Break The Law/ Make Art e-mail

For those of you who decided to take one of the several panels home, here is the e-mail if it could not be read on its back:

approvedgraf@hotmail.com

Please e-mail an image (or images) of what you did with the panel you took home and a description of what happened to it. It can be as in depth as you wish, as long as you tell us where it ended up (ie. Given to family, sent to another country, etc.)

It is important you send these descriptions so that we can begin to compile a PDF that contains pictures and info on our project and will be concluded with section pertaining to what you have done with the art. The PDF will hopefully be available for download within a week or two.

Also if anyone took pictures of the Graffiti project, please send any extra pictures to the e-mail above.

Thank You

Break The Law / Make Some Art

activate the park in CA...

Canadian Architect posted a small article about Activate the Park yesterday on their website. It's just a small article, but on a site that receives thousands of hits daily.

Cheers.

This is the map of the Park

This is where your class will be located in the park.

Activate the Park - Poster Template

You can use this template. If not, this information should be included within your publicity materials.

Activate the Park! Invitation - pass it on!

Activate the Park!














First Year OCAD Interaction Design students create 15 interactive public space projects to be displayed in Butterfield Park (under the OCAD "tabletop") on March 30, 3-6pm


Toronto ON: First year interaction design students at the Ontario College of Art and Design have been charged with the task of "Activating the Park." Nestled underneath architect Will Alsop's now-famous "tabletop" is Butterfield park, a new and beautiful urban park, but one people don't linger in -- it's a space to pass through, not stop and reflect on the space or interact with others.

Each class has created an environment that will change that that will be presented from 3pm - 6pm on Thursday March 30. Projects include:

• Interactive graffiti walls
• Communal music making
• Radio controlled cars
• Human Statues
• A food fight
• A peepshow in the park
• A piñata in the park
• Paint hockey
• Giant movable cubes
• A Toronto memory map
• A race with a "randomizer"
• Giant toys
• And more…

The entire park is the canvas, and passers-by the subject. With the recent interest Toronto's public spaces, these student projects represent what happens when people look at our city's communal spaces and ask; "how can we engage people there?"

Location: Butterfield Park, south end of OCAD building, 100 McCaul Street

What is interaction design?

Interaction design is a sub-discipline of design that examines the role of embedded behaviors and intelligence in physical and virtual spaces as well as the convergence of physical and digital products. Sometimes referred to by the acronyms "IxD" or "iD," interaction design has recently developed as a field of study in a growing number of universities throughout the world. Interactive Design is concerned with a user, customer, audience, or participant's experience with a designed object, system or environment.

Sculpture garden

I went to the sculpture garden, located at 115 King Street East, near Church Street and opposite St. James' Cathedral, the Garden is both a civic and a private initiative.
Featuring a bi-annual exhibit created by various Canadian sculptors, this garden offers displays of art in a fresh outdoor setting. A walkway around the garden adds a sensual floral fragrance to experience, surrounding with beautiful flowers and art objects.
As well, the La Marquette restaurant's terrace overlooks the garden.

The Park in the Biomolecular Research Center on College St.

I went to the park inside the Geomolecuar lab on College St. Its basically a forest of bamboo trees in the entrance of the building. It has 2 main seating areas that are actually inside this small forest as well as a row of trees and a bench on the other side of the stairs. The way the park is layed out is for someone to follow the stepping stones onto a small deck with a bench to sit down.

The person would then find themselves surrounded by trees and silence, the perfect place to go and reflect. think or just relax. Its really neat because you are in this completely modern building, yet you are inside a little bamboo garden....Its very zen!

The denseness of the garden doesn't afford someone walking through it,only to follow the walkway to the bench. It doesn't afford skateboarders inside the park, but outside the building is another story! The benches are fairly big, but I don't see it holding more then 3 people before it becomes a crowed relaxation spot. It doesn't really afford playing (its a research building after all!) or loudess. I actually found this to be the most quiet place in Toronto by far...The only real noise was a fan, that was pretty quiet. It also doesn't afford any signs at all...the trees are to small..and again its inside a building!

Overall, I think the main purpose of this park is to allow the park-goer to relax and look the trees around and above. Its a very calming place, which in Toronto is most definitely needed!

Gamelan Playtime

From March/April's issue of Azure (page 50). This interactive wall/border surrounds the Royal Festival Hall in London while it's undergoing renovations.

Toronto Sculpture Garden

I had the pleasure of going to the Toronto Sculpture Garden, on King St. E, one light before Jarvis.

First of all, the visbility is pretty bad. By that I mean, it was impossible to find the place. It is wedged inbetween to historic buildings, and does not strike me as a 'park' at all. It looks like a nicley paved ally to get to the buildings behind it. I had to ask around and attempt to read the different signage near the park to confirm that this was infact it.

Below is a basic layout of how the park looks.


The park is made up of a main greenery area, and the walk way next to it.
I wasnt able to find anyone at the park, except for people who used it to get to King St. (they just walked through) But when you do find the park, it has a very welcoming walk way, with elegant lighting, and its clear to see the 2 entrances and exits.


Also, I found an artist statement (below) but no art! There was a large pillar in the middle, and I assume that might have been it? Or that had been removed.

