Responsive Environments Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Technologies capable of automatically sensing and recognizing emotion are becoming increasingly prevalent in performance and compositional practice. Though these technologies are complex and diverse, we present a typology that draws on similarities with computational systems for expressive music performance. This typology provides a framework to present results from the development of two audio environments for the Emotional Imaging Composer, a commercial product for realtime arousal/valence recognition that uses signals from the autonomic nervous system. In the first environment, a spectral delay processor for live vocal performance uses the performer's emotional state to interpolate between subspaces of the arousal/valence plane. For the second, a sonification mapping communicates continuous arousal and valence measurements using tempo, loudness, decay, mode, and roughness. Both were informed by empirical research on musical emotion, though differences in desired output schemas manifested in different mapping strategies.

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- Responsive Environments, Affective Computing
- by Larry D Busbea
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- Design, Participatory Design, Environmental History, Cybernetics

From sculpture and performance to art and technology projects, video art, and installation art, this book charts the rise of interpersonal modes of art spectatorship. It provides a historical account of mirroring processes in contemporary art and offers insight into the phenomenological and socio-political concerns that have inspired artists to stage processes of affective, perceptual, and behavioral mirroring between art viewers.

- by Cristina Albu
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- Art History, New Media, Installation Art, Contemporary Art

This paper examines the links between social-emotional learning (SEL) and intercultural education. The work calls for pedagogical attention to the role of emotions in intercultural education and analyses the role of SEL within the umbrella of intercultural education. It claims that both SEL
and intercultural education offer a framework for rethinking and changing curricula, school climates and relationships providing the foundation for quality of education for all.
Therefore, this connection is not only critical but also inevitable and desirable. It asserts that SEL in intercultural landscapes is a human right that all students are entitled to, and argues that ignoring this right amounts to a social injustice.
Some pedagogical considerations and strategies for enacting a culturally relevant implementation of SEL in intercultural settings will be provided. The purpose of the paper is to inform the debate on the role of emotional aspects in intercultural education, and how to configure culturally
responsive teachers.

Once a practising architect, engaged in the offices of Gunter Behnisch, Christian Moeller was attracted away from the conventional route of the profession by the stimulation and opportunities of the 1980s art scene. In this profile by Lucy Bullivant, the now professor of media arts/design at UCLA describes his aptitude for the accessible, and why he prefers ‘temporary fireworks’ and experiment in his interactive practice over permanent installations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Electronic surfaces to buildings that carry sounds and imagery are not new in a world of high-technology billboards. However, BIX Matrix, writes Lucy Bullivant, is integral to the architecture of the Kunsthaus in Graz – an innovative and... more

'Toward Responsive Architectures' is a part of the exploration of the interconnectedness of what surrounds us. The focus of the Responsive Architectures: Subtle Technologies collection is on a new generation of interactive systems within science, art and architecture that are based on constantly evolving relationships. Using a wide definition of architecture that includes both built and natural realms, we examine dynamic systems and environments of scales from molecules to cities. A responsive environment can be described as a networked structure that senses action within a field of attention and responds dynamically with programmed and designed logic. Focusing the issue of responsiveness more precisely within the field of architecture raises multiple questions: which parameters of such environments might a designer address in order to imaginatively employ their capacities for dynamic transformation and interaction? These projects cast light on the subject of responsive architecture from diverse viewpoints derived from current architecture, science, and art practices. They examine the relation between a physical environment and its inhabitants and focus in particular on professional practice. How do responsive systems affect us? Scientific research, art and architecture come together in this multidisciplinary forum documenting the 2006 Subtle Technologies Festival of Art and Science. Subjects include electronic art and performance installations, research in cell structures and natural systems, and design of interactive buildings. Discussions include historical context and contemporary implications.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's skepticism about the expressive scope of propositional language, Jacques Derrida's critique of logocentrism, generalized via semiotics to all forms of representation, and Judith Butler's analysis of the performativity of gender motivate the turn to performance as an alternative to representation. In this essay I discuss a genre of responsive environments in which computationally augmented tangible media respond to the improvised gesture and activity of their inhabitants. I propose that these responsive environments constitute an apparatus for experimentally investigating questions significant for both performance research and philosophical inquiry. The responsive environments were designed as sites for phenomenological experiments about interaction and response, agency, and intention under three conditions: (1) the participants are physically co-present, (2) each inhabitant is both actor and spectator, (3) language is bracketed. The last condition does not deny language, but focusses attention on how an event unfolds without appealing solely to textual or verbal communication. As such, these environments constitute performative spaces whose media -- sound, visual field, acoustics and lighting, objects and furnishings -- can be reproducibly conditioned, and in which actions can be rehearsed or improvised. I will describe the apparatus of these performative spaces in enough detail to be able to address certain phenomenological questions about the continuum of intentional and accidental gesture in the dynamical substrate of calligraphic media : continuous fields of video and sound or other computationally animated materials, continuously modulated by gesture or movement. I suggest that emerging forms of calligraphic media present an alternative to linguistic pattern for the articulation of affectively charged events, practically and theoretically interrogating the status of narrative in the construction of theatrical events. The central question, however, is how can ambient and its inhabitants co-articulate an event, or in a related phrasing, what are the dynamics of a meaning-making event? The techniques I employed in a new kind of dynamics for temporal media and people to co-articulate an event were essentially an energetic dynamical system not in the stratum of physical bodies and objects but in the stratum of metaphor, or more precisely of state of event. Modelled after statistical physics of continuous media, this sort of dynamics differs radically from fixed scores and timetracks, from boolean logic, and also from aleatory techniques. Moreover, the dynamics allows unbounded multiplicity and continuous overlapping state, profoundly distinct from digital logic and graph-theoretic logic. Eppur si muove.

