Our Future World – Trends, Risks and Scenarios: Stefan Hajkowicz

‘How will our children, grand children and great grand children be living? What policies, research and investments do they need us to make today to make their lives better tomorrow? A megatrend is a pattern of environmental, social and/or economic activity with profound implications for how we live. Mega shocks are sudden, hard to predict, single events. Scenarios are a mix of science fiction and science fact and explore how the trends and shocks might play out into an uncertain future.’

Stefan's lecture explored in depth the concept of the megaworld, which is made up of...iworld, more or less, a personal touch and divergent demographics. What i took away from this lecture is that the megaworld and future will eventually cross over and become the same thing.


Group Work

We decided to begin our work on MAX MSP and Jitter as soon as possible, to ensure the final concept satisfies our initial aim, as well as our tutor's expectations. Below are some photos to show our work in progress.


Jo and I proposed our idea of Llankelly to the rest of the group this week--

• ‘Llankelly place is an already existing passage/walkway, which connects Darlinghurst rd to Orwell st- which then connects back onto Victoria st. The passageway consists of little restaurants and cafes and is located in the heart of Kings Cross- right near the police station and the fountain.
• We thought this could become an interactive passageway which would connect the ‘strip’ to the transport hub- drawing people away from the drama of the cross to a slightly different atmosphere behind the busy nightlife- to create a transition area between the travellers crazy night out and the cab/ transport home.’

The rest of the group agreed with the location for our transport hub. As we work to complete the DJ booth, we began to work on our A1 board and presentations.


Structure of Presentation:

• Slide one/concept: Interactive Playground

-  Desire to create an outdoor play escape in a urban setting. Design structures and incorporation of interactive technology specifically focuses on minimising antisocial behaviour, educate users on the effects of alcohol, improve safety in high activity environment and promote recreational environment.
At the semester break we proposed the introduction of projections into King’s Cross to minimise antisocial behaviour. During our research we found antisocial behaviour to be the result of alcohol fuelled violence and crime, however we were unable to find any academic research that projections could or would minimise the prevailing issues.

We used Designing Out Crime as the building blocks for our project, and since then we have developed an interactive transport hub which improves traffic flow and congestion of people and transport. The hub provides a safer route to transport for people entering and leaving the Cross.
We have proposed projections throughout the transport hub. In order of making these projections interactive, we developed the concept of a dj booth- – incorporating the same controls on a dj pad to allow the user to trigger and influence the projected images.
The camera facing the dj booth and audience are the basis of the projections, and the various effects triggered by the dj pad cause different effects on the image, i.e. blur, rotate etc. By having the camera facing them, the projections relate directly to the user’s physical state.

Design phase

Design phase- process, testing and development
-       Include location, physical development

• 3.design proposal
•   -Original intention for design
•   -Evolution of ideas

• 4. Location and connection to previous research on the stakeholders

Location- comparison between what we first outlined to the final decision, Dan’s imagery- jo’s development mapà final map outlying flow etc-Revised map of location [Alex’s mapping] and how it relates to the design proposal.
Why have we chosen this location?- Limited interference/ change to existing landscape

• Evolution of physical process, influence of MAX msp, sensors
• Include photos, diagrams, screen grabs and videos of progress
• Documentation of playing with projector in the cross at night- video footage and pictures etc

A3 Board:

• 3 images required- final design in action- main image
• Map of area – small [Alex’s creation] with key?
• Transport hub idea- small

Project name:  escape kings cross, escapade, and the strip, exit the strip, exit red-Llankelly Place
Pitch line: your tunnel to transport, the safer way to leave, your interactive departure,The interactive way to get home?

Students: Catherine Barnes, Rebecca Glaser, Alexandra Hackett, Johanna Lark, and Daniel Mazic.

Brief: to provide Kings Cross commuters with a transportation hub, which engages exiting visitors with interactive urban graffiti. The design will aim to assist in minimising antisocial behaviour, congestion issues and to provide a direct and safe passageway for departing commuters to their desired mode of transport.


Situation- physical and social context of area:The Kings Cross precinct is an inner city locality that borders the CBD. In its social context, Darlinghurst Rd or ‘the strip’ is known as Sydney’s red light district and prominent entertainment quarter. High-density traffic, a thoroughly built up area and a high volume of activity characterize the district.

Problems

• Anti-social behaviour
• Lack of transport
• Safety concerns
• High alcohol and drug consumption in a confined space
• High fluctuation of visitors/ stakeholders, especially between Fridays through to Monday mornings.

Solution: To create an interactive passageway and transportation hub which will engage exiting visitors through an interactive projection experience. The proposed DJ booth with live camera feeds of the audience, will engage, entertain and distract the departing visitors. Our primary aim is to draw individuals away from the high social activity environment of kings cross and work towards managing and decreasing congestion through the implementation of the proposed transport hub and passageway. We have chosen to place this interactive environment in Llankelly Place, Kings Cross, because the space is pre-existing, is in close proximity to the police station and there is minimal change required for infrastructure.

