cafe (was: Portals / Table of Content, and boundary objects)

Hi Everyone, 

To follow up Christy –

Christy Spackman, Lauren Hayes and I think the social form of the meal / cafe gives a concrete “boundary object” in which to try out speculative, experimental artistic / computational techniques, as well as  conceptual questions.  It is rich enough to be a site for individual special research work, and simultaneously meaningful to people from any walk of life.  So let’s make the meal / cafe social form one of Synthesis focal research platforms.  (The other remains improvisatory events and participatory steering of complex systems in responsive environments.)

I’m hoping that this term, with Shomit, Yanjun, Ri, and Andrew R, Garrett, and 
supported by key Synthesis researchers, we can build a new generation of experiments that will lead to publications and internationally exhibitable work that can attract support from outside ASU, even outside the academy.

We’re very lucky to have faculty like Lauren and Christy interested in advising us in this work.
We are interested in helping focus the really exciting explorations into tangible iterations.

Yanjun, Shomit, Ri, Garrett, 
In order to make progress let’s propel this with the initial constraints and questions that Christy and I pose.  To repeat:

Imagine you are at a cafe. Three people are there. 
1) who are the three people whose interaction you want to prototype?
2) what might a "normal" script be for those interactions?
3) what new script(s) are you hoping to inspire?


In order to have impact, we’ll need to have an adequate production level : I will take responsibility for this — with Connor and Pete as “goto” experts, as well as Todd, Lauren, Brandon, and the Tech Team (Pete, Luke, Ozzie).   Remember the Tech Team are advisors but they have very limited time to actually fabricate solutions.   So it will be important to collanorate, recruit students, and pool skills.

Let’s talk today if we can .

I’ll Zoom in in about 15’ as soon as I get to a quite spot  and hang out near my zoom for a couple of hours as long as I can today.

Xin Wei

PS  Thanks Garrett, Shomit, Yanjun Andrew’s for earlier ideas…
Can someone — Yanjun? — start a a Google project folder + notes doc for the “cafe” ? 
We may want a more inclusive name for the social form / genre of collective meal / refreshment in common space 


On Sep 13, 2019, at 6:00 AM, Christy Spackman <Christy.Spackman@asu.edu> wrote:

Yanjun, Shomit, Ri (and Garrett),

I met with Xin Wei yesterday, and we wanted to add on one additional task for all of you. We think that the possible interactions you could explore are quite large, so we invite you to constrain it in the following way:

Imagine you are at a cafe. Three people are there. 
1) who are the three people whose interaction you want to prototype?
2) what might a "normal" script be for those interactions?
3) what new script(s) are you hoping to inspire?

Please plan on being able to present this information to us in person during Synthesis lab's open work hours in a week. Please let us know which of the drop in hours you will make.

Best,
Christy and Xin Wei

Christy Spackman, PhD
Assistant Professor
School for the Future of Innovation in Society
School of Arts, Media, and Engineering
Arizona State University

@christyspackman



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Sha Xin Wei • Professor and Director • School of Arts, Media and Engineering + Synthesis
skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
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