A multidisciplinary team based at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, ETH, Zurich, was responsible for Ada: the intelligent room, an interactive space conceived of as a human being that responded to visitors at Exp02, the Swiss national exhibition at Neuchatel, where it was launched, writes Lucy Bullivant. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This PhD research project builds on thirteen years of enquiries as an academic practitioner, developing/critiquing interactive audio-visuals. This approach interweaves theory and practice so that both build on each other. It responds to the need for principles that inter-relate people, digital technologies and environments. The concept of “responsive environments” (RE) is offered as a starting point for the development of principles focusing on people within these environments. A responsive environment is “responsive” in the sense that some form of computer technologies are present and sensing/recording/reacting to people, and an “environment” in the sense that these activities are located in a place and that that place matters in terms of setting the scene, housing the technology and providing a context for the users/visitors. Common themes were extracted from the literature review to draw together previous and, for the most part, separate attempts at theory/practice relating to RE. These themes were complemented by research into contemporaneous activities in the areas of Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Locative Media to provided enhancements to the development of three practice projects. These enhancements together with the incorporation of Moore and Anderson’s concepts of “patient”, “actor”, “reciprocator” and “referee” as roles available to those encountering REs led to specific research questions regarding roles, positions, opportunities for repurposing content, learning experiences, the use of sound, visuals and presence, and the assessment of values represented in and through a responsive environment. In each case these questions shift the emphasis of the research towards the experiencing of REs and what they enable rather than the technologies used only. The use of Schwartz and Halegoua’s concept of the “spatial self” further focuses attention of the value in connecting digital expression with real spaces through an RE. This has led to a proposed conceptual framework and principles of practice that can be applied in the area of study of RE to nurture opportunities for participants and protagonists. The latter term is proposed as a means of acknowledging opportunities to make content/concepts in an RE as well as obtain and use them by participation. These opportunities are supported by both synchronous and asynchronous interactions through digital layers using online social media platforms. These platforms enable the archiving of content in a digital layer and/or possibilities for continued social interaction through a digital social layer in relation to the responsive environment. The incorporation of synchronous and asynchronous interactions through digital layers is a major contribution to the concept of REs. A further contribution is the use of the pioneering work of Gordon Pask in both the practice and theory of cybernetics as informing the concept of REs. Pask provided a formulation that expressed how content/concepts could be produced through relationships between people, computers and environments. This approach has been mirrored in other disciplines thus giving additional credence to its value. This discovery provides the impetus for further research, by academic practitioners and others, in this developing area of study.

- by Dr. Brian R. Sinclair
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- Architecture, Resilience, Systems Thinking, Responsive Environments
- by Duncan Patterson
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- Human Computer Interaction, Cyborg Theory, Architecture, Poetry
- by Philip Beesley
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- Artificial Intelligence, Cyborg Theory, Architecture, Installation Art
- by Orit Halpern
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- Architecture, Ubiquitous Computing, Cybernetics, Responsive Environments

In this paper we report on an ongoing collaborative research-creation project focused around urban socioaesthetic ambiences. This custom media system sonifies group movement. We propose a speculative application of real-time gestural computation of group activity and poetically composed media which scopes movement and computing to a realm of concerns endemic to public life. What's at stake is the role of media, sensing, and computation in the composition of urban futures, social experience and public life (the commons). The computation intends to catalyze and intensify renao poiesis, while attuning to possibilities for improvised public life to create novel and ethical public futures.

