JANUARY

#9 / 2nd Double. At home, putting washing on the radiator. Festive hangover, no strong emotion.

#10 / 10th Part cough double, chewing gum induced. Laptop into bag, drink with friend cancelled. Free evening.

#11 / 19th Single. At home, morning before Playable City award announcement. Went to the mirror to watch myself sneeze.

#12 / 19th Delayed double. Making coffee, discussing the guy who thought the whole household was unemployed.

#13 / 22nd Big double, cathartic. Leaving work to do tax return at home.

#14 / 24th Single. Holding a full cup of tea, required some balance. Packing bag for training at Leyton Orient ground.

FEBRUARY

#15 / 2nd Nasal double, directed at carpet. Drinking an Erdinger, editing detective interview.

#16 / 5th Double, chesty. Lying on my side, 6.30am wake up for filming at BBR.

#17 / 4th Double, throaty. Night before going to India. Closing laptop, heading home.

#18 / 5th Rapid double. Packing for India, thinking about linen shirts.

#19 / 5th Single, just taken off out of Heathrow. Using the inflight seat to seat messaging service.

#20 / 11th Double, in Afgan airspace. Tired, watched The Help, nearly cried.

#21 / 11th Single, over Eastern Europe. Watching Brazil.

#22 / 11th Cough-like sneeze, single. Heathrow airspace, the City and the City.

#23 / 12th Single, muffled by a developing cold. Writing Mind film questions, thinking about new world wines.

#24 / 12th Single. Realising the event is paid.

#25 / 13th Single, Ill. Checking the map of Africa.

#26 / 25th Single, cycling. Fake Nike trainers and a sunset. 6-0 at football.

#27 / 26th Single, expecting a second. You’re so smart and I can’t wait to see you

#28 / 27th One sneeze, kicked out of pub. Drunk, Cheese.

#29 / 28th Single. Bacon sandwich and horror films.

MARCH

#30 / 3rd Single. Waiting for the 78, about to buy a kilo of sausages.

#31 / 5th Double. First sunny day in March, thinking beyond lunch.

#32 / 5th Three part single. Beer on the stoop, and a medicinal airwave

Siren Diary

We extended the idea for our recent trip to Unbox in Dehli, to make a micro version over the four days of festival. We called it the siren diary, and an alarm went off at intervals through out the four days. It was fairly unsuccessful as people were so busy, so we changed to become the sirens ourselves using a video camera. We hoped to start conversations about how people reflect and build on experiences, how we manage the passing of time and what it takes to shake up a routine. Here are some of the responses to the question, “what are you thinking about?”

Perhaps the nicest thing we heard was a girl who for every term throughout her 4 years of college used a different perfume. She saw it as a way of separating and remembering the stages in her life. It’s another beautiful intervention, giving episodes a specific smell and acknowledging them as descrete periods, strung together to form a whole. It makes standing at the dresser applying perfume an act of understanding, a smile at times passing.

Recently we’ve talked a lot about how memory and place relate, in part following on from our thoughts on Memory, identity and the network. The discussion also formed a starting point for our Playable City submission. We have been exploring ways to let people create a new history of the city, to record and share the stories they have lived and are living.

One inspiration was Austerlitz, Seabald’s excellent novel where the titular protagonist unravels his forgotten past through travel, searching for his identity by crossing the globe as if it was his brain, examining the cities of crumbling synapse. It paints an idea of our environment, the city, as a Wiki about how we got to be the way we are, where we can walk the streets and be reminded of the ingredients.

James Bridle draws the network as the 5th dimension, that of memory:

“The network is not a shared consciousness, but it is a shared memory (and a shared experience if it makes sense to say that our experiences are just memories)… It is a recording device. It is a recording angel, but a curiously passive one. “

This passivity is important, more than ever there is an imperative to be agent in how we remember. What do we give and what do we get back? The network defies time too, at last years Serpentine Memory Marathon Douglas Copeland talked about how eras have been flattened in our networked age, platforms like spotify don’t care about when.

“Our lives have lost their narrative threads. The internet has bent us to it’s will quicker than any other technology….all eras co-exist at once.” 

The collective memory has become as available as our own, the function of memory on identity is being separated and tested. We rely on the network to tell us what we are like. This Is My Jam Odyssey refers to a years personal listening as an epic journey of exploration, and it is. The network knows we want, perhaps need, to be reminded of what we’re like. Bookcases aren’t about storage, but a granular record of what we’re made of, and this is a continuation.

