Archive for the ‘research’ Category

geoRSS Layar gateway

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

This is the most recent outcome of my PhD research: a Layar layer that allows you to visualise dynamic geoRSS feeds with no effort or set-up at all. Just provide the geoRSS feed URL. Here’s an overview:

The geoRSS Layar Gateway – An overview from Josh Harle on Vimeo.

There is an example geoRSS feed that you can base your own on.

It is possible to create links that – when viewed on your iPhone – will automatically open Layar, the geoRSS gateway, and your geoRSS feed, using the following format:

layar://georssgateway?CHECKBOXLIST=1&SEARCHBOX=the tinyURL version of your feed

Please use the comments section to report any bugs or suggestions.

Conference Presentation

Monday, July 12th, 2010

The Experimental Society conference at Lancaster University has just happened, and it was a rich mix of different takes on the need for, danger of, and nature of experimentation of one form or another.

My paper was on Michel de Certeau and how we experience space (…and place/location/architecture), and how our engagement with it can take the form of experimentation. It travels via Heidegger and Deleuze and Guattari, and quietly stewarded by Bachelard, and Debord.

Annotated notes are in the second half.

Tactical and Strategic Experimentation in Space – Conference Presentation

Analogue Augmented Reality, and History

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Vivid Sydney

 
Here in Sydney at the moment we are in the middle of Vivid Sydney, a festival of “light, music and ideas”. As part of the festival, a number of historic buildings are being “augmented” with projected animations telling their history in an intervention called Macquarie Visions:

Macquarie Visions casts a new light onto Sydney’s ceremonial street, celebrating in stunning and immersive light displays, the 200th anniversary and story of two great visionary leaders, Governor Lachlan Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth.

The Macquaries’ innovations are revealed with illuminating, theatrical and contemporary light displays in a family friendly free night…

These projections are effectively an analogue version of the sort of Augmented Reality applications we should expect to see in the next few years. (In fact, the AusWiki AR layer does a similar job of pulling up Wikipedia entries associated with important Sydney buildings.) Here, the City has a vested interest in presenting a specific version of history, for the sake of promoting Sydney. The “family friendly” narrative of Sydney space excludes a great deal from its account of history.

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Tactical Surveillance

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Boardgame by Suviko on Flickr

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m reading spatial theorist Michel de Certeau for an account of spatial practices. De Certeau emphasises the inadequacy and restrictiveness of abstract representations of place as administered by authority (land owners, city planners, architects), and exposes the everyday lived experience of space which is enacted beyond it. The abstract conception of place is held by those with established, demarcated territory, who attempt to control and survey it. He calls this action Strategic. In contrast to this is the Tactical; the everyday poaching of space as we move through the city, working subtly and intuitively against the logic of the Strategic model, while jaywalking or short-cutting across the grass or squatting.

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Scanning the World in 3D

Monday, May 31st, 2010

 

In a similar vein to the image-matching against point-clouds that was demonstrated in the Bing Maps TED talk, PhotoCity is aiming to progressively construct a 3D scan of the world. To this end they have released a free iPhone app that displays current scans, and encourages users to compete to fill in gaps in the scans. Currently there is a limited number of locations available to add to, but you may start your own “seeds”, which will create new areas to improve. I’m thinking of committing to a University of New South Wales seed – any helpers?

Edit: Still waiting for my building seed to be processed from this morning. The project is very new, so hopefully the delay is because they have a backlog, and not because they have abandoned processing new locations all together.