Concept Sketch v1.0

The sketch now shows, more clearly, the close-knit relationships between the data sharing infrastructures (via cell-phone or other WiFi-enabled mobile device) and the physicalities of the park. (Again, this remains at the conceptual level, and is only one of many, many possibilities of physical manifestations.)

Artificial trees which are integrated into the real landscape (and mimic real ones) are, quite literally, the source of life and light into the underground chambers. Fibre-optic cables, whose ends run from the 'tree' branches into the trunks and into the underground, allow for the underground chambers to be lit.

The hemispherical pods may be placed in other parts of the city extraneous to the park, say, in bus-stands, news-stands, public libraries and so on. Content from the park users can then be viewed within any pod, anywhere in the city, thereby expanding the boundaries of the media 'hinterland', i.e. the park.

Each facet within the interior surface of the underground chamber acts as a unique surface for a unique user. Strategic placement of projectors allows for every facet to display content, in a similar fashion as that in the pods, i.e. content which is foreign and disjunctive to the cultural background of the viewer.

The disjunction is aimed at education - insofar as the visual, aural and/or video content of other park users (which have been fed to the main server, through the WAN (Wide-Area Network) that has been set up at the park) with other cultural backgrounds would inform.

Cellphones and/or other Wi-fi enabled devices, seamlessly connected to the WAN at the park, are the end-user tools in this entire scheme of things. They are both information collectors and distributors, and their capabilities are augmented with larger-scale projections onto real surfaces, thereby allowing for content to be mapped onto a physical surface. This potentially allows for a new spatial environment to be created, one that is highly dynamic due to the flux in imagery and aural content that constantly changes.

(The cellphones illustrated are the N80 and N93 models from Nokia, which has provided 300 N80 phones to REMAP for testing purposes. The illustrations do not serve as any form of advertisement.)

Concept Sketch v0.5 - Physicality

This sketch examines one of my ideas (and one of many possibilities) for the interactive park.

This very preliminary design is borne out of several factors, the first of which involves the provision of multiple facets for a number of media projections to be effected. The underground chambers as suggested in the sketch would accommodate for these multiple facets, and, being underground, would allow for daytime use as well.

The landscape above-ground would be respectful to the landscape design by Hargreaves Associates, a San Francisco-based landscape design firm which has been commissioned to design the landscape for the park. (REMAP's involvement is the interactive media / technology aspect of the park.)

Hemispherical pods (see sketch) would dot the landscape above, allowing for a maximum of three people to fit under it. These can be thought of as micro iMax theatres. The video information that is projected onto the insides of the hemispherical surface would contribute to an immersive experience for the parkgoer.

The video that is shown on the inside surface of each pod is called up from a main server, housed in the Remapping LA lab downtown. When the user enters the hemispherical pod, information from his cellphone will be read and, from previous tagging of his identity, his background culture and ethnicity will be noted. The information that is fed to the user will not be that of his identity, in an attempt for him to familiarise with other communities that are surrounding the park. (There are four distinct communities - Chinese, Korean, Jewish and Latino - each of which is tightly bound within itself.)

Thus, the videos projected would be of the neighbourhoods and communities that are 'foreign' to the visitor's. (A censorship system detects potentially offensive content and removes them from the server; these systems are existent and will be documented in a future post.)

The intention is to provide for a data-sharing infrastructure and environment that is immersive, multi-layered, and most importantly, creates an awareness of other communities which one may not physically mingle with.

Networked Neighbourhood

Concurrent to conceptualising the park (for which Walt Disney Interactive R&D is involved as well), the REMAP team has been busy testing and setting up CISCO-sponsored wireless access points in the studio, and in Melnitz Hall, which houses the School of Theater, Film and Television, and which is also where REMAP is centred.

The set-up will then be implemented at the site of the LA State Historic Park, on the very large scale (32 hectares!). Once this set-up is complete, the entire park itself will be a connected Wi-fi hotspot, and in itself a WAN (Wide-area Network) which allows for user-tagging and other possibilities associated with GPSes (Global/Geographic Positioning Systems) and GISes (Geographic Information Systems), albeit at a smaller scale than a GPS. A server could then be placed at REMAP, UCLA as a "control station" for the network in the park.

The concept design of the park would, therefore, ideally make the most out of this infrastructure.

Evolution of Information Distribution

The notion of information distribution, and how this distribution is perceived at the user level, is inextricable with the concept of the interactive park. So far, I have envisioned it to be a real-world, a physical (or at least quasi-physical) YouTube, if you might, where video content, instead of being viewed and interpreted from a computer screen, becomes projected on-screen, or displayed on an installation such that it becomes immersive to the user.

The possibilities of having the architecture act as an infrastructure for themed content, or as a means of engaging the public to understand their city, and the myriad range of cultures within that city, underpins my thesis. The setting up of this infrastructure is of prime importance to REMAP as well, and will be briefly described in a future post.

The series of diagrams above depicts the evolution of the distribution of information. The diagram labelled '1' shows a hierarchical distribution, where information is distributed from a central source, and then sub-distributed, possibly through multiple layers and censures, before it reaches the 'grassroots' individual. This would also reflect the state of Negri and Hardt's 'Imperialism'.

The subsequent diagrams represent the decentralisation of the source of information, which creates different patterns in the way information is received, and therefore interpreted. Levels of censures will be lower (which may or may not be beneficial), but the individual begins to gain more autonomy in the amount and nature of information he receives.

Diagram '3' would be the stage at which the 'Empire' is.

As it were, the hierarchical distribution of information will become more indistinct, resulting in a constant flux of information distribution, redistribution and exchange, through multiple channels. The individual begins to gain power as he becomes the giver of information, as much as he is the receiver. This mirrors the condition of the 'Multitude'.

The same diagram can be used to illustrate the evolution of role of the architect - or any other profession - as one moves from an expertise-specific, closed environment to a multi-disciplinary environment. The architect becomes a node in a flat hierarchy, in a non-predefined system where "separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another." (Gilles Deleuze, 'Negotiations'.)

Each node, in itself, becomes a rhizome. In taking away one node, another will emerge, and the 'system' will continue to perpetuate.