I’ve referenced Tom Armitage’s Ghostcar before and it goes someway to answering the question of how we geolocate and revist memories in a meaningful way. It’s built on FourSquare, the most notable locational service and a very digital tool in a physical, messy reality. The beauty of ghostcar is it closes the loop, asks you to actually be there. Tom Loois’  Blank Ways is an app that shows the places you haven’t been, what Matt Ward describes as the spaces of mental calm, the unused storage, it’s a poetic highlighting of how memory and location are interwoven.

The memory structures of a city are a journey of surprise, we don’t always know the recalled experiences that will jump from a bus stop or broken sign. At it’s simplest, the network requires us to know what we want to remember. Facebook reminds us of holidays and parties, twitter of our sharable thoughts (it’s well worth keeping a tweets I didn’t send.doc as a personal record). We don’t visit physical spaces to journey backwards so often, but if we did, could we equally describe a return to childhood haunts as an ‘epic journey of exploration’? On a recent trip to my Grandparents soon to be sold house, I was surprised by the number of memories awaiting me, one in a steep stair case, another in a half dug pond. The image of it all being bulldozed and lost forever suddenly seemed a much more personal violation, a loss of data. Our experiences are intricately linked with place, but we haven’t reconciled locations temporality with our new networked realities.

So it’s from that space, between the networked collation of experience, and the stronger sensory reactions evoked using location that we approached Hello Lamp Post. Documenting and sharing these spacial memories as they change, before they change. Tracing them onto the network. The infrastructure of the smart city provides the skeleton of a low tech network that we hope will allow us to explore that.

We’re also really grateful to the judges for their comments, some of which are below.

Imogen Heap said: ‘I love this for its whispers on the street, guardians in dark corners, humanising our cities’ appendages whose eyes and ears now have a voice. Vessels for an ever evolving conversation, connecting us together. They were there all along!’

Tom Uglow said: ‘Hello Lamp Post! stood out with a potential for both art and play using existing urban furniture. It points to a future made up of the physical objects already around us, the ‘internet of things’, and the underlying complexity is made simple and easy for people by just using SMS for this project. Poetry and technology combine to create subtle and playful reflections of the world we live in. It filled me with a childish delight.”

Claire Doherty says: “We were enchanted by this proposal and particularly loved the way it challenged the prevalence of mass-entertainment and spectacle, revealing an invisible ‘soft city’ – the exchanges and incidents that create a city’s social fabric. It’s rare to find a proposal which combines those intimate exchanges with the humour and playfulness of Hello Lamp Post!”

Clare Reddington, Judging Panel Chair says, “We were really excited by the applications we received and by the comments and questions from audiences about the short-listed entries.  The judges had a difficult decision to make but have selected an unusual and innovative project, which responds perfectly to the theme and seems very apt for Bristol. We will certainly have some challenges to make sure the project reaches as many people as possible, but am sure people will respond with curiosity and warmth and I am very much looking forward to waking up some street furniture this summer.”

We’ll keep you updated as the project develops, and look forward to developing the ideas and building the project. Thanks for all the support during the shortlisting process.

The other intervention type, however, is a little bit trickier and much less common. These are transformations, or augmentations – finding constant, passive, sustainable ways of being. How do you squeeze more life out of everyday living? We’ve identified three broad categories of transformation that would allow the collection of more experience value: sensory augmentation, memory augmentation and attitudinal re-evaluation.

1. Sensory Augmentation

Sensory Augmentation is ‘improving’ the way we interpret the world, which could be done in many ways:

Augmenting our existing senses

We could, theoretically, take our existing senses and improve them with the following abilities:

• Perceiving beyond our current range, e.g. our vision does not include infra-red or ultra-violet light; our hearing capacity is restricted to a narrow band of frequencies)
• Detecting things from greater distances (e.g. sharpness of vision, smelling blood in the water that originates from far away)
• Distinguishing subtle differences between similar sensory inputs (e.g. tasting different varieties of grape in wines, or being able to sing pitch-perfectly)
• Isolating a particular element amongst broad and varied sources (e.g. picking out a particular voice in a bar)
• Processing input more quickly (e.g. seeing movement at a faster “frame-rate”, as many birds can)
• Discerning subtle rates of change (in temperature, light, speed)
• Observing in a broader directional field (e.g. having greater peripheral vision)

Here’s part of a larger Mezzmer info-graphic doing the rounds. It illustrates how awesomely badass the mantis shrimp’s vision is, relative to ours:

