SF Makers, this looks like it’s going to be a GREAT dorkbot! BOCA (Bar of Contemporary Art), 7:30pm Wednesday – 11 October 2006. Here are the details from our pal Karen… – “October’s dorkbot is about pointing out the demise of the 2D desktop metaphor that has inundated anything and every thing computer-related in the last couple of decades. tim hunkin and mike kuniavsky show us alternatives and engage our senses in multi-modal, more tangible ways.
Tim Hunkin (http://www.timhunkin.com) talks about his flourishing UK arcade, full of homemade coin operated games and simulator rides. Microbreak, the three minute all inclusive package holiday: Mobility Masterclass, train for your future by crossing the freeway with a walker: Test your nerve, how long do you dare put your hand inside the mad dog’s cage: and many, many more. He shows how the machines are made, using cannibalised old arcade and gym machines and cheap consumer electronics.
Arcades used to be exciting places where you first tried the latest video games. They have a history of technical innovation going back 100 years, when many people’s first experience of moving images was Edison’s coin operated Kinescope. Arcades today have forgotten their innovative past and are cynically focussing on gambling machines. Its time for a revival!
Mike Kuniavsky (http://www.orangecone.com) points out how increasingly, the devices in our lives have behaviors that we do not, and cannot, fully control, based on technologies that are difficult to understand. This situation can be frustrating. For us nerds, these frustrations may drive our desire to hack technology or they may create a nostalgia for technologies whose power is easier to understand (or at least touch). However, many people have to live with this tech and make it do what it’s supposed to (or at least what we expect of it), but few will have the time to delve into how it works.
How can we explain the functionality of new technologies in a useful way when their actual functionality is highly complex and interrelated?
The desktop metaphor was useful for twenty years as a way to structure and explain information-processing technology. I propose using “magic” as a replacement metaphor when creating technology, instead of the desktop metaphor. Not pretending that technology is magic so as to avoid explaining how it works, but as a framework for communicating how devices work and interact with each other and with us.” – Link.
Take pictures / some notes and send us electrons…
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