Roland Haring

Introducing the FabLab as interactive exhibition space

This paper introduces an approach to include a fab lab into an interactive exhibition space of a museum. Fab labs, as coined by Neil Gershenfeld, have established a great point of view for educational access to modern means of invention and technological empowerment. However realizations so far have been mainly focused on technical equipment and peer- to-peer project based training. Given the context of a museum, we focused on providing an open and easy for every visitor accessible design and fabrication space focusing on identified key elements like creative prototyping and shared creativity within the range of the realized integrative system. We describe our findings based on the work for the FabLab at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC) in Linz, Austria.

The (St)Age of Participation: audience involvement in interactive performances

Abstract In todays age of participation, co-creation, user-generated content and social networking have become part of a mass-appeal digital lifestyle. This contribution discusses potential implications for contemporary and future media art in the context of the stage. It reflects on why and how interactive performances could give consideration to this zeitgeist of empowered spectatorship and, moreover, proposes principles for participatory stage pieces that incorporate practice-based experience as well as findings from (social) flow theory, a psychological framework for optimal creative experience that we found to be valuable for fostering audience engagement in interactive dramaturgies.

Self-Organization in Trafric Networks by Digital Pheromones

Nature often provides excellent patterns for the solution of technical problems and challenges: The principle of swarm intelligence e.g., is imitated by a manifold of optimization algorithms, where organisms mark their local environment in order to indirectly communicate with their conspecifics and to consequently solve complex problems in the collective. Emerging positioning and communication technologies allow extending swarm intelligence to the traffic system. Vehicles equipped with sensors, actuators and wireless communication technology virtually annotate their local environment for indirect communication and therefore form a smart collective with self-organizing capabilities following the example of nature. This paper presents and empirically verifies a decentralized self-organizing traffic flow model using a complex micro simulator capable of simulating real city networks based on authentic data acquisitions.

Shadowgram: a case study for social fabrication through interactive fabrication in public spaces

This paper describes a case study of Shadowgram as an application of interactive fabrication in public spaces to realize a creative communication environment based on an interactive installation, which generates sticker cutouts of the silhouettes of participants. In this paper, we propose an approach called Social Fabrication that stimulates communication in society. Finally, we assess the potential of our creative catalyst by installing Shadowgram in public events and through observation and analysis we examine the behavior of participants.

Multi-user mixed reality system ‘Gulliver’s World’: a case study on collaborative edutainment at the intersection of material and virtual worlds

This case study is about ‘Gulliver’s World’, a multi-user mixed reality environment that functions simultaneously as interactive edutainment platform and learning environment as well as flexible infrastructure for the expansion of mixed reality environments via innovations in technology and media art. As an exhibition project, the installation is characterized by a nonlinear exhibition concept that activates interaction between individual users and different modes of virtual reality as well as collaboration among the users themselves. At seven workstations, people of all age groups range along the Reality–Virtuality continuum while collaboratively creating 3D worlds. Results of these creation activities are interactive worlds at the nexus of theatre, digital film production and game environment. As a research project, ‘Gulliver’s World’ features multilevel infrastructure with exemplary content in which the latest insights and models to emerge from HCI research as well as concepts of mixed reality and virtual environments and their supporting technology are brought together and developed further.

Social brainstorming via interactive fabrication

We present Shadowgram as an outcome from our research into catalyzing the creativity of audiences, in particular for the task of social brainstorming through interactive fabrication. We discuss our motivation to design Shadowgram as a natural extension of existing fabrication technologies. We discuss the functional aspects of the design and implementation, and conclude with directions for further detailed research.

SWITCH: case study of an edutainment kit for experience design in everyday life

We introduce a method to stimulate and catalyse the creativity of students and the general public in the field of experience design. The research is centered on a product design called SWITCH: a simple creative prototyping platform for everyday use which can be likened to picture frame containing a picture with two states, an on and an off state. The states are switched by one of three types of adjustable sensors (light, human, sound) and mechanism. The pictures can be easily customized with analogue art materials like pens and brushes. Our core motivation was to design a product that would bypass the inherent complexities of technology as much as possible, and directly engage the student in creating their own experience design concept with SWITCH. In this paper we introduce our motivation, methods, design and workshop strategies, and evaluations from workshops with the general public.