- by Xin Wei Sha and +1
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- Interaction Design, Urban Studies, Responsive Environments, Social Media

Ambient intelligence originates from the confluence of ubiquitous computing, sensor networks, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction design. The vision it promotes is one of a world where technology is deeply integrated into our physical environments, where systems work cooperatively to support people in carrying out their everyday life activities, and where intelligence derived from sensor networks is used to learn, anticipate, and adapt to the user’s needs. Tailor aims to explore the ideals present in ambient technology by imagining what it would be like to embed computation into our clothing. Following this pursuit, we propose the creation of a system that can autonomously learn from the occurring interactions between a user and their clothing, that can use this knowledge to anticipate user needs, and that can be merged into the environment to support natural and human interaction styles.

This paper attempts to document the crucial questions addressed and analyze the decisions made in the design of an interactive structure. One of the main contributions of this paper is to explore how a physical environment can change its shape to accommodate various spatial performances based on the movement of the user’s body. The central focus is on the relationship between materials, form and interactive systems of control.Alloplastic Architecture is a project involving an adaptive tensegrity structure that responds to human movement. The intention is to establish a scenario whereby a dancer can dance with the structure such that it reacts to her presence without any physical contact. Thus, three issues within the design process need to be addressed: what kind of structure might be most appropriate for form transformation (structure), how best to make it adaptive (adaptation) and how to control the movement of the structure (control). Lessons learnt from this project, in terms of its structural adaptability, language of soft form transformation and the technique of controlling the interaction will provide new possibilities for enriching human-environment interactions.

- by Russell Richards
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- Sociology, Computer Science, Interaction Design, Responsive Environments

Chapter 3, pp 101-124 Rhythm and Critique: Technics, Modalities, Practice ed. Paola Crespi, Sunil Manghani Rhythm requires variation of matter – in a perfectly homogeneous experience of a perfectly homogeneous world there can be no... more

- by Xin Wei Sha
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- Gesture, Rhythm, Phenomenology, Time-Consciousness
- by Duncan Patterson
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- Human Computer Interaction, Cyborg Theory, Art, Architecture

Based on several research by design cases illustrations, the paper aims to conclude a mix of diverse media in reference to diverse generative agency in Systemic Approach to Architectural Performance design field. In this field, the design processes and design's performances in time are seen as the 'resulting design objects'. Therefore, the agency involved in both is merged and proceeds parallel within one co-performative and co-living ecosystem in its fight for Post-Anthropocene in built environment. SAAP is a fusion of several process based fields and their media, involving namely: a) 'Systems Oriented Design'; b) 'Performance Oriented Architecture'; 3) 'Prototypical Urban Interventions'; d) 'Time-Based Design'; e) 'Service Design'; f) 'Co-Design, Co-Creation and DIY'. The paper separately investigates SAAP's relations to these fields and concludes with their integration and synergy.

- by Marie Davidova
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- Ecosystems Ecology, Responsive Environments, Performance, Wood Science

This paper attempts to document the crucial questions addressed and analyze the decisions made in the design of an interactive structure. One of the main contributions of this paper is to explore how a physical environment can change its shape to accommodate various spatial performances based on the movement of the user’s body. The central focus is on the relationship between materials, form and interactive systems of control. Alloplastic Architecture is a project involving an adaptive tensegrity structure that responds to human movement. The intention is to establish a scenario whereby a dancer can dance with the structure such that it reacts to her presence without any physical contact. Thus, three issues within the design process need to be addressed: what kind of structure might be most appropriate for form transformation (structure), how best to make it adaptive (adaptation) and how to control the movement of the structure (control). Lessons learnt from this project, in terms o...

- by Alvin Huang
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- Computer Science, Tensegrity Structures, Responsive Environments, Smart Materials

Urban spaces and public spheres are reshaped by information and communication technologies. So far architecture, however, has remained a frozen, static environment, incapable of adapting to changing contextual parameters. This research project - topotransegrity - explores how a responsive architecture can be introduced in public spaces challenging long-held assumptions about architecture as a passive arrangement. It investigates today's networked ways that enable architecture itself to operate as an intelligent interface that connects spaces, users, and performance criteria in real time. It studies the capacities a reconfigurable structure has to react to, and more importantly interact with the people occupying a space, and to what extent it can become an architecture of reciprocity, developing patterns generated by the presence and actions of people.