The park did have realy moody and interesting lighting, but not much of an interaction value in them. The lights were very cool though, some of them even had smoke coming out of them.

The park did however afford certain things. There is an arched 'walkway' type area that you can use to walk around the sculptures to get a bettwer view. Also, there is a brick half wall that you could climb up onto to see the sculptures and the park from a different angle. There is also a grate bench that I assume was for sitting, although it was really uncomfortable (the metal had bent and warped, probably because people walked on it instead of sitting on it)

The Brick Wall you can climb on to see the sculptures at a cool angle.


The Middle Pillar and Walkway, aswell as some of the green



The Main bulk of the park


The Grate Bench (slightly deformed and uncomfortable) you can sit on.

There is also a concrete area, where you can stand and view the sculpture at lower angles (the conrete area is in a depressed part of the ground, making it lower)

Basically, the only thing I found of interest here, was all the different places you were able to move to view the sculptures.

The park itself allowed you to dynamically move about, without much constraints, to view the peice from many different angles, and viewpoints.

project 4 - activate the park (some ideas)

hi all,

here are some very useful and interesting links that greg has been sending around via email and now posted here for everybody's viewing pleasure. hope it helps with ideas for project 4.


wikipedia - internet of things

A related project here in Toronto, encourages cell phone users to
call a specific number to hear a pre-recorded audio story about
a specific "storied" place, for example a famous bar where artists
and musicians traded ideas and hung out. It's centred in on Spadina
Avenue, the Annex and Kensington Market.
It's called the Murmur project

Came across a funky blog from Denmark with a lot of cool
art/ design / technology posts.
For those that know the Beal Centre's work in the emerging field
we call "dataspace," there're a lot of interesting references in here.
walking cartography, etc

Analysis of an Object

Yes, it's incredibly late, (sorry :( ). But it has arrived! Hazaa!

So here is my object:


It's a 10 in 1 card reader w USB 2.0 (To bad I don't have USB 2.0 ports) The one I have is slightly different, its 21 in 1, and is blue, but is basically the same thing.

Visibility
Although its "21 in 1", there are only 4 slots to put in a card, so one has to assume each slot accomidates more than 1 type of card, the problem is there is nothing indicating which card goes where. Logically, you assume that larger cards like CF (compact flash) would go in the larger slots, of which there are two, and smaller cards like SD cards go in the smaller ones (also 2), the problem is you dont know which card goes in which slot since there is 2 of each. This is potentially dangerous, because these cards have holes for pins in them, if you put it in the wrong slot, and try and jam/force it in, you could potentially ruin your card.

Feedback
There is someonewhat of an indictaion of weather or not its working, there are 2 led lights on it, that flash green or red. The problem is, you have no idea what green or red symbolize. If you were to deduce through common knowledge that red is bad and green is good (related it to street lights) than maybe it makes sense...except even when the red lights are on, it works just fine. Infact I've never seen it with the green light on, except when it is intially plugged into the computer. PC computers make a weird sound when it is plugged in and recognized, and macs just show it as a removable drive on the desktop.

Affordances
Like I said above, its hard to figure out which card goes where, and although its similar to when you plug things into your motherboard from the back of your computer (like monitor cables etc) there is no indicatin of what goes where, and just like monitor cables that have pins, if you attempt to jam it into the wrong slot, you may potentially ruin the reader and the card. An older card reader I had, actually had the lights FLICKER when it was reading/writting data, so you were able to tell something was happening.

Mapping
Mapping? Ha! What mapping, it's non existant in this little doo-dad. Aside from the obvious fact that the power plug goes in the back of the reader (where there is only one slot for something small and box shaped to go into) There is NOTHING on this thing that tells you what kind of card goes in in which of the 4 slots. And nowhere does it indicate what each of the 2 LED lights represnt. Infact I'm a little skeptical it really accepts 21 kinds of cards, and who the hell has 21 devices that use completely different kinds of memory sticks/cards?!

Constraints
Constraints are average on this reader. If its not plugged in properly, the lights dont flicker, and it wont make a sound or show up on the desktop on PC's or Macs, respectivly. The larger cards wont fit in the smaller slots, so you can't mistakingly put a CF card in a SM/SD slot. But you could put it in a CF2 slot, and it wouldn't work. If you should put the card in the wrong slot, it wont fit snugly and the computer wont recognize it.

Habituation and Breakdown
Like alot of new technologies, it's really hard to tell if it's not working with this device. Because you interface with it through a computer, it's not easy to determine weather the computer is malfunctioning or the hardware. I assume the red LED lights are some sort of signal for a malfunction, but since it doesn't say weather its a hardware/software malfunction or even what, if anything is wrong, its hard to tell. Like I mentioned earlier, as long as I've had this thing, its been showing me a red light, but has worked fine. So, if the lights dont turn on when you plug it in, or the computer doesn't recognize it, you can tell there is a breakdown somewhere in the system. The problem is, finding out where?

Card readers like these are essential to my computer life, and I cheaped out and bought this thing, because they stopped making the one I had before. That one however, was much better. It also accepted a variety of cards, but all in the SAME slot. It had 1 light, that flickered if it was working, and was solid when it was ready to work. It was much MUCh better than this hunk of junk.