MoDe Workshop

I participated in the MoDe (Mobiling and Designing) workshop, which was conducted by the team from Initiative Information Studies, University of Tokyo lead by Professor Shin Mizukoshi at Media Lab on the 20th March 2006.

MoDe project is an experimental project to investigate a new type of media research linking analytical humanities and social scientific research to creative experimental research in fields such as media literacy, information design and media art. This project includes efforts to nurture public media literacy on mobile media, as well as the development and implementation of practical programs (educational materials, curricula, workshop) in order to reinvigorate public communication.

This research group has been developing their own framework of methodology that is called “media probe”, which combines activities, such as information design, workshop program, media literacy program and ethnographic research. Starting from designing media, they have been experimenting new ways of media communication based on critical views to the current mode of media. They design a new media and gave it to the users to be tested. The new media aims to provoke user reaction so that they may express themselves through that media. After a period of time, they gather the traces of the users' activities left in these medias. Redesign media based on the information from the probes and iterate the next cycle are the next steps of the design process.

In this workshop, they particularly introduce the Cambrian game. Cambrian was a combination of old and new methods. Renga, which is considered as an old method, is an old Japanese series of poetries, which link as inspiration of emergence and whose space focused in sessions. The new method that they use is blogging.

In Cambrian game, renga was used as inspiration to share interesting digital images to the the community. The game allows players to submit their own "leaf" in form of pictures, images, music/sounds, movies, commentaries to a virtual tree using their mobile devices or PC. The players can link a new leaf to any inspiring leaf. A leaf can trigger some leaves which will grow the tree explosively.

Playing Cambrian game has a lot of similarities with blogging. The game encourages individual to share their personal thoughts, memories and favorites in public spaces, in particular using their mobile devices.

From learning point of view, I think the game has a lot of potentials in supporting the process of idea generation, mind mapping, data gathering, etc.

Moreover, the game can be used as means to start communication in the community. People start to get to know each other by playing the Cambrian game. In one of their workshop, the research groups extended the format of file sharing from digital pictures to movies and music. Combined with other technology, such as QR-code and RFID, further interaction and sharing information techniques can be developed further.

From game to learning

I recently attended an interesting workshop on Cambrian Game. The game allows players to submit their own leaf in form of pictures, images, music/sounds, movies, commentaries to a virtual tree using their mobile devices or PC. The players can link a new leaf to any inspiring leaf. A leaf can trigger some leaves which will grow the tree explosively.

Playing Cambrian game has a lot of similarities with blogging. The game encourages individual to share their personal thoughts, memories and favorites in public spaces, in particular using their mobile devices.

The game has a lot of potentials in supporting educational process. Some learning activities that can potentially be developed further using this game include “mind mapping”, “idea generation” and “data gathering/collection” activities.

Habbohotel, behind the scene

We had the opportunity to meet Sampo Karjalainen, the Chief Creative Officer of Sulake Oy and the original finder of Habbohotel, who visited UIAH on the 7 March 2006 to give an interesting presentation about Habbo Hotel, one of the most popular Internet virtual game in the world.

He explained that Habbohotel.com” was originally a Finnish online game, but it had been developing into a well-known online international hotel chains game. The game is the main product of Sulake Oy (Finland), which has been used by over 200.000 users in 17 countries in the world and translated into several languages. In his talk, Sampo shared to the audience the history, business strategy, design and development process of Habbo Hotel.

The original main target audience of the Habbo Hotel was Nordic youngsters from 13 to 16 years old, but their research indicated that the game is currently played by anyone from various ages and background both on computer-based as well as on mobile media.

Habbo Hotel game was designed to be different from any other online games. The game was designed as a social and casual game, which could easily be accessed and played by any ordinary people. It was expected that the game could be a means for self-expression and social orientation. Habbohotel is an open-ended game where each user can create and have their own goals. To play Habbo Hotel, each user need to have a user account, which one can get it easily for free from the Habbo Hotel website. Unless they want to buy something, such as rooms, furnitures, drinks or join any hotel clubs, this game is free. The players do not need to pay for anything. There are a lot of possibilities how users can interact with others by sending messages, chatting, treating others as well as building a personal relationship with anyone within the hotel spaces privately or publicly. As he said, the game emphasized on the self-expression, creativity and participation of the users.

Even though, playing Habbo Hotel on the mobile device is is getting popular, the common problems especially faced by youngsters are the cost of the fancy multimedia mobile telecommunication devices, data traffic cost, and Internet availability on the mobile devices.

Several issues that I have been thinking during the presentations are:

Habbo Hotel was originally developed based only game designers' ideas, based on some assumption on what it would be good for young people in Nordic countries. I was wondering if the company has done any specific user studies, testings and evaluation in different countries. They only mentioned that they conducted several playability testings. What about the interfaces or interactions in each hotel in each countries? I hope they have made some ethnographic studies in each country before they build their hotels there.