Yet, the challenge of the multitude for the "social multiplicity to manage to communicate and act in common while remaining internally different", i.e. the quest for diversity within multiplicity, remains.

Theoretical Underpinnings

Sketch relational diagram 1

Diagram showing relationships between IDM (NUS), REMAP (UCLA) and WDI. Finalised diagram pending.

Second Brainstorming Session with Walt Disney Imagineering

The second brainstorming session between REMAP and WDI (Walt Disney Imagineering) was held at the WDI R&D studios, Glendale, on 12 January 2007. A progression from the first meeting on 29 Nov 2006, the second brainstorming session was aimed at focusing on core ideas to be further developed for implementation in the summer of '07.

From the Agenda, some of the aims were to update all parties involved on the project progress, which has now included many more layers than in the previous meeting. For starters:
1. Cisco Systems has sanctioned the deployment of a wireless network covering the entire park site;
2. a 3D topographic model has been generated (see images below);
3. Nokia has sponsored 250 cell-phones for the community-participation aspect;
4. DWP (Dept. of Water and Power, LA) has agreed to support the project in the provision of cable and power infrastructure;
5. Classes conducted by Bruce Vaughn and Fabian Wagmister are underway, at UCLA.

Screenshot of point cloud data for site, viewed with Leica Geosystems' Cyclone

On a closer look (click to enlarge image), it becomes obvious that the surfaces are generated by a large number of dots. 'Join the dots', anyone?

The meeting was attended by REMAP's project participants in Remapping LA, key creative designers from WDI, as well as representatives from LA State Parks.

A congregation of creative individuals under one roof, each wanting to share his/her ideas and lay them on the table, meant that it was impossible to restrict the ideas into any specific focus. Nevertheless, the new ideas that were generated were indeed interesting, some of which are more refined than the ideas brought up in the previous meeting. Some examples (of my interpretation of the ideas):

• "media constellations" - network of interconnected media displays, whose topology would resemble that of constellations of stars;
  
• "media beacons" - large displays of media which encourage remote participation and interaction;
• overlays of maps on the physical park;
• "miniature LA" in which a virtual map of LA is projected onto the site, and visitors can visit the points of interest in the city virtually, both in space and time;
  
• content that represents, or recreates, the cataclysmic events that have shaped the history of LA - floods, fires, earthquakes;
• the rhythm of these events are organic and unplanned - could there be a possibility of employing the moving trains (passing alongside the site) as a medium of projection? This leads to...
  
• ...the creation of an anticipation amongst park visitors who are expecting something to happen on the surfaces of the moving trains;
• "metaphorical geophysical events" in which the media content portrays, within a theme, the history of the city;
• "time travel" concept, similar to previous concept but allowing the visitor to call up any point in time in history of the city, and vicariously experience it;
• "Mecano set" of miniature landmarks within the city, which allows children visiting the park to design an alternatice LA, a la SimCity, but in a real-life scale model;
• augmented reality environments which would cater for physically-immobile people, enabling them to visualise other happenings in the park.
  

Jeff Burke demonstrating the 3D model of the site

At some point in time, when we designers became too engrossed in speculating new ideas, it became more apparent that the focus on the community slowly faded into the background. At this, Fabian pointed out that the park is in fact for the community, particularly the Hispanic and Chinese migrant communities living adjacent to the park.

Four principles were laid out by Fabian, in his vision for the park:

• The consideration for the community.
• The park should be inspired by, based on, owned by and authored by the community, as well as historical events which defined the city.

• The assets in and around the park.
• The physical and built landscapes and infrastructure around the park should be maximised, or in the very least, considered, in the design of the interactive park.

• The dialectic between 'environment' and 'events'.
• The events that occur in the park should be complementary to its environment, and to the city of LA at large.

• The dialectic between 'elements' and 'activities'.
• The park elements should be designed with community activities in mind.

While the ideas were still preliminary, with the possibility of multiple interpretations, Fabian's insistence on the community aspect of the project was something that I very much welcomed. This is in line with my own principles on how the design of a park should be - the result of much dialogue between the designers (be they architects, storyboard writers and artists, content generators or media artists) and the communities that actually use the park. Likewise, the content should as far as possible be open-source.

Future meetings with WDI would involve smaller brainstorming sessions, with the aim of narrowing down to several key ideas, based on the several themes and principles above, and developing on them. This is with the aim of visualising these ideas. Further reviews would then decide if the ideas are indeed feasible.

It also affirmed my thoughts that for the purposes of my thesis project, the ideas were to serve as supplementary drivers for the project, rather than the primary driver. The discrepancy in the timelines for my own project and the overall project at large means that I have to push my thesis in a direction that, while running parallel to the overall scheme of things, would have to begin to take shape on its own.

In discussions with Kheng Soon and later Fabian and Jeff, the key concepts for my thesis began to crystallise. I intend the thesis to be a tripartite project comprising:

• a model of the NUS/REMAP/WDI collaborative effort, and collaborative efforts at large.
• a series of diagrams, proposals and key design concepts that illustrate the results of that collaboration.
• my own interpretations - and design - of what Remapping LA could be. (This would ideally be in tandem with the overall project's directions.)
  

SenseCam

This is an interesting development in photography - and data collection in general - taking images passively. It is a project of Microsoft Research, the research arm of the industry giants dealing with research in software engineering and computer science.

According to Microsoft, on its SenseCam website,

"SenseCam is a wearable digital camera that is designed to take photographs passively, without user intervention, while it is being worn...

Unlike a regular digital camera or a cameraphone, SenseCam does not have a viewfinder or a display that can be used to frame photos. Instead, it is fitted with a wide-angle (fish-eye) lens that maximizes its field-of-view. This ensures that nearly everything in view of the wearer is captured by the camera, which is important because a regular wearable camera would likely produce many uninteresting images. SenseCam also contains a number of different electronic sensors."

The camera itself adopts a nondescript, unassuming design, and perhaps rightly so. Its merits lie in its intrinsic concepts and technology, which allows images to be taken, through a fish-eye lens, with changes in body temperature, ambient lighting and other variables. Images can also be taken on a regular timed basis.