- by Philip Beesley
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- Architecture, Hybrid Systems, Art and Science, Responsive Environments

SC is a modular suite of software designed to allow designers to compose the behavior of a responsive media environment evolving in concert with contingent activity in a physical space. The media can be rich and fairly eccentric: projected video, spatialized audio, theatrical lighting — generally fields of structured time-varying light and sound, as well as water, mist, animated objects etc. The behavior of the responsive environment evolves according to prior design as well as contingent activity.1 A key condition is that everything happens in real-time, in concert with the activity of the inhabi- tants of the responsive environment. SC supports rich and thick experiences with poetic, symbolic, and scientific effects.

La natura pervasiva dell'informazione digitale e dell'interazione tecnologi-ca si ripercuote ad ogni scala, dal singolo individuo agli ambienti urbani fino alle grandi infrastrutture di supporto. Sotto l'appellativo di smart cities si racchiudono i modelli di sviluppo urbano orientati alla creazione di si-stemi, luoghi e processi altamente performanti ed efficienti, i quali, facendo uso di sensori e tecnologie di big data, ambiscono ad ottimizzare operazioni e monitorare il complesso sistema delle dinamiche urbane. Tali logiche pos-sono essere integrate ampliando i limiti dell'efficientismo tecnologico attra-verso il coinvolgimento attivo della cittadinanza nel funzionamento della città. Attraverso l'applicazione del concetto di glitch urbano, questo saggio vuole ridefinire il concetto di smart city, estendendolo poi a quello di smart environment o di smart landscape, applicazione più ampia del quadro par-tecipativo per lo sviluppo di territori. Applicativa concretizzazione di tale coniugazione sono i contratti di paesaggio, intesi come un accordo fra la cittadinanza e le amministrazioni per la costruzione di progettualità integrate per lo sviluppo dell'ambito paesaggistico individuato, specificatamente indirizzato verso una governance del territorio e delle relazioni sociali.

- by Stefano Andreani and +1
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- Responsive Environments, Urban Design, Smart City

the urban-design approach of RESPONSIVE ENVIRONMENTS (1985)--permeability, variety, third places, and new urbanism

This process account demonstrates how a student-led, peer-to-peer learning Design-Build initiative is transforming the academic experience at Waterloo Architecture. The paper outlines how F_RMlab—a collective founded by a core group of graduate students in Waterloo’s self-directed masters program—is acquiring agency and resources for advanced computational design through the analysis of Field Guide–a responsive ceiling canopy–as a catalyst for student initiated Design-Build research.

- by W. Connor O'Grady and +1
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- Design, Architectural Education, Responsive Environments, Peer-to-Peer

In this essay I discuss a series of art installation cum
performance events called TGardens. These tangible environments'computationally augmented media respond to the improvised gesture and activity of theirinhabitants. They were designed as phenomenological experiments about interaction andresponse, agency, and intention. I describe the architecture of these performative spacesin enough detail in order to be able to address certain phenomenological questions aboutagency and the continuum of intentional and accidental gesture in the dynamical substrateof
calligraphic media without grammatical superstructure.

- by Xin Wei Sha
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- Experimental philosophy, Responsive Environments, Performance, Experimental Theatre

On Paolo Soleri's understanding of the relationship between consciousness and the built environment.

- by Larry D Busbea
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- Responsive Environments, Consciousness, Desert Ecology, Environmental Design

We present a stream of research on Experiential Complex Systems which aims to incorporate responsive, experiential media systems , i.e. interactive, multimodal media environments capable of responding to sensed activity at perceptual rates, into the toolbox of computational science practitioners. Drawing on enactivist, embodied approaches to design, we suggest that these responsive, experiential media systems, driven by models of complex system dynamics, can help provide an experiential, enactive mode of scientific computing in the form of perceptually instantaneous, seamless iterations of hypothesis generation and immersive gestural shaping of dense simulations when used together with existing high performance computing implementations and analytical tools. As a first study of such a system, we present EMA, an Expe-riential Model of the Atmosphere, a responsive media environment that uses immersive projection, spatialized audio, and infrared-filtered optical sensing to allow participants to interactively steer a computational model of cloud physics, exploring the necessary conditions for different atmospheric processes and phenomena through the movement and presence of their bodies and objects in the lab space.