For Habbo mobile, Sampo said that the company has actually started exploring their innovative and creative mobile game concepts since 2000 before the technology was ready in the market. There have been a lot of challenges that the company has faced during the time until it launched its mobile product recently. I guess one of the success and sustainability factors of Sulake, more or less, were influenced by a supportive business environment in Finland, where small business can created, nurtured and developed with support from research, government institutions and bigger industrial organisations; by the maturity of the technology and by the willingness of the company to look at their competitors and change their own strategy to follow what their competitors do in order to survive.

Dust and Noise Seminar, 4 March 2006

On the second day, Anna Magdalena L. Midtgaard, a conservator from Copenhagen Library, presented “The Dust of History and Politics of Presentation”. Her talk was very interesting, because she talked about the real dust, instead of the philosophical or abstract meanings of dust. She explained about the dust she found in the library, on the archives and old manuscript and her conservatory works and policies on saving the library's valuable collection from the harmful dust as well as saving of library's valuable and aesthetic dust on the old manuscript collections.

She gave descriptive and vivid explanation about dust in general and how it is closely related with library and librarians. Dust can be so evil in causing illness for the librarians as well deterioration of library collections. A lot of works need to be done to clean the library as well as to preserve the collection.

Cleaning the dust in the library is not a simple matter. Researchers study different ways on how to clean the dust fast but the activity should not destroy the valuable materials. The dust in the old manuscripts, in particular, should be carefully cleaned as the dust would be able to show the historical values of the manuscript as well.

In her interesting presentation, she presented a lot of pictures and images that give vivid illustration about dust in the library. Her presentation reminds me that the presence of dust is often insignificant but it has the great positive as well as negative impacts which implies serious responsibility in treating the dust. It can be either friend or enemy for people in the library as well as people in general.

Cecilie Mejer from Copenhagen, Denmark, continued with her presentation ”From Dust to Dawn”. Her presentation was about clinical photography of the students (patients) at the blind institute in Copenhagen in the past. She aimed to analyze the pictures of the students from different periods, which include the setting, position, style, lighting, background, etc.

Clinical photography was made by doctors as a medical record to visualize the development of students. Pictures usually made on their arrival and departures showed more talking proof of the blind development than many words.

Her topic was intriguing because she tried to argue that there are relationships among context, period, space and style of the pictures.

In her picture collections, she showed that in the beginning of 20th centuries, only faces were exposed. Later, more things, such as other body parts (hands and legs) background and various settings, were exposed. However, when she was asked about the current practice, she mentioned that the medical photography is still being done, but only organ (such as eyes) were exposed. Her answer is somehow on the contrary of her previous arguments that as the time goes more parts were exposed.

Dust and Noise Seminar, 3 March 2006

On the fist day of the Dust and Noise seminar at the Media Lab, University of Art and Design, Dag Petersson, the organiser of the seminar gave an opening remark about the seminar and the Nordic Summer Institute that organized the it.

Olli Lagerspetz, from department of Philosophy, Åbo Akademi (Turku), started by presenting about ”Dirt and Refuse: Grammatical Remarks”. He discussed the philosophies of dirt and refuse from the grammatical point of view. Furthermore, he also explained how the terms “dirt” and “refuse” are used in context; how the judgment of “dirt” and “refuse” can be used.

He said that dirt was a matter that out of place. Dirtiness can be objects/substances as well as quality. While, the concept of refuse implies of any movable materials abandoned because of its uselessness, such as souvenirs, which are abandoned on the shelf after they are bought, picture of unidentified people after the important part of the pictures were used.

The concepts of dirt and refuse somehow raised discussion among the participants. Some had difficulties to relate his philosophical point of view with their works. For example, a photographer might have different perspective about dirty object. He argued that his concept can be the basis of those aesthetic works. There was also confusion among the participants when and where thing is considered as dirty. He explained that in order to judge something as a dirt, one needs to have a meaningful engagement with that particular objects.

In my point of views, the concept of dirt and refuse will have different meaning and perception depending on the context where they are used. Moreover, the concept of dirt and refuse are very subjective. For example: I will consider that the dirt on my new T-shirt as bad because I have spent a lot of money to buy those clothes and I want to enjoy the cleanliness of the new T-shirt. On the other hand, the dirt on my old T-shirt because I spill some acrylic by accident would not be considered as dirt as I used to have a plan to make this T-shirt look more eccentric and cool.

Torben Sangild, Faculty of Humanistic, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), presented some interrelations between dust and noise. Before characterizing different kinds of dust and noise, he started by giving some visual illustration about disturbing dust and annoying noise in the real world. He said that there are three kinds of noise that are acoustic, communicative and subjective noise. An example from vinyl noise were presented to give a comparison between vinyl dust nostalgia and current CD output. Briefly, he also explained that dust and noise can be found in form of visual dust and noise, such as in Adobe or Final Cut Pro (movie editing software).

An inspiration from vacuum cleaner, which is so called støvesuger (Scandinavian word: støve – dust, suger- sucker), were used to give an example of white noise. The noise of vacuum cleaner inspired in a music band as well as a white noise music (http://www.sleeplullabies.com/) to help babies getting relaxed and sleeping.