"SenseCam takes pictures at VGA (640 x 480) resolution... the time-lapse first-person-viewpoint sequences represent a useful media type that exists somewhere between still images and video... SenseCam also stores a log file, which records other sensor data along with their timestamps. Additional user data, such as time-stamped GPS traces, may be used in conjunction with the SenseCam data via time-correlation.

Once imported to a PC, files can be stored and manipulated in a simple image viewer application that we have developed. The basis of this viewer, which is designed to be very straightforward to use, is a window in which images are displayed, and a simple VCR-type control which allows an image sequence to be played slowly (around 2 images/second), quickly (around 10 images/second), re-wound and paused. The fast-play option creates a kind of ‘flip-book’ movie effect – the entire event represented by he images is replayed as a time-compressed movie...

An additional option is provided to correct for the ‘fish-eye’ lens effect using an algorithm which applies an inverse model of the distortion."

Read more about it here.

My thoughts on it are that it can certainly be a useful tool for the Remapping LA project, insofar as the data collection and information mapping stages are concerned. The "spartan" nature of the camera, and its small size, makes it convenient to wear.

Taking this one step further would be to incorporate the camera into a device which allows images to be taken from the viewpoint of the eye, rather than from the level of the chest (if slung around the neck), or hip (if attached to a belt loop). A simple non-obtrusive device can be fashioned to be either hung around the ears, or a more fashionable contraption can be designed, perhaps similar to Oakley/Motorola's bluetooth phone/MP3 player-cum-shades:


I'd be very much interested to design such a contraption, which would add another dimension (and scale) to the architectural/urban design component of Remapping LA. The implementation of an eye-level camera would, as mentioned above, enhance the level of realism for the visual information that is collected.

Kudos to Fabian for the link; images are from Microsoft, except the last image which is 'borrowed' from CNet.

Workspace

Melnitz Hall, UCLA, which houses the School of Theatre, Film and TV.

Hypermedia studio

REMAP office, where paperwork is done and meetings are conducted

In the News: Interactive digital media sector gets funding for 4 interlinked activities

S Ramesh, Channel News Asia, 10 January 2007. Some excerpts from the article.

SINGAPORE: Singapore's interactive digital media industry has been given a shot in the arm with the announcement that the sector's R&D Programme Office will fund four interlinked initiatives.

The initiatives were announced by Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.

He said the initiatives aim to create a high-growth and self-sustaining eco-system which will propel Singapore into the forefront of research and development in interactive digital media.

The interactive digital media industry had been identified as a key growth sector for Singapore's economy in the years ahead by the high-powered Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council during its inaugural meeting last year, which was chaired by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

IDM at NUS logo, part of the digital media network in Singapore.

Giving details of the initiatives, Dr Balakrishnan said that firstly, the government will support intensive R&D at institutes of higher learning and research institutes and bring the best global interactive digital media R&D institutions to Singapore.

Secondly, the government will incentivise companies to push the boundaries of the industry's R&D through investment in infrastructure and innovative services...

Thirdly, Singapore aims to put itself at the forefront of R&D in interactive and digital media by establishing itself as a preferred port-of-call for partners in innovation-test bedding.

Fourthly, Singapore aims to encourage significant investments by companies in the media industry to anchor demand for interactive digital media.

Dr Balakrishnan noted that the interactive and digital media sector is large, with many sub-sectors and different stakeholders.

So far more than 30 stakeholders and partners from the sector have indicated their support and commitment to the R&D initiative. - CNA/ir

Also, see Singapore on its way to achieve Intelligent Nation vision by 2015.

Post-Empire Urbanisms

The following is an excerpt from an article written by Ed Keller for a class he is conducting at SCIArc, Post-Empire Urbanisms. While I am not enrolled in SCIArc, I believe much of what Keller contends resonates, to a large extent, with what I believe my thesis is dealing with.

Parallel Realities, Trans-national Archipelagos, New Urban Ambiences

"...Cities have historically functioned as 'ambient' environments, with many cultural, economic, political and aesthetic systems inflecting each other and creating complex urban ecosystems with lifespans in the centuries. The city comes to life through the overlapping ambiences it can host: either as a kind of software, in cultural movements, or a kind of hardware, in the physical forms of the architecture of the city itself. The unique nature and identity of any urban location emerges in an irreducible resonance that is produced between that 'software' and 'hardware'. In the case of the contemporary global city, the intensification of this relationship has produced a more radical set of bifurcations, no longer resolved as the outcome of a binary logic ('ambience'), yet rather as a monolithic temporal construct of parallel realities.

The political theorist Frederic Jameson argues that in contemporary post-capital/post-national society, the task of creating 'cognitive maps' of urban space and cultural landscapes has become substantially more complex. Today's development of geotagging, locative media systems and the like are symptomatic of a new genre of representation and communication that will radically transform the city.

The 'time' of the institution, which organizes a kind of monolithic memory structure on a political and cultural level, contrasts dramatically with the time of the individual subject, which is filled with myriad unpredictable details. Similarly, the 'time' of the built fabric of the city provides an archetypal and shared memory which spans all cultures, while the individual subject in their chance encounters creates an absolutely unique memory which then cascades into the urban form itself, in many ways. Urban morphologies are now on fast forward, as they adjust ever more rapidly to global systems that provide individuals, collectives, institutions with constantly shifting ways to interact.

Architecture operates as a key link in this dynamic relation, in its capability to slow down such time, unlike many other disciplines tied into the practice of generating urban morphology. This seminar will study these emerging 'Post-Empire' landscapes of control, systemic tendencies, and new freedoms."

Keller, Ed. Parallel Realities, Trans-national Archipelagos, New Urban Ambiences. 2007

The above preambles what I think is a challenge for the interpretation of our new urban environments. The turn of the century saw the embrace - with fear and admiration, and rejection in many cases - of the virtual as an extension to the real. The proliferation of technology has led to the virtual becoming an alternative to the real, in terms of how we interact and share.

