• Urban Drift • m-Learning with apps • Dennis Dollens

Game of Life used as a form generator

The development of a uDrift component for a design class in October & November temporarily shifted development to common areas where the Summer uDrift 3 week class could contribute and benefit from drifts taking place for the development of an e-learning program at a larger, full-time scale. The above pages introduce some of the “elective” areas where m-learning may intersect the summer class. The images above, from the Game of Life (simulated, algorithmic e-life) relate to city streets and emergent data from them, and may enter our discussion of games, mapping, layers of information.

Shell Tower Silhouette Study

Collected shells as tower massing

Collecting only shell with holes made by viruses, I randomly thread them onto small rods making abstract, physical models that serve as a kind of tower from. They are used for sketching and photographs, sometimes video and in a sense become generators for e-learning ideas. The eventual software-mediated design (or text or photographs or drawings) will not look like shells, but may use attributes from their random forms as ideas for architectural or sculptural profiles and silhouettes. After several days of model making, with a few different models made repeatedly on site, the physical studies illustrate methods of stacking, linking, pairing, abutting, cupping, rotating, standing-on-end — assemblages — that substantiate geometric relationships not limited to shell clusters and thus generative design, formal studies. The individual shells are thus actively engaged, sought out, but their embodied relationships, collective forms, and materiality are emergent.

Florida Blanca Squat 2 April 2012

Full MapMyRide route imported into Google Earth

Area of study, overlooping tracks indicate paths used for photographs

This was a test for exporting MapMyRide (walk) data into Google Earth; the 4.95 mile walk and the original map are given in the link in the previous post.

Suqat/Graffiti Walk

While I’m testing apps for environmental and urban mapping, I thought to also begin tracking some subjects that could be researched in Urban Drift projects. These are samples and only intended as examples of possible areas of research. I will be posting topics suitable for u-Drift projects to give an idea of the types of material and subjects that may be approached. With only two examples we could still imagine topology studies of “how to read urban markings,” or “when does graffiti become art,” or “what public service is delivered in graffiti,” etc. In upcoming posts I will create some images where the maps are integrated into the research.

Morning Walk / Afternoon Walk (Click to enlarge; Two screen composite)

Last night Hamish pointed me toward OpenPaths and I’m beginning to test it today. It has export abilities and what looks interesting is its automatic locations pins. Update later this afternoon.
Android and iOS

https://openpaths.cc/

8:30pm update — the map on the left shows the paths for morning errands; on the right, the walk to the Moray House School of Education — both images are screen shots from the OpenPaths website. The app is demonstrating useful narrative and tracking abilities and I will be testing it in relation to MapMyRide.

Urban Drift is a group-sourced, project-based class testing mobiles and smartphones as collaborative devices. While complexity theory propels the class OS, that theory stays in the background. The class involves one or two brief texts per week followed by asynchronous blog discussion. uDrift’s deeper goal is in using mobile phones and apps as constructive, AI imbued, and collaborative m-learning devices. Considered as learning partners, mobile phones then allow a different approach to landscapes and urban places for natural, cultural, and artistic production. It is this territory of mobile-assisted environmental and urban exploration and research, from which our three exercises emerges. The commitment of time will depend on project detail, but on average students should allow between 5 and 8 hours per week.

See the post below for a longer uDrift explanation.

(First see video Golden Tiger below — it’s less than 2 minutes & then take a look at the box above called “Drawing w/Satellites for a preview of class material.)

The class will be implementing some posthuman strategies, not as theory, but as method. Individually and as a group we shall discuss aspects of mobile and smartphone technology as collaborative between students, networks, and objects/environments (no theoretical background required.) This will give us a common scaffold for individual and/or collective action in an environment of choice. From the beginning we involve GPS territorial strategies easily carried out in Google Maps or with mobile apps. Some of workings will if you like, be based in movement, narrative, or on video and e-games, situating the user/student in a context between mobile technology and built and natural environments. A second phase, sets to use the mapped environment in collaboration with project research (brief video production, jpeg essay, app drawing, or social media text) engaging some specific place/thing found in the mapped territory.

In each of the second and third weeks there will be slightly more detailed discussion of posthuman spatial occupation and what m-learning can deliver differently than e-leaning. In this sense, each week there is another layer of environmental / technological depth and creative engagement between student + technology + place.

The choice of apps, the use of territory, and the implementation will be guided and assisted by me using tweets, email, and Skype. At least initially, the home base will be this MScEL site. But for mobile and open-access the class will drift to a collaborative hosting blog. For sure, if you have specific ideas to experiment with, or specific apps to test, we will attempt to incorporate them.

In the end, we aim for a 3-part layering (one layer per week) of e-learning as it is reflected in m-leaning technology and environment, but customized to your way of being in a physical place supported by technology. We will have implemented what in cybernetics is known as a feedback system. We shall capture aspects of posthuman narrative and territory as they assist us to generate and articulate the drawings, video, jpeg essay, or social media mix through the eM-leaning process. And we will have returned them to the environment and our subsequent thinking as our mapped artifacts of technological mediated occupation and place.

My last point, the above may sound slightly complex — but it’s not difficult.

For Urban Drift: This brief video plays out non-standard urban visualizations and image mapping. I’m previewing it here for you to have a sense of the type of material that will appear for class and discussion. What is this video’s relationship to graffiti for example, and how could we learn from it’s technology and aesthetics with our mobile phones as production equipment? What does it tell us about “marking” place or making “signs?”

GE’s Butterfly-inspired Design to Enable Advanced, Low Cost Thermal Imaging Devices