Senses seen in other Animals, not analogous to human senses

With the aid of developing tech, we might be able to equip ourselves with entirely new senses, inspired by other organisms in nature, such as:

• echo-location, such as that used by bats, or dolphins (granted, some people have mastered echo-location too)
• chemical detection via a vomeronasal organ, like in snakes
• electroreception, as seen in sharks
• magnetoception, as seen in birds

Data-centric Augmentation:

Contextual data could aid our perception and navigation of the social, human-constructed world:

• universal translators and other aids for communication
• diagrammatic vision – abstract visualisation of intangible things e.g. showing the electric field around an object, or the presence of radiation
• annotated vision – providing ancillary data about things seen

Non-naturally occuring senses – including the fantastical

• “x-ray” vision – seeing ‘through’ solid things
• thermography – perceiving temperature (edit: some snakes have a crude form of this)
• tele-sensation – tactile sensation from a distance, perhaps through an avatar/ slave-sensor
• telepathy – non-verbal/ non-physical communication

Gregory McRoberts used an Arduino Lilypad, ultrasonic and infrared sensors to augment his partially-sighted eye to provide distance and temperature data

But… Would Sense Augmentation Really Increase Experience Value?

We’re postulating on the fly, to be honest. It makes sense that if sensory capacity was enhanced, one would get more from life, but we don’t really have any evidence to back this up. So perhaps we should consider it an opportunity for discourse. There are after all couple of considerations…

The first consideration is feasibility. Can we improve our capacity for greater sensation? Perhaps, even with the greatest bionic and genetic development we couldn’t enhance our senses beyond a certain limiting factor. Even if we could, it seems our minds can only process a finite amount of sensory stimulation at once.

The second consideration is: should we seek to augment our senses? They are, after all, a product of our evolution and should (you’d think) be somewhat attuned to our needs – we’ve actually lost some superfluous ancestral sensory abilities, such as a stronger olfactory ability, as recently as the last couple of hundred-thousand years. It may be that not only does further sensory development fail to provide an evolutionary edge, but possessing it could even reduce quality of life.

For example, Gregory McRoberts says that anyone trying to use his eye-patch on a fully-functioning eye suffers from a form of ‘Helmet fire’ – a term coined in aviation, where stress-induced task saturation, exacerbated by helmet HUDs, impedes pilots abilities to function and make decisions.

See also the clip below of ‘binocular soccer’ – even though binoculars are an accepted form of visual augmentation, if they can’t integrate passively and sympathetically with the other demands of our vision (depth perception and peripheral awareness) they also have an impeding effect:

2. Memory Augmentation

Specifically, enhancing experience would require augmenting Autobiographical memory; episodic memory in particular - recollecting times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual knowledge.

Augmenting Human memory would involve affecting our ability to:

• record memories – encoding experiences exhaustively, with depth and detail
• retain memories – remembering experiences for longer/ indefinitely
• recall memories – have access to memories easily, quickly, entirely, accurately

Pragmatically this can be done in part through existing stuff – tools (such as cameras), systems (such as diaries) or techniques (such as mnemonics), but conceivably, it could perhaps be achievable in the future through genetics or neural-interfacing bionics.

Of course, the experiences themselves aren’t enhanced, but the memories of them are more exactly and comprehensively stored – so all memories would retain more experiential value.

Some people already have superior autobiographical memory – the condition is known as Hyperthymesia and is incredibly rare. People possessing the condition can recall every detail of their lives with as much accuracy as if it’d happened moments ago. Once again, however, we need to question if this capability really improves the human experience. The condition isn’t always regarded as a ‘blessing’; some affected experience it as a burden, and many spend a great deal of time dwelling on the past. The condition challenges the traditional notion of what healthy memory is, prompting the attitude ”it isn’t just about retaining the significant stuff. Far more important is being able to forget the rest.” [(via Wikipedia) Rubin, D. C., Schrauf, R. W., & Greenberg, D. L. (2003). Belief and recollection of autobiographical memories. Memory and Cognition, 31, 887–901.]

3. Attitudinal Change/ Value Re-assessment

Finally, sense- and memory-augmentation won’t reap much benefit for any individual unless they have a sincere interest in exploiting such capacity to gain more experience value.

Attitudinal change, based on a reassessment of values, is a much less technology-orientated intervention. Instead it is a cognitive shift; a willingness to perceive ones environment more actively, and with a greater attention to detail.