The italicised statement above brings to light the following questions:

1 How does one perceive the virtual in the light of the real?

2 How do we employ technology such that the virtual augments the real, insofar as it may become an alternative reality in itself?

3 Granted that technology allows the creation of a personalised space (as defined by one's own interactions with mobile technology / computing interfaces), how does one perceive the physicalities / "form" of this personal space?

4 What happens when a network of such personalised spaces are created? Again, how does one perceive its "form"?

5 How do we 'remap' the structure of a city in a way that effects in the production of a collective consciousness of the multitude?

6 Taking that a step further, how can diversity be maintained, or even brought to the forefront, in this collective consciousness? What might the technological means to do this be?

These thoughts will be the core questions as I pursue my thesis.

The Project Site

To be furnished...

LA of the future

The following is something that recently made its way into the architecture headlines here in LA.

Eric Owen Moss has recently won a state-wide competition on the visions for the city of Los Angeles of the future. The public now gets to choose their favourite of three cities - New York, Chicago and Los Angeles here.

Here's a bit more on Moss's future vision of LA, from The History Channel's Engineering an Empire:

"The primary organizational components that define contemporary Los Angeles are enormous works of civil engineering - the railway tracks and bridges; the power grids; the "v" shaped, concrete L.A. River; and the ubiquitous steel and concrete freeways.

The infrastructure, when successful, solves the technical objectives of its design engineers: moves trains; moves power; moves water; moves cars.

But in Los Angeles technical means often become both visual ends and operational limits the original problem solvers never imagined. The cumulative effect of the existing infrastructure is to sub-divide the city, delimit zones of use and purpose, and to segregate by race, and economic capacity.

The freeways, tracks, power grids, and concrete rivers originally designed to connect a horizontal city, often deliver the opposite: the piecemeal city, with infrastructure as a consistent obstacle to the integration of the disparate civic parts.

The solution: reconceive the city by multiplying the purposes of its infrastructure. We intend to build over, under, around, and through the freeways, rivers, power grids, and tracks, to use the existing rights of way as the foundations for a series of new, infrastructure-scaled conceptions of building form, habitation, and public and private purpose that will redefine Los Angeles by strategically re-associating the sociologies, the uses, and the sense of the civic whole the civil engineers have long precluded."

While Moss Architects are probably not the first to have identified Los Angeles's urban problems, the italicised paragraphs succinctly underline my personal observations of the city. The civil engineering efforts in constructing the city's transportation infrastructure (in particular, freeways) have done more damage in cutting up the city into "piecemeal" fragments, rather than linking up the sprawling sub-cities / suburban centres.

Somewhere at the back of my head lies the intention of using Remapping LA as a stage for critiquing this phenomenon, and perhaps as a means of alleviating the situation (although given its own location - disjointed from other parts of downtown LA by virtue of the rail lines and the LA river that borders it - this would require a masterplan that would involve the site's vicinity as well.)

The State Historic Park, for instance, could be conceived of as a microcosm of the city's distinct cultures, sans the boundaries that segregate present-day Los Angeles.

In re-reading the final paragraph of the above blog quote though, it is difficult to conceive how the problem can be solved by multiplying the agents of the initial problem. It seems, on first impression, like a megalomaniacal architect's pipe dream - of designing more than what might be necessary, in the hopes of further saturating the city with built transportation infrastructure that may now further segregate the city on not just a horizontal plane, but on the vertical plane as well.

Here are the images from the above website:

From the rendered perspectives and physical models, what seems to be the design intention, at least as far as the formal solution appears to be, is to saturate the riverine banks with high density development, in the hopes of creating urban vibrancy that might more clearly define the metropolis that Los Angeles is, or at least allow it to fall within the conventions of a metropolis. Gargantuan arching forms over the city's urban layer are reminiscent of what the post-modernist Archigram movement would do, albeit in a different setting and with a different formal language.

While there seems a clear-cut aim of intensifying the city by means of urban form, and in pushing for, in reviewer Daniel Libeskind's words, "a big urbanist idea in which habitation, public and private space are fused together in order to create a civic whole; one which has eluded the piecemeal construction of the city", it remains to be seen how such a future city would address the segregation of cultures that, if left uncontrolled, could lead to eventual dystopia.

My comments right now might be premature, given the following: my take on it is purely founded on observation of low-resolution images, and that the project itself is a concept-in-progress. Yet it is my aim that the strategy for the LA State Historic Park in the Remapping LA project would involve community participation - or at the very least, a consideration of the communities - for the design of the interactive park.

NTT Docomo's Keitai City ideas competition

'Keitai' City

iPod owners may disagree with this statement, but the keitai (Japanese term for, and hereafter, "cellphone") is undeniably the indispensable portable device of the past decade. NTT Docomo, the top mobile operator in Japan, organises an annual architectural design competition, with slightly varying themes, focusing on how (in my interpretation) the cellphone can be thought of as a tool for one to interact with others, and with his own space.

(I interpret the term 'keitai'/cellphone as 'convergence devices' - PDAs, blackberries, handheld PCs. For the sake of convenience, they will be referred to as 'cellphones' in this post.)

The 2005 competition website poses the rather general question:

"How is the city, our immediate environment, developing under these circumstances [presented by the ever-emerging use of the cellphone]? In times of great change, the city, in keeping with, or in critical reaction to, that change, has also undergone changes of guise or structure. What sorts of conditions will the city generate in the future, as the [cellphone] becomes an integral part of our lifestyle?"

In a discussion (full article here) between Kiyohito Nagata, Vice President of NTT Docomo and Managing Director of its Product Department, and Kengo Kuma, world-renowned architect, recurring themes of blurred boundaries between real and virtual architectures and infrastructures persist. Some interesting thoughts:

"Recently there has been a great deal of discussion about how to prevent leaks of personal information. If you drop your [cellphone], then you lose an enormous amount of personal information. This is the kind of problem that might be solved if we changed our ways of thinking, including our thinking about cities and space." Nagata

"If you look at the keitai as something that blends in together with people and spaces, then spaces will become more attractive and new spaces and systems will emerge to make life more enjoyable." Nagata

On the role of the architect in designing information / computational networks, Kuma contends:

"In the urban style of communications, when you want to meet your friend you get on a train and go see him. But you can also communicate by connecting through your keitai. If the rail network is an infrastructure, then you could also call the 'keitai' an infrastructure. In the 1960s, it was thought that cities should be approached in terms of their infrastructure. Since the 1970s there has been a reaction to that in architecture – an atmosphere of nihilism stemming from a feeling of powerless and the difficulty as an architect to make any progress with large urban plans. The dominant feeling has been that to discover where you should be going as an architect you should concentrate on designing small-scale architecture. The keitai has changed all that. Now seems to be our chance to change cities from their infrastructure."

