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PORTABLE EFFECTS: A Survey of Nomadic Design Practice
``` [Note that this show closes soon.]
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Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 12:22:22 -0700 From: rachel@interval.com (Rachel Strickland) Subject: PORTABLE EFFECTS: A Survey of Nomadic Design Practice
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.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PORTABLE EFFECTS: A Survey of Nomadic Design Practice
by artist in residence Rachel Strickland at the Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA 1 March - 1 June 1997 1:30 - 5pm, daily except Mondays
Where are you going today? What did you leave behind? What things did you bring? How do you wear these things while you're in motion? Where do you park them when you stop? Do you think you may have forgotten the most important thing?
Everybody is a designer in everyday life. Yet we share no common vocabulary for describing everyday design practice, and few would even claim to have a coherent method for pursuing it. Through glimpses into human mobile nature, Portable Effects is an interactive video exploration which prompts each of us to consider the design motives and methods that underlie our daily transactions with ordinary objects.
People's selection and arrangement of the things they take with them-in handbags, pockets, briefcases, backpacks, etc.-form the context of the investigation. Between setting forth in the morning and returning home at night, each person lives nomadically for several hours a day. You can't take everything with you-neither in your backpack nor in your head. Identifying essentials, figuring out how to contain, arrange and keep track of them as you go are instances of design thinking. Understanding the properties and consequences of portability is a way to grasp principles that underlie the transferability of knowledge from one domain to another. A purse is a physical container, a changing array of interrelated functions, a prosthesis for memory, a haptic "user interface," an information system. The life size lessons of purse design and pocket organization may be adapted to larger and more complex 3-dimensional problems that frame our ephemeral earthly experience.
The Portable Effects project was initiated in 1989 by architect/videographer Rachel Strickland and educator Doreen Nelson, with the support of Apple Computer. In 1993 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded a grant to seed the development of an interactive video database for introducing principles of design practice through the Portable Effects material. The work has unfolded since then under the direction of Rachel Strickland, as a research project of Interval Research Corporation, with the collaboration of the Exploratorium.
.. . . . . . . . . A Word about System Architecture
The Portable Effects exhibit at the Exploratorium consists of five stations, all connected to a local ethernet hub. Of the five stations, two are for input, three for output. Since two of the output stations run the same program, there are actually two input applications and two output applications. All four of these custom applications are built in Macromedia Director. The input applications add information to a shared database; the output applications display that information.
The exhibit uses FileFlex as its database engine. Since FileFlex is not a multi-user database, different copies of the database files are stored on each local machine and information is passed between the applications through a set of special temporary files which have a protocol set up so they can't be accessed simultaneously by any of the stations. Also, since =46ileFlex only handles alphanumeric data, the still images and audio are stored separately in files whose names can be generated from text fields in the FileFlex database.
The Unloading Dock is an input station that invites visitors to consider how they carry their stuff. The station employs two industrial weighing scales to determine the ratio of a person's body weight to the weight of the stuff carried. It also uses three QuickCams to snap photos of each visitor's face, bag, and feet. A scale signals the computer when someone is present. To 'QUIT' the program, a visitor need simply walk away.
The other input station is called the Inspection Station. Here you are prompted to consider the collection of things that you happen to be carrying, and to ask yourself what these things are for. Virtual affordances for sorting, arranging, reflecting, and recording augment tactile exploration and physical manipulation of the actual objects.
The Portrait Gallery is an output station where people can compare their own nomadic design choices with the solutions of other visitors. Flashing buttons and a Las Vegas slot machine handle are the input devices for a guessing game that challenges you to consider "who might carry this stuff?" Each portrait is a compositions of images, sounds, and text that were recorded through a series of transactions in the Inspection Station and the Unloading Dock. You should be able to find your own nomadic portrait in this collection without too much trouble, or invoke simple sorting operations to explore similarities and differences among the others.
.. . . . . . . . . Rachel Strickland describes herself as an architect who practices in motion picture media more than pencil and paper. Her work of the past 25 years has focused on cinematic dimensions of the sense of place. She earned her Master of Architecture degree at MIT, with a concentration in cin=E9ma v=E9r= it=E9 filmmaking. She has taught film and video production at MIT, UC Santa Cruz, and Southern California Institute of Architecture, and served five years in Los Angeles as research videographer for Apple Computer's Vivarium Program. As an independent, she has experimented with new paradigms for place representation and narrative action in interactive media. Her "Portable Portraits" are a video work-in-progress, exploring people's design of the miniature environments they carry with them. Strickland is currently a member of the research staff at Interval Research Corporation, and she is an Artist in Residence at the Exploratorium.
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Rachel Strickland ```
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