Pixelache University '08: Travelling without moving
Mar 16 2008
Pixelache Helsinki Festival 2008 (13-16 March) was under the topic of “exploring education in the cross-roads of science, technology, art and culture”. In addition, there was a lot to see, hear and experience, both at Kiasma, the main festival venue, and at the “Night on Earth launch event” on Saturday evening.
Travelling without moving
The Saturday seminar, “Travelling without moving” promised interesting insights into various aspects of topics related to telepresence, virtual sociability and last but not least environmental issues:
“Today, one of the most efficient ways to reduce one’s ecological footprint is to reduce the amount of flying, or stop flying altogether. For many people this seems like an impossible solution since their professions require constant traveling. The seminar will feature examples of concrete tools to tackle this issue, and reflections of why in the era of communication technologies it is still necessary to be flying people around for face-to-face meetings?”
Image caption: Daniel Peltz and Matt Jones participated to the session remotly
Here’s a copy of my notes (by no means a comprehensive documentation).
Matt Jones on Dopplr
- Introduction of self: Availbot, a presence-aware USB toy Matt stood model for
- Dopplr social online service:
- Aim: Making travel more human
- Trips as social objects
- New feature: your personal carbon footprint graph
- Philosophy: “Scale not diet”
- Goal: Optimization rather than abandonment
- By knowing when and where your contacts are travelling, you can optimize your itinerary
Daniel Peltz
- Lofoten workshop:
- Micro-tourism
- Digitally-mediated friendship quilting
- RSID.tv project
- Among others, used during his projects in schools in Cameroon
- Connecting video clips
- Online collaboration as alternative models (partially) for studying abroad?
John Thackara
- Pre-economic vs. Post-economic
- “Always on”
- Flow of energy as base of economy
- Aristocrats of future
- “From my space to fake space”
- Telecommuting
- Cyberware company digitizing humans
- Connection over bandwidth
- “Kissing the picture” / Wittgenstein
Andreas Zachariah presenting Carbon Hero
- “Carbon Hero uses existing technologies in a novel and innovative way, without compromising the individual’s privacy, to reveal to its user their own unique Travel Carbon Footprint. It essentially identifies and evaluates the different forms of transport used as one goes about ones business getting from A to B, and then outputs this to the user.”
- Software recognizes all modes of travel, except for cycling, due to variety of cyclist typologies (from walking speed “cruisers” to car speed “racers”)
- Currently in closed beta status
Discussion
- “World without oil” game: imagining the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis
Kitchen Budapest: “No copy-paste”
Image caption: Kitchen Budapest live coding
During a 30 minutes “live coding” performance, the programming of five coders was projected on the whitescreen: a well-composed entity of four different 3D-renderings accompanied with sound (PureData) generated live on the fifth screen.