The last paragraph might seem to suggest that Kuma is validating the role of the architect in the design of invisible infrastructures; therein lies a deeper consciousness of social awareness and the intention to seize the chance to "change cities from their [invisible] infrastructure(s)". While this may not be a completely new breakthrough in architectural discourse pertaining to real and virtual infrastructures, it represents a clear intention to push the boundaries of the assumptions associated with virtual infrastructures and networks. The organisation of such a competition (with a highly lucrative monetary incentive, no less!) can only be a good thing, with regards to idea- and content-generation.

The winning entry:

(Image copyright of NTT Docomo)

According to the winners:

"The telephone rings. The keitai is opened, like opening an umbrella when it begins to rain. A space floats above the person talking on the telephone, changing in shape and size according to the volume and tone of their voice. People talking on the telephone separate themselves to ensure that the surrounding people do not collide with the space. From the shape of the space visible above people making telephone calls, the surrounding people can spy on their condition.

When speaking on a keitai, although separate from the person on the phone, there is a sense of togetherness, and the feeling of actual space fades. At the same time, the surrounding people feel a slight sense of alienation. The intervening space (empty space) with the person on the phone has no substance, but by temporarily visualizing it in the space above the person calling, the awkwardness of the sense of place in the city, instigated by the appearance of the keitai, is softened."

(It is becoming more apparent that there does not seem to be a literal English translation for 'keitai' - it seems it could mean 'cellphone' and the network that is covers a cellphone.)

Other entries which piqued my interest (in no particular order; images are not mine, but NTT Docomo's):


The explanation for the above project, which I think leaves very much up to one's interpretation, goes:

"Palette city

Currently, the diffusion of the keitai is reported to have reached 80% of the population. If the enabled area of telephone reception is an urban region, there is almost 100% coverage, and it has become an important tool in influencing the behavior of modern people.

Accordingly, taking the eaves of buildings as the starting point, out-of-range areas are scattered throughout the town. For an environment in which the keitai is always enabled, we consider the presence or absence of electromagnetic waves to be an element for composing a new locality.

The intention is to give rise to a variety of places in the town due to the relationship between the place and the tool."

Conceptually, it is a neat idea - of defining space by the intensity of electromagnetic waves that are present (ostensibly by virtue of whether a cellphone is in use, or not). Such a space would necessarily be very dynamic and undefined - like a flux. Graphically, the project illustrates 'blobs' of spaces within the 'hinterland' of the electromagnetic waves generated in a cellphone conversation. These blobs fall within a fixed city infrastructure, with the walls of the building torn down / opened up (or at least, not considered). As a graphic image, it sends a strong message on the potential of dynamic, flux spaces taking over our perceptions of a city's spaces (or its cityscapes) as that which is traditionally defined by brick and mortar.

On to more winning entries:

"Information is provided as a continuous stream to mobile phones (like a webpage banner). Businesses purchase these rights to provide information about its services and products to all the mobile users in a designated area. This real-time information empowers individuals to proactively choose goods and services. This results in a flexible building that is determined by on-the-minute consumer demand."

"Digital fields in the keitai city follow urban forms; distance and space give relevance to information, forming a connection between the virtual and the real. The keitai contains its owner's preferences and attributes. It modulates and interacts with digital fields and other keitai - creating personalised cities."

Conceptually, the above entry resonates the most with my initial ideas for the Remapping LA project, in particular, its focus on the specificness of the owner's "preferences and attributes" to his mobile device. The projection of images or video content onto a virtual surface, as suggested in the collages in the entry, is resonant to my ideas of transient displays for the LA project as well.

"Invisible noise.
This proposal is keen on the perception of innumerable radio waves that exist in urban settings. We use the mobile phone daily, but are unable to perceive the existence of corresponding radio waves. They are visualised using the nature of light and radio waves that travel at the same speed. We intend for the space to become a place to realise that the imperceptible element in our space has actual transfer and movement." (language edited)

The above entry is reminiscent of light installations done by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, or the technique used to visualise invisible laser beams by blowing powder (a la Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment).

Thus, what originates as a rather mundane, yet challenging, question leads to several interesting ideas that definitely bear potential for further development and realisation. Parallels can be drawn between some of the concepts that have been visualised in the above proposals and some of the ideas that have been brought up in the REMAP brainstorming sessions, including those which I have a vested interest in.

See the full proposals and results here.

Remapping LA - Project Timeline

1. REMAP's timeline

2. Personal timeline

To be furnished...

Role of the Architect

Being in a multi-disciplinary project group invariably calls into question the levels of participation of each team member (who necessarily represent their professional training). The dynamics of the working relationships are interesting to address, with each member bringing the baggage of his field of expertise and putting it on the table.

While the team has just been formed (and thus the specific responsibilities remain vague), I've had the opportunity to interact with a film student, a computer-science major and researchers in mobile sensing technologies. In my five years of architectural education, this is indeed the first time that this has happened. I have never done an architectural design project that involved any contributor other than myself (or other architecture-trained students, for that matter), and this therefore represents a rather new experience. (It also means that the "architect ego quotient" within the group is therefore very low!)

Within the past month, the exposure that I have been given, in terms of contact made with firms and organisations which deal with technology, community, grant-endowment, and so on, is one that is refreshing and highly relevant in the career of an architect. Indeed, the architect (or the architect-to-be, in my case) has to see himself as a cog in a gear, or even a cog in a larger series of gears. This has become especially apparent in the in-group meetings that REMAP has had - the success of the park (from its conceptualisation to eventual realisation) can only be effected through careful participation and employment of relevant talent, skill and technology from every participant.

