Since many of you talked about holographic representations, here is a video showing that it isn't that far-fetched anymore. Feel free to incorporate it into your projects!

Hi guys. I have been instructed to give a 5-minute overview of the abovementioned lecture. The point is to highlight some of the people we talked about, and to consider the development of art in parallel with the development of human-computer interaction, and of course, the importance of interactivity in the larger scheme of things. The points in the 2 slides I have prepared are as follows:

Slide 1:

• User-oriented, bottom-up interface systems to overcome the institutionalization of knowledge
• Based on the use of associations created by networks of users; documents could thus be linked together via a “social-space” (Vannevar Bush)
• Computer-human interaction should be matched based on the processes/needs of each domain in order to enable humans to augment mortal limits (Douglas Engelbart)
• Ted Nelson’s vision of hypertext is a conceptualization of how a bottom-up and collaborative user interface might be achieved

And Slide 2, which presents the parallels in the development of interactivity in art:

• The development of art is an allegory to Human-computer interaction
• Artists were seen as the sole authors of artwork
• This aesthetic tradition was shaken with critical/socialist realism (circa 1900s)
• Art can be seen part of society’s superstructure, and a potential ideological tool to critique the repressive tendencies of capitalism (or institutionalism)
• Duchamp’s Readymades is a representation of how the power of the institution (i.e., artists as authors) can be subverted by increasing the amount of interactivity allowed to the audience

On a final note, do keep in mind that I am approaching this topic from a liberal arts, and not fine arts perspective, so you may hear something different during the lecture. And to be pragmatic about the whole thing, if you are faced with an MCQ situation (hypothetically), always defer to what was said in your readings and in the lecture; tutorials should be seen as a space where we can challenge ourselves on what we have learnt. This is usually the case for modules in FASS that do not test your knowledge using essay questions.

Hi everyone. I came across an entry about recent tech developments over at my geek site, and thought I'd share it with the class. You can ignore the Star Trek stuff, and direct your attention to the universal translator (I do recall a group wanting to do this), the virtual cloth (which sounds really neat!), and the virtual graffiti, which is described in the video below: