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To try out my idea, I´m currently making a prototype for the system. A bracket to place on the bike, that allows me to adjust the positioning of the camera. I have some rough footage taken on the way to school yeasterday, the quality is realy poor and this shows some of the limitations of the idea.

 I have also found two relevant projects: passingby is a website that shows images taken from cars and busses. Interesting idea, but it shows how boring such footage may be. The other is a site where messenger and bike-enthusiast Lucas Brunell has an archive of videos depicting him and friends draggracing through the streets. Again, even though the adrenaline level is much higher, the experience is somewhat monotone. Then again, this time-lapse film shoot from a bike is satisfying enough to watch even though I don´t know the neighbourhood.  

With some mentoring from Mosse today, I feel more comfortable on pursuing the idea of “blogging” city bikes (I will cease to use terms revolving the “blog” in this project I think, it doesn’t´t have the right feel). The concept has a strong appeal, much due to the context. The bike is a positive charged object that most people relate to.

  

 

  I have been looking at the bike sharing system in Oslo as a possible context for my project. What appeals to me about this particular context is its connection to the local. The bike depots are placed locally and in well defined areas of the neighbourhood. The bikes themselves connects different areas in new ways, and stimulates exploration of new areas. Also using the bikes gives a community feeling, and a connection to other city-bike users you pas on the way. The System allows for interaction with more or less motivated people, and further the huge daily activity can generate a lot of data. About you, about the bike and about the system. What to do with this data is another thing. 

My proposal is blogging city-bikes. There are about a thousand bikes in Oslo at the moment, so maybe only a third or so of the bikes may be engaged. The bikes will be equipped with a GPS reciever, a camera and possibilities to upload the data collected. In use, the camera will take random photos  triggered by speed, location, transit, etc. The data can be compiled to concern the individual users, the individual bikes themselves, and mashed on top of maps, and used in timelaps films from destination to destination.

The week with Tom Igoe in prototyping has so far been really interesting. we have gone through some applications like using multiple controllers from a microcontroller to processing, and reading RFID tags from multiple readers. We are now going into more serial communications, looking at Xbee and bluetooth communication between devices.

I´m still looking into exactly what to prototype, I have an idea about making photo-blogging city bikes that will involve the use of an RFID reader, Internet communication, possibly GPS tracking and hopefully digital camera. Looking forward to more insight tomorrow.

Working on my project last week, I found myself plunged into social theory (actually drowning in ideas from  Baudelaire, Benjamin and Habermas.). Very interesting stuff for sure, but I realized that I may be going too deep into the theoretical stuff. In the end I am designer and should focus on creation rather than evaluation (although the theories themselves are easily inspiring). So I decided to compile my thoughts  and inspiration coming out of these papers. It turned out that a text was to big a task for a Friday afternoon, so inspired by Christers dictionary, I have started on a kind of lexicon of my own. It is just a begining, so feel free to critique or add words and concepts.

Further, I am pushing to focus my project to a more concrete level. I´m doing further research on materials, information and interfaces in public space, and to set the project in a specific context, I´m looking at people in transit, in local places. With this I mean i.e. a student unlocking a city-bike, or a woman waiting for the tram to work. The moments when we are moving from  one mode of transport to another.

The coming week our course are having a work-shop with Tom Igoe to make working prototypes for interactions. I have been trying to think what kind of platform I could build that is useful for my project. Obviously, I would like to make a communication platform that can deal with RFID reading and bluetooth or wifi technology, but  I see that as being a tad ambitious for one week. I would like to make two RFID readers to talk with each other. 

What I also need is a platform that can be used to make various feedbacks from the RFID reader. This would allow for detailed mapping of the actual interaction, but what feedbacks should i concider? (I want to work around using the screen as the main interface, so sound, vibration and lights are obvious contestans).

Last, as I´m making a interface that has to work outdoors, it has to be robust, and withstand a tough climate (and also “age well”). So the interface itself might want to respond to different lighting conditions, temperatures and humid conditions.  

Last Friday, I held my first workshop and I´m quite satisfied. Not so much about concrete results but at the inspiration of holding a workshop and getting such a massive output from only four persons over three hours.

We started with the familiar:  I had told Fan Fan, Kyrre and Natacha  (atending the workshop) to bring a (any kind of) item from the area where they live. They brought a stone, a poster and a piece of wood from a bench. We continued with an association on what the items could mean and their qualities and what they could be used as. We used different scenarios to examine different angles.  It was sort of a warm-up to put us in the right mind-set, and turned out to be very inspiring. 

We continued by looking at a map over the area around the school. My idea was that we were to uncover opportunities by reading the area´s different functions, qualities, feelings, etc (my first simple take on a kind of psycho-geography). The session was inspiring and by all means fruitful, but it turned out to be difficult to get the participants read the map in an abstract way. I think I want to use more time on this part next time.

After that we had a session of free asosiation on a problem definition I had prepared: “how can we discover secrets in an area”. The words were grouped, and then used as inspiration to make ideas tied to specific places on the map, and continued to work around those ideas.

I found this object at my school, and was instantly inspired by it. It is originally a lamp or something (I don´t know who made it) powered through a usb connection. What inspired me was the combination of material and technology, the possibility of being at the same time an architectural element and  an electronic device. Imagine connecting your computer to the street via USB…