Naturally, there is a flipside to it - the level of architectural and urban discourse within the team remains, for now, low. I foresee having to argue with myself on many design- and architecture-specific decisions for the interactive park. Yet, the views of the team members who are not in the same field might be highly useful. This runs in parallel with my perception of the Remapping LA project as a convergence of a series of bottom-up and participatory actions, needs and wants, rather than a dictatorial 'masterplanner' pre-empting a design which the community may reject.

There is, however, a fine line to draw between prescribing a design and having a community design the interactive park in a completely democratic manner. Indeed, in drawing back to the previous post on the individual and the multitude, the challenge is to design something that caters to all, even if it means having to compromise some interests.

A balance has to be stricken somewhere.

Perhaps, at the very same point that I have to strike a balance between being a 'masterplanner' (at least in the urban / spatial sense) or a mere participant in the Remapping LA team.

Added on 17 Jan:

On another note, after the discussions with REMAP and WDI R&D, it amuses me at how idiosyncratic each individual profession tends to be, and how these idiosyncrasies manifest in the ideas that are laid out on the table. The ideas from the WDI R&D members would almost always involve physical objects - a physical installation, a running cart accompanied by music, or the like. The media artists would shun from anything that would leave a physical imprint on the park; the computer scientists would be more interested in the network topologies that would facilitate content collection/distribution...

All this, naturally, adds to very engaging discussions, and it is indeed interesting to look through the eyes of the various professionals.

Conscience check (on the collective conscious): "Information Technology vs Human Consciousness"

In the midst of thinking about the possible technologies - augmented reality viewing devices, web2.0, mobile sensing, mapping of people's preferences and displaying content that is relevant to individualistic preferences (one of the key concepts behind the Remapping LA project), I receive an e-mail from my architecture project supervisor on the NUS side, Tay Kheng Soon. It's a sobering thought, and on re-reading his arguments, certainly leads one to re-evaluate the assumptions that one would make of individuals as a collective group - in particular, our tendency to lump individuals into a collective culture, a collective generalisation.

THINKING ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN Information Technology AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS - Tay Kheng Soon

29/12/06

"The principal aspect of IT exemplified in the Internet is interconnectivity. Even though the human brain is massively networked in terms of its neural structure, yet the human mind is socialised to think in discrete patterns within a near-sighted ontology. Herein is the fundamental conflict.

Is there a situation wherein the conflict can be resolved? Can massive numbers of humans acting discretely and separately become an intelligent neural network? What will this involve if it is possible?

Assuming there is a means to distribute data collection and also gather the results, there is a further need to process the data, that is, to make it intelligible. The results are then fed back to the participating human multitude. Would this iterative circulation and further recirculation of results affect subsequent data collection and formulation of inputs and outputs continuously?

What can be the value of this? Well, for one, it will build a consensus as to what reality is. But would this really reflect reality or will it merely confirm a collectively selected perception?

What if, in the system design, deliberate minoritarian data streams are injected into the majoritarian data stream? What would result? Would it mean that the minoritarian data streams be merely absorbed and diluted or can it be made to cause splits in the flow and branches to form. Is it possible then that a networked matrix of alternative flows can come about whereby different sets of operations are set off concurrently positing "what if" propositions that will then interrupt the majoritarian flow to such an extent that new propositions come about.

Will it then be possible to harvest such results for further initiatives to begin? Where does actuality come in? The decision to actualise, it seems to me is a political one, one that is a social act which could come about due to exhaustion and or conviction. Such an act of collective decision, in such a system, could be justifiable. Then the consequences of actualisation is understood as a shared responsibility for better or for worse."

In their book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, sequel to their seminal Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri contend that the phenomenon of networked (and networking) people, seen as diverse individuals, bears potential in overthrowing "Empire", thereby establishing true democracy.

("Empire" here, as defined by Negri and Hardt - and warped by my own understanding of their writing - is the "new form of sovereignty", that which replaces the defunct Classical Imperialism, and is defined by the blend of consumerism, technologies, global multi-national corporations and so on which drive global economics today.)

Yet, Multitude starts off with focusing on the masses within this empire, and ends off with the realisation that the multitude is, in fact, defined by its diversity, rather than its commonalities. The challenge of the multitude is "for the social multiplicity to manage to communicate and act in common while remaining internally different."

It is indeed a reality check for me - it's oh so easy to get caught up in the technologies, the design and the snazziness. This leads to one failing to evaluate oneself and realise that these technologies tend to serve the multitude as a collective, rather than as a highly-diverse entity. TV companies, news networks, advertising agencies etc have had agendas (political or otherwise) for the longest time, and have distributed content almost solely based on their agendas. Maybe it is indeed good that the content planned for the Remapping LA project is intended to be open source, so this problem is somewhat mitigated.

This, for now, serves as a response to Kheng Soon's sharp observations on the potential pitfalls of a collective sensing or a collective "intelligent neural network" system. I'll have to sleep on it a bit more before coming up with a more well-informed response, but it certainly leaves me with the conscience to take a step back and look at the ramifications of such technologies on individuals who are part of a larger multitude, from time to time, as the project progresses.

I'll check back with an update soon once I have my thoughts sorted out.

The Singapore Connection; IDM Scenarios

IDM and REMAP

According to their website, the objectives of the IDM (Interactive Digital Media) Network, NUS, are:

"To establish Singapore at at forefront of the interactive media revolution worldwide and in the Asia Pacific region and to be a link for cutting edge creative media research laboratories in NUS.

By exploring commercially creative interactive media research which will assist in development of creative industries and cultural exuberance for Singapore and creating human technology which involves the development of new interfaces to make machines more natural, intuitive and easy to use, the IDM Network has as its aim to bring about this vision and bring the future of new media into reality.

It is also an aim to make Singapore one of the main global cross-points and nuclei of new media and the exporter of new media in the Asia Pacific region."