On the one hand, this can be thought of as a learned skill. Sherlock Holmes, for example, is the archetypal ‘observer’ – someone who is ceaselessly, lucidly, taking in the details around him, analysing them and extracting wisdom. On the other hand, there is also a broader philosophical element, or at the very least a set of arguments – statements for why seeking out and making the most of life’s variety is of benefit to us.

To cause a change in attitude and behaviour would require:

• Learning how to stand back during autobiographical events and and have an absolute, lucid, sensory attentiveness to what’s happening.
• Being able to objectively reflect on one’s own motivations, decisions, actions and emotional state.
• Training emotional and intellectual post-analysis (reflection, critiquing)
• understanding why it is desirable to maximise one’s experiences

People talk about an ability to “live in the now”. Often it is seen as a good thing, though sometimes the phrase is used pejoratively to imply an inability to see the consequences of actions. It is contrasted with both those obsessed with and living inside of their memories, and those who cannot appreciate the here and now because they are constantly looking for the next thing.

Mindfulness

‘Mindfulness‘ is an essential tenet of Buddhism. Considered to be one of the seven factors for achieving spiritual enlightenment, it is a ready-made, tried-and-tested tool kit for gaining a greater appreciation of one’s environment. Mindfulness teaches both the importance of being aware, as well as providing instructions into how to achieve such a state. Unavoidably, it’s is a very trendy concept in the west at the moment, mainly because it’s lessons can also be applied as a form of cognitive therapy, to help temper conditions such as anxiety, depression and stress.

From our perspective, the applicable teachings of Mindfulness are very interesting, and as we continue to investigate them we’re keen to see what can be learned. However, without wanting to diminish it’s spiritual salience, nor the significance of being able to help therapeutically, as experience designers we need to be sure we can (if possible) isolate the processes from the spiritual.

Experiential Research?

‘Medicine’ is an enormous branch of applied science; a collection of inter-related but distinct areas of study, implicitly dedicated (arguments for quality of life to one side) to the goal of prolonging human life, through countering disease, environmental harm or genetic conditions.

Imagine if there was another contrasting branch of science, called Experiential Research. Experiential research might be considered to have the same ultimate purpose as medicine, but with an approach pivoted at 90 degrees. That ultimate goal being to fit more living into a life, but the change in tact being to get more intensity of living into each minute, rather than increasing the number of minutes.

Obviously, the underlying sciences already exist – biochemistry, bionics, cybernetics, genetics, psychology, neurology, human-system interfaces and data visualisation. The concepts of “body-hacking”, or “super-senses” are not new either. But if there was more collaboration across these disciplines, with the aim of creating new transformative interventions, then perhaps we could all reap the benefits of new capabilities and new perspectives.

The Prototype

We’re pleased to announce that this week we’ve assembled our first working prototype – a rudimentary, bare-bones version of what we’d like to finally end up building.

The prototype has 6 scent chambers (the final version will likely have between 18 and 30), and uses piezo-atomisers paired with felt wicks to make the compound scents airborne. Ben gutted the components and electronics from a bunch of Glade “Wisps” (there’s a Make: tutorial on how these can be hacked.) and got a couple of Arduinos inside setup to sync the atomising with the push a of a trigger. The left-most button is a “submit” button, and the rest toggle respective piezos (‘up’ is on, though you can see at the time of the photo they weren’t aligned).

Getting to a Prototype stage

To briefly summarise how we got to where we are now – firstly, we’re very grateful to Odette Toilette, who has valuable experience having worked on some interesting fragrance-based products before, and knows all about the alchemical world of olfaction. She pointed us in the right direction for sourcing the scents we needed, and helped us get our heads around the mechanics of how to make smell-objects work.

We bought thirty of so ingredient scents from Perfumer’s Apprentice, who were very helpful when we explained what we were trying to do. They sent us a bunch of tiny jars with a broad spectrum of concentrated scents in them, ranging from musky base tones to fruity high notes. Stuff like Ethyl Methyl 2-Butyrate (which sort of smells like a banana-flavoured epoxy), Bergamot (citric) and Civetone. Civetone is one of the oldest known ingredients in perfume, and is still present in contemporary fragrances like Chanel No. 5. However in isolation it smells like a prison gymnasium crossed with a festival toilet.

Experiments

We used these scents for a couple of research projects, to see if memory scent tagging would work as neatly as we hoped.

First a “sample group” of colleagues visited two locations: one as a control, and one whilst using a composite scent. Several days later we re-combined the composite scent and tested to see if they could recall the latter location with more clarity than the control.

