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John Maeda asserted Marcel DuChamp’s Readymades as early precedent for tangible interfaces, with evocative, ambiguous pre-existing artifacts as representations for abstract concepts. In scaled-up aspirations for tangibles – as faces, hands, and bodies for the embryonic Internet of Things, mediating billions of diverse cyberphysical associations – we see more pragmatic representational strategies as highly important. Toward this, we introduce the LAVA heuristic (legible, actionable, veritable, aspirational); and discuss its relation to cyberphysical artifacts and ecologies interweaving complementary forms, scales, and interaction modalities. As grounding examples, we introduce challenge coins, pages, books, clocks, and portals, including their realizations and applications within the Enodia project. Each is mediated by diverse virtual and physical editions. These incorporate multiple passive and active representational modalities, including light, text, visuals, actuation, and 2D+3D shape. These engage and interweave complementary facets of actionable legibility. We are particularly interested in ecologies combining multiple cyberphysical artifacts, juxtaposed at physical and temporal scales spanning several orders of magnitude. We highlight tensions and interdependencies between content and platform, including early genomic, automotive, and web applications, and explore prospects for collaboration. (This work results from a collaboration with Alexandre Siqueira and Miriam Konkel.)

Tangible visualization: paths toward physically-entangled interactive computational STEAM

30th September 2014, 2:00pm - 3:00pm
PCRI, Salle 445 (how to get there ?)

UPDATE: TALK IS CANCELLED (due to Air France Strike)

Abstract

Scientific and information visualization have long offered powerful approaches for helping people graphically represent, explore, and understand our universe. Our group investigates tangible visualization. Here, tangible interfaces (which support interaction through systems of computationally-mediated physical artifacts) are used to interactively represent complex systems. We approach this research from two perspectives: studying and engaging specific application domains; and developing underlying architectures supporting realizations of tangible visualization. We target two primary application areas: interactive computational science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (ICy STEAM) and cultural computing. We will describe ICy STEAM efforts in computational comparative genomics, and cultural computing examples from LSU CCT's Cultural Computing focus area (with faculty spanning our Schools of Art, EECS, ISDS, Mass Communications, and Music).

Biography

Brygg Ullmer is the Effie C. and Donald M. Hardy associate professor at LSU, jointly in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the Center for Computation and Technology (CCT). He leads CCT's Cultural Computing focus area (research division), with 15 faculty spanning six departments, and co-leads the Tangible Visualization group. He serves as director for the Louisiana Biomedical Research Network (LBRN) Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, and Computational Biology (BBC) Core. Ullmer completed his Ph.D. at the MIT Media Laboratory (Tangible Media group) in 2002, where his research focused on tangible user interfaces. He held a postdoctoral position in the visualization department of the Zuse Institute Berlin, internships at Interval Research (Palo Alto) and Sony CSL (Tokyo), and has been a visiting lecturer at Hong Kong Polytechnic's School of Design. His research interests include tangible interfaces, computational genomics (and more broadly, interactive computational STEAM), visualization, and rapid physical and electronic prototyping. He also has a strong interest in computationally-mediated art, craft, and design, rooted in the traditions and material expressions of specific regions and cultures.