IDM covers a wide-ranging spectrum of digital-media-related activities, facilitating processes for teaching, and "supply(ing) Singapore with the technologies that will be at the digital heart of many of Singapore's emerging sectors including Digital Exchange, Digital Entertainment and Digital Media, Digital Culture as well as adding value to Biomedical and Biotechnology initiatives."

In its cross-disciplinary roots, REMAP, which in itself is a joint programme between UCLA's School of Television, Film and Theatre and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has a similar set-up (although not pertaining to Singapore, naturally). The exchange between IDM and REMAP, while spanning the Pacific, opens doors for the exchange of ideas which are culturally distinct, and the sharing of technological expertise which would be beneficial to both institutions.

In addressing issues (and therefore projects) on augmented realities and media experience in public spaces, spatiality is an integral part of the equation. The Department of Architecture, which also hosts the Digital Space Lab, has endorsed my participation in this programme, and has given me the opportunity to explore, in my project, possibilities of cross-collaboration efforts between Architecture and the fields of interactive media and content generation. Remapping LA presents itself as a "test project" for the beginnings of what might be a similar vein of projects in Singapore.

The Interactive City (as envisioned by IDM)

This would be in tandem with the proposals that IDM, NUS has come up with. The full versions are downloadable from the IDM Scenarios website; in essence, they represent a concerted effort on IDM's part to develop Singapore as an interactive city. In one of the scenarios, visitors would, in visiting a key historic location in Singapore, be able to view 'augmented scenes' of the past architecture of that location, or past events in that location, through a viewing device (tentatively, a PDA-like device; see image below, images copyright of IDM).

This would be made possible by having a miniscule RFID chip on the wall of the building, which triggers such content to be displayed on the viewing device.

The above represents one of the myriad applications that could fall within the aforementioned Interactive City scenario. The following image illustrates another:

While not a brand new concept, the possibility of having individuals virtually placed within a space, for conferencing or other activity that requires company, is integral to the mixed-reality 'playing field' that the Interactive City scenario bases itself on. (Star Trek afficionados would relate to such a "Beam me up, Scottie" scenario.)

These 'mini-scenarios' would contribute to an immersive experience of the city - not just restricted to Singapore, naturally - one that allows for visual, aural and mixed media to pervade through one's environment (in his own interest, of course). In the larger frame of things, the IDM proposal has this to say:

"In such an Interactive-City, the boundaries of cyber-space and physical space blur, and the networks along with its computational, media, and information resources become resources to our daily physical existence. The paradigm would shift from one where the user has to ‘go into cyber-space’ through a prescribed portal like computer terminal running a web browser, to one in which the information and communication are contextualized and close at hand."

Information Technology as neither a Slave nor a Master, but a Bedfellow

While the possible manifestations of such technologies are endless, and also superlatively exciting, it would also open up a whole Pandora's Box of privacy invasion and ethical issues. These would be thought of and discussed in future post entrie. Etiquette enforcement would likely be necessary, but for now, we are looking more at the possible positives, rather than the misappropriations that plagues whatever new technology that emerges from the horizon.

The proposal adds:

"What implications for life-style, entertainment, society, and commerce (how we work, live and play) may arise? What new opportunities for innovation will present themselves? What are the impacts on society, public services, security, law enforcement, and emergency services? These and other questions will lead to rich veins of research and opportunity to be mined."

The "veins of research and opportunity" transcend a multitude of agendas and disciplines, as would be characteristic, one would expect, of generating an "interactive city". While central to the diagram, information technology cannot be thought of as the central driver for the Interactive City within which multiple applications and scenarios would operate. Rather, IT should be seen as a tool for furthering these applications.

(At this point, I would like to add that in my interest in technology - specifically, in its applications - I do not relegate IT as a mere perfunctory entity, but in itself a contributing factor in the conceptualisation, design and implementation of these applications and scenarios. What I am getting at is, while the scenarios can be influenced by existing, pervading technologies, they should not be solely derived from technology. Rather, it should be such that efforts in developing technology becomes collaborative to the desired processes and outcomes, rather than control the desired outcomes.)

This brings in the following diagram (again courtesy of IDM):


This brings me back to the above chart, which (rather basically and simplistically) distills human practices into 'Cultural', 'Scientific' and 'Business' practices. Information Technology is central to these practices, in a way that allows the different fields of practice to communicate, and perhaps eventually integrate. While highly simplistic, it underlines IDM's push for inter-disciplinary research and sharing.

Architecture and the Architect

I find myself going back to thinking of what the role the Architect has in this large scheme of things. Naturally, the conception of a city, interactive or otherwise, necessitates an architect/urban planner-type. The issue of spatiality, both as a driver and as a factor that will result from the conception of such ideas, in both the IDM-proposed scenarios and the Remapping LA project, necessitates for the architect to (at least) have a finger in the pie.

More than just a spatial planner, however, I envision the architect to be part of the conceptualisation process of these projects. As such, my role in Remapping LA should go beyond that of 'visualisation artist' or 'spatial planner', but as a proactive member of the multi-disciplinary team. I'd like to see my responsibilities as one who considers and researches into the socio-cultural implications of such an effort, and potentially influences the technologies that are developed and effected, on top of the creative aspects of the project.

More on the role of the architect in a future post.

Brainstorming with Walt Disney Imagineering

1. Initial Impressions

My perceptions on the dialogue between REMAP and Walt Disney Imagineering are, for now, solely based on a meeting between UCLA, WDI and NUS (as represented by myself) on 29 November 2006. WDI houses itself in a nondescript studio at Glendale, which is a half-hour drive from Westwood, where UCLA is. Beneath the normalcy of the exterior, however, was a bustling creative environment where various television programs screened under the Disney Channel are storyboarded, and where other Disney-related creative pursuits are visualised.

The meeting yielded numerous ideas for the Remapping LA project. These were, however, at the very preliminary stage; some of these ideas do sound rather promising. A brief introduction on the project site was given by Jeff Burke and FabianWagmister (REMAP), and several ideas as to how the site may be intervened to facilitate an interactive park were generated. (Some of these have been briefly mentioned in preceding posts.) The following are photographs from the meeting, as well as a list of ideas which were floated around and bounced off amongst the participants during the course of the meeting.