- by Christopher Roberts and +1
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- Responsive Environments, Interactive Arts, Interactive Environments, Responsive media
- by Xin Wei Sha
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- Experimental philosophy, Experimental Media Arts, Rhythm, Gilles Deleuze

Parallel with the introduction of the computational design environment, architectural design and representation processes witness a radical transition, which may be asserted to initiate a paradigm shift affecting both. In this new design environment, the computational design process is governed by process-based studies making use of relations and equations that aim to define a constantly evolving process, where the end-product alters simultaneously with data integration and modification. This paper focuses mainly on active/dynamic environments defined by responsive systems where there exists a mutual relation between the system (made up of sensors, reactors, and collectors etc. that provide the information flow) and the user. Simultaneously capturing the data from the user, scanning into numeric data and transmitting it to the relations, the responsive models propose simultaneous visualization of their interaction with the user, thus redefining the architectural representation process within the computational design environment.

Poster presentation at ISG2010 Vancouver, Doctoral Masterclass. Presenter: Dalton, C., B Arch, MRIAI Supervisors: Harrison, J.D., B Arch, D Litt, McCartney, Prof. K. Cork Centre for Architectural Education, College of Engineering & Food... more

In this essay I discuss a genre of responsive environments in which computationally augmented tangible media respond to the improvised gesture and activity of their inhabitants. I propose that these responsive environments constitute an apparatus for experimentally investigating questions significant for both performance research and philosophical inquiry. The responsive environments were designed as sites for phenomenological experiments about interaction and response, agency, and intention under three conditions: (1) the participants are physically co-present, (2) each inhabitant is both actor and spectator, (3) language is bracketed. The last condition does not deny language, but focusses attention on how an event unfolds without appealing solely to textual or verbal communication. As such, these environments constitute performative spaces whose media -- sound, visual field, acoustics and lighting, objects and furnishings -- can be reproducibly conditioned, and in which actions can be rehearsed or improvised. I describe the apparatus of these performative spaces in enough detail to be able to address certain phenomenological questions about the continuum of intentional and accidental gesture in the dynamical substrate of calligraphic media : continuous fields of video and sound or other computationally animated materials, continuously modulated by gesture or movement. I suggest that emerging forms of calligraphic media present an alternative to linguistic pattern for the articulation of affectively charged events, practically and theoretically interrogating the status of narrative in the construction of theatrical events.

- by Philip Beesley
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- Architecture, Installation Art, Contemporary Art, Synthetic Biology

This paper describes a particular contribution toward design methods for responsive, interactive architecture, drawing from the Hylozoic Series, a decade-long evolving group of highly distributed, extremely lightweight immersive environments employing textile-like resilient scaffolds and distributed computational controls embedded with synthetic biology . In this discussion I make comments about emplacement in pursuit of a fundamental relationship with the environment rooted in diffusive form. I describe subtle phenomena that evoke expanded physiologies, embodying the forms of diffusion and dissipative forms. Building from these qualities, projects are described that approach living qualities. I argue for a particular kind of form language employing diffusive and dissipative forms. This morphology stands distinctly against the prevailing modern preference for stripped, minimal stages offering freedom. The language I argue for instead pursues culpable involvement. An undulating, quasiperiodic metabolism is evoked by this series of projects. Rather than a polarized working method that follows only a ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ method, the edges of this working method oscillate. The deliberate ambivalence of this approach can yield qualities where things convulse and stutter in emerging vitality.

- by Philip Beesley
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- Distributed Computing, Human Computer Interaction, Electronics, Kinetics

Music has become a ubiquitous element of the restaurant soundscape, one that even in the most calculated dining environments is commonly relegated to the role of a background mood enhancer. In a series of events that I call “food operas,” I have explored ways to pair food and sound more overtly, using techniques adapted from my work in the video game industry to synchronize music with different courses, to conform to the indeterminate durations of dining room states, and to provide variation over the extended length of a multi-course meal. This paper describes the challenges of building a sound deployment system for a restaurant that delivers and coordinates a customized soundtrack for each diner, while also examining the expressive potential of this new genre.

- by Ben Houge
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- Responsive Environments, Phonography, Cooking, Generative Music

- by Fabio Bianconi
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- Geography, Responsive Environments, Urban Design, Smart City

This paper examines the historical momentum in architecture and applications of data-harvesting processes. The concept of Inclusive Data is introduced and elaborated, exemplary case studies are examined and implementations proposed.... more