Benefits

• Will contribute towards minimising congestion.
• Will provide a safer route for commuters to leave the Cross.
• The interactive projection will entertain and engage visitors to distract from possible participation in anti social behaviour.


Will encourage movement of people from ‘the Strip’ into an easily accessible transport area

Week 10 9 Meals From Anarchy: Nick Ritar

Permaculture: Goal to create a permanent culture.

Milkwood Permaculture- www.milkwood.net
Ritar's lecture was based around the concept of 'whole system design', following permaculture ideals such as; How can we design truly resilient cities? Why aren't we designing urban food production as a fundamental facet of any urban design? Why is the inclusion of food growing in urban planning still largely only seen from a point of view of increasing the design's 'green' credentials or increasing its energy efficiency?


3 Core Values

1. care for the earth
2. care for each other
3. setting limits on consumption of population 

‘Australia’s cities and urban centre’s are hubs for many human needs, but not for food production. Our cities create massive organic waste streams which could be converted into excellent growing mediums, which in turn could produce a large percentage of that city’s food needs, thereby increasing food security, general nutrition and truly sustainable systems.’- Ritar. Ritar believes that it is a large scale not a small scale problem, and there are currently not enough cycles. At the moment our resources aren't moving through a cycle, instead they are in one direction...growth, consumption, waste...Ritar said that we need to complete the cycle and make use of the waste in terms of nutrition during growth of agricultural resources.


In regards to our group's design proposal idea, I found it difficult to draw parallels between it and Ritar's lecture. However, the problem space we are dealing with is part of the built environment and currently is suffering from a poor system from growth to waste, and therefore we have to be mindful of what changes we make to this environment. It is because of this that our group would like to use the existing infrastructure within Kings Cross.


Later in the week Yos spoke to us about 'Sounds as Interaction Modalities' and 'Sonic Interaction'. I found this lesson quite intriguing, as within the sound scape, what we hear is always changing. Sometimes we don't even pay attention to the sounds used for interactive purposes, for example the microwave's "beep" or typewriter's "ping".


Group Work

Rough sketch of possible design proposal

Our group shared ideas we had come up with over the week, and one idea we all liked and thought was appropriate was the concept of incorporating a DJ Booth into our interactive hub. Our goal is to play around with the idea of public projections and the different ways users/passers by can interact with our product. We aim to incorporate a range of movement sensors which may act as triggers to change the projections etc.





Shadow Monsters installation by Phillip Worthington, 2005


>>Our group finds previous work really inspiring when brainstorming possible design proposals.


This week Jo and I took a trip to Kings Cross to explore areas for the installation of our projections. Following on from the Permaculture lecture at the start of the week it has become extremely important to us that we do not distrupt the existing environment or infrastructure.


Below is the area we found and seek to propose to our group over the weekend...

We would like to make some of the central streets of Kings Cross one way to solve congestion issues,
and make our transport hub a more plausible realistic solution.

Area Proposal to present to the rest of the group

Llankelly Place- a pre-existing alleyway connecting Darlinghurst Road to Orwell Street...the perfect setting for our hub!






Orwell Street- the site of our taxi rank/transport hub...takes the people off the main street, through a safe passageway to the transport to take them home.

Week 9 The Australian Time Bomb- Prof. Tom Barker

"Humour is the enemy of authority..."


Barker explored the challenges Australia will face over the coming decades. Globally, Australia was the weathiest country per head from 1900-the early 80s. Barker puts the decline down to australian-ness and poor leadership.


The lecture argued that Australia could be a massive advantage to the Asian production market however the prime ministers from the 70s have ignored the possibility of such a notion. Barker calls this Australian-ness...democracy, the "lucky country" and selfish policies.


The many issues explored include; "Australia's;...isolation, protectionism, indigenous extinction, immigration restrictions, introspection, lack of infrastructure...which all combine to create the Australian timebomb".


For the future generations of designers, Barker suggests E-EVERYTHING... and the Internet is a good start for this. He believes it is important to access and harness the web as there lies many global opportunities.


"What is now proved, was only once imaged"- Blake

Group Work

Our group developed a semi-concrete idea this week which will allow us to go into the interactive lab and start playing with MAX and various sensors. We strengthened the concept of an interactive transport hub, and have begin to explore the relationship between the effects of alcohol on individuals with interactive projections. We are currently thinking along the lines of developing projections which are engaging and entertaining and may lower the amount of alcohol consumption by offering users something else to do.


We have now realised our group needs to focus on what we aim to target with these projections, and how they may solve the prevailing issues with the problem space. We are going to spend the week brainstorming and sharing ideas.








The LightScraper- Victoria, Australia


Featuring real-time 3D graphics and a human motion tracking system, this structure is a vortex of visuals and sound feeding off its surroundings. The LightScraper also serves as a musical instrument, emitting melodies influenced by the people’s locations.

 This is a current example of an interactive system which allows people to interact with it...pretty cool!

References:

Light Scraper: http://nait5.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/eness-lightscraper07.jpg