2. Ideas generated from REMAP/WDI Meeting

The ideas that emerged from the brainstorming session can be categorically listed as follows. (Details have been removed to avoid intellectual property-ownership issues; kudos to Chase Knowles for the following list.)

- installations that interweave experience, technology and process
- the involvement of historically-dislocated communities
- the empowerment of these communities through technology design
- fixtures and/or production as a prototype for future Park endeavours
- mapping of the city of Los Angeles onto the Park (and vice versa, perhaps??)
- projection of private community stories into public space
- every interface is a new experience
- fixture as a memory hub which reflects flow of community history
- park as a central destination point for visitors to Los Angeles

3. Continuity

A further meeting on 12 January 2007 between REMAP and WDI R&D will further brainstorm the above ideas, which are still very preliminary and lacking in structure and/or organisation. Perhaps some links may be made between some ideas, and perhaps preliminary visualisations of some of these ideas could be effected during/after the meeting.

Several better ideas will likely be shortlisted, and then refined (redefined if need be), and sent to the WDI R&D Advisory Board. This will be further narrowed down to three major ideas suitable for further concept work and design.

REMAP's goal is to have a clear idea of what we would like to pursue by February, and then begin concept development and construction during the summer.

Why 'convergence'?

I've used this term quite liberally in the previous post, and I'd like to add a bit more credence to my employment of this term. We're looking at a world which is beginning to value individual contribution (into a larger scheme of things) more and more - think open-source engineering,

On the Open Source trend, Jeff Burke, the Principal Investigator for Remapping LA, has furnished a few links:

1 Open Source at 90mph
Inspired by Linux, the OScar project aims to build a car by tapping the knowledge of a volunteer team. It won't be an easy ride, but their journey is important.

2 The Open Prosthetics Project is producing useful innovations in the field of prosthetics and giving the designs away for free.

3 Open source collaboration meets construction, by Rebecca Fernandez. Two hundred years ago, there were very few proprietary home builders. Most construction was done in a collaborative, community-based environment.

These reflect current trends in thinking - the zeitgeist of the 21st century, if you may - of the world we live in, on how we can actually change - or at least affect, by means of contributing to - the environments we live in, and/or the content we're exposed to. Think Blogger, Wiki, Youtube... Rightly so, Time Magazine has named you (and I) its Person of the Year:

"The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.

...(2006 is) a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

...We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.

...America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.

Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred. But that's what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There's no road map for how an organism that's not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person..."

Read more about it here.

This set me thinking, what would be the real-world manifestation of a Web 2.0-like environment? The leap from text-, image- and video-based content to real, customisable virtual environments was manifested in Second Life, introduced to me by Jeremy Chan, my colleague at NUS Architecture... Kudos to you, Jed! (Read the Wikipedia entry here.) By now it needs little introduction, but effectively, it's a virtual world which allows participants (who are Second Life 'citizens' on a subscription basis) to create virtual environments and interact with other avatars within these environments. (Side note: The massive servers which handle all that data is handled by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, and are termed "The Grid"... perhaps because the name "The Matrix" had already been used?)

Think of Second Life as a cross between The Sims, SimCity (and Sim-etc.), and MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons/Domains). Anyhow, here are some screenshots, courtesy of the official Second Life website.

There's so much rave about it that performing artistes (Suzanne Vega, 'Luka') have jumped on the bandwagon and will perform "live" on Second Life. That takes a bit of a leap of faith to grasp - that the artiste will be performing live, virtually - but what is undeniable is the mass appeal of such an environment which allows users to sit in front of their laptops and participate in a concert, rather than brave the wind and snow and head down to Woodstock or the ilk and risk getting drugged in the process.

Well, enough about Second Life. My point was, Web 2.0 is convergent in its perceived divergence (in terms of content creation). It brings communities together, warts and all, and allows for immersive (on-screen, at least) interaction with a virtual environment. There exists a central "patrolling" structure which can be implemented if/when necessary, that is to say, Linden Lab has the option of enforcing etiquette and protocol which participants have to follow, should anyone go astray.

It is at this point that I bring in the potential of the Remapping LA project. It could in fact take the rubric of virtual environments such as Second Life and MUDs into a new level. The multi-user, multi-participatory environments in these said virtual environments are merely the tip of the iceberg. Could we take it a step further and manifest such interaction and immersive environments in real life? The expanse of land (32 whopping acres) of the LA State Historic Park certainly allows for various types of media technologies to be employed - land area is no issue. What would be worth considering would be the cultural influences of the park, given its proximity to the Chinese and Hispanic migrant communities in Los Angeles, and the ramifications that whatever intervention(s) on the park would have on these communities.

The resulting park would, of course, be guided by a structure in its operation and in its content, and the physical interventions on it would, unlike in Second Life, be more heavily influenced by real-world architectural and physical sensibilities (thus, still obeying Newton's Laws).

On architecture, I chanced upon a website (and met one of the principals of the organisation), AUMStudio, led by Ed Keller, design tutor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIArc), and architect/multimedia designer. Here are a few teaser images, before I post my thoughts on them (images copyright of AUMStudio):

I won't go into the details of the projects themselves; if you're interested, you can view the details and synopses on the AUMStudio website. For the moment, suffice to say, they involve the integration of multimedia and architecture. The visualisations above give a sense of environments that bridge between the real and the ethereal - composed of architecture that is in turn composed of media walls that are not necessarily flat planes; architecture that allows one to experience different and multiple environments by means of projection screens and reality-augmentation.

While the nature of the above projects - Second Life and the work of media/architecture studios such as AUMStudio - do not necessarily serve as a precursor for the Remapping LA project, the bases on which they are structured gives some direction, at least as far as the environmental design aspect of the LA project is concerned. Naturally, there will have to be many other influencing factors and forces at play, and it is only via open, coordinated discussion that they can be addressed and incorporated, if necessary.

One such discussion was effected in a meeting between UCLA, myself and WDI on Nov 29, 2006, at the Disney R&D Studios at Glendale, California. Details of the outcome will follow in a future posting.