In the second experiment we took a larger group (some 50 or so Goldsmiths design volunteers) and showed them five youtube music videos, in each case giving them a different composite scent. We wanted to see if they could later recall which scent was linked to which video.

Disappointingly, in both cases we learned that episodic memory is not as discreet as we first hoped. Declaring one “episode” of memory over, and another to have begun is not as straight-forward as we had expected – similar activities, especially if minutes apart, will ultimately “bleed” into one another from the perspective of a participant.

It seems the time frame of a Proustian mark will be associated with a period longer than several minutes. Though both experiments showed a slight trend towards there being a positive correlation between olfactory stimulation and memory, we’ll need to repeat them, spaced over a longer period of time, to glean any usable data. Now at least we can use the prototype in these experiments.

Refining the model

With a working prototype out in the field, we’ve set our sights on designs for a fully-featured iteration. Specifically, we’re working out a form and use-cases to get the right scents in the right place, and with a solid and intuitive user-interface.

Justas has been rapidly sketching forms to interrogate the object’s potential use. We’re conscious that as a conversation piece, our object may benefit from referencing consumer technology products. We’ve set about exploring forms that both indicate it’s situations of use and it’s scent based nature. We want people to be able to imagine it in their hands and functioning in their lives. Drawing and re-drawing the object, we’re learning about what the object needed to function and how to read as a camera-like object.

Justas has also explored the form as 3-D render-sketches, again to see it as a finished object and have conversations about how it works and where it sits. We’re now starting to produce physical sketches, which we’ll upload pics of soon.

Next Steps

We still need solid data, demonstrating whether or not our object can do what the scientific theory implies. We’ll use our prototype to explore this. Our use-case explorations have helped us identify three routes, which we’ll be weighing up over the following weeks.

The outcome of this exploration could be:

1. A conceptually ‘purist’ approach – a ‘blind’ object with minimal functionality, capable of only two functions: a) emitting a scent for the first time,  b) emitting a previous scent-encoding at random
2. An assisting device for cameras – something that works in tandem with convention cameras to provide a more holistic memory encoding experience
3. A compromise between the two – a legitimate ‘competitor’ to a recollection-through-sight object, but a tool that is sympathetic to the user and provides meta-data (location, time, possibly the ability to tag scents textually) to help them select previous scents.

Once we’ve settled on the use conditions, we’ll get 3D prints made up and install component PCB’s more specifically adapted to our final needs (as opposed to the proto-electronics we’ve been using so far).

(Finally, here’s is a close up of a scent getting atomised, click for more detail:)

We’re very excited to announce we’ve been shortlisted for the Playable City Award 2013.

The Playable City Award offers artists and creatives from across the world a unique opportunity to make something wonderful using creative technologies. The 2013 award will produce a work which surprises, challenges and engages people in exploring the playable city.

Pushing the boundaries and encouraging experimentation, this international award sits at the intersections of technology and culture and will champion Bristol as an international hub for cutting-edge creativity.

The commissioned work will cross cultural contexts and will be toured. It will use technology in an integrated and interesting way. It will inject a sense of wonder and meaning into public space.

The shortlist gives the public the chance to comment on the finalists ideas, critique them, and ask probing questions. Our entry is OPEN NOW for review, so have a look and share your thoughts with us.

We developed Hello Lamp Post! in collaboration with designer/ technologist Tom Armitage and media artist Gyorgyi Galik.

Our Proposition [Abridged]

To provide a clear idea of what we’re proposing, we decided to make a condensed version of our pitch document available online for public perusal. Here it is:

Downloadable version:

Individual slides:

This year our advent calendar is called The Santa Scores. It is the only advent-calendar tv-listings site that picks a film from that day, and then rates it for Christmasiness, against other films that are also on, but on different days. 

Last year our advent calendar reviewed pre-packaged high street sandwiches. This year we’re asking what gives films a festive feeling. We’ve been scanning the TV listings for you. Every day we’ll choose a film that looks like the most Christmassy one on and then we’ll review it for Christmasiness. You can exploit this information as you choose.

From an experiential perspective, we think the “Christmas feeling” is very interesting. It’s a weird compound emotion – a mix of apprehension, nostalgia and suspension of disbelief; synonymous with feelings towards family, reward, comfort and pop mythology. Though it must be unique for everyone, a lot of people understand it as a concept and have had personal experience of it. When it begins is very subjective, and the subtlest of details can trigger it – Christmas lights going up, decorating the tree, or other tropes and rituals – including, we suspect, certain films. We’re keen to find out which movies have the best chance of triggering a ‘festive cascade’.