Failte Ireland Thematic Grant successfully concluded

The Failte Ireland Thematic Grant Project, which the IDC had been involved in for the past two years, was successfully concluded this week with the handing over of the report to Failte Ireland, the funding agency, and an open seminar to representatives from the tourism industry in Ireland. The report, titled "Enhancing the Visitor Experience at Visitor Attractions through the Adoption of Information and Communication Technology". was presented by the team: Prof. Jim Deegan, Director of the National Centre for Tourism Policy Studies, Kemmy Business School, Martin Hayes, Wireless Access Research Centre, Dept. of ECE, and IDC's Luigina Ciolfi and Marc McLoughlin, who together with Prof. Liam Bannon, worked on the project case study at Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. UL's Vice President Research, Prof. Brian Fitzgerald opened the seminar.



Pictured above are (front): Prof. Jim Deegan, Prof. Brian Fitzgerald, Kevin Moriarty (Failte Ireland); (back) John Ruddle (Shannon Heritage), Martin Hayes, Marc McLoughlin and Luigina Ciolfi.

Visit by Jaana Parviainen, in Collaboration with Daghdha Dance Company

The IDC has co-hosted with Daghdha Dance Company a public lecture by Dr. Jaana Parviainen, University of Tampere (Finland), on “The Crisis of Knowledge: How We Know In and Through the Moving Body”. Jaana talked about her inter-disciplinary excursions into the worlds of philosophy, phenomenology and most recently the world of business management and organizational relations.
Jaana, together with Steve Valk and a group of Daghdha Artists in Residence also visited the IDC studio space, discussing possible future collaborations.

IDC workshop on the empirical value of the concept of practice

The second workshop focusing on the concept of practice - organised by Dr. Cristiano Storni-took place today in the IDC . During the first one - back in July- we focused more on the theoretical aspects (some resources are listed here).



Guided by a list of questions formulated by Cristiano, Anders Sigfridson and Parag Deshpande presented their own perspectives on the concept and the way they each use it in his PhD work.

Here are Cristiano's questions:

• What are straight forward illustrations of a "practice" in my data, research, field notes?
• What does the concept add to my understanding of my empirical problem?
• What do I gain using this concept/lens in my case study/research?
• What are the limits of the concept and how do my data and case study challenge its aspects?
• What it would mean to design for a practice?
• What it would mean to design a practice?

Anders' perspective is connected to his previous participation in the socGSD project that studied globally distributed software development (GSD) projects, and looked at it as a social activity in an environment mediated by information technology and computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools. The aim was to unveil and explain the non-canonical work practices (as compared to espoused practices) through which people actually achieve GSD. Within this frame, Anders' thesis work investigates the locally situated practices through which members of software development teams in global projects build up and apply knowledge.

On the other side, Parag's perspective has its foundations in his own practice in architecture for over 15 years, following what it is known as the self-conscious (Alexander, 1964) view on design which relies on the architect/designer to guide him during the activity of design. Looking at interaction design as a design discipline, his PhD thesis is aimed to critique how design and the activity of design are understood in interaction design research.

The nine participants had a very interesting debate trying to unveil the intricacies of the concept.

Visit to Interaction Research Studio

Lui and Nora have paid a visit to the Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths College in London, where IDC projects and activities were presented informally to the group led by Professor Bill Gaver. Thanks to John Bowers for making the visit possible!

Congratulations to Erik

Erik Lovquist was named best "Clinical Research Associate" at the Irish Healthcare Awards 2008. Congratulations to Erik on this great honour!

"Imagining Space" conference at UCD

Lui presented a paper at the multidisciplinary conference "Imagining Space: Negotiating Cross Discipline Terrains" organised by the School of Languages and Literatures at Dublin City University.
The conference featured a keynote presentation by Professor Edward Casey.

TWEAK 2008

Here are some really bad mobile phone video clips from tonight's performance:

Tweak 2008

Tweak is a new interactive digital art festival happening here in Limerick from the 22nd to the 27th of September. WE (here at the University of Limerick) are hosting a number of free workshops (topics include hacking, circuit bending, digital art, prototyping, vj-ing and robotics) and there are still some spaces left. These workshops are taking place in the Limerick School of Art and Design Monday to Friday 9-5. They feature workshops by speakers such as France Cadet, Digital Slaves, Area10Media Lab and John Bowers to name a few.
There is also a digital art exhibition taking place in Istrabraq Hall in the Limerick City Hall from Tuesday to Friday. This exhibit features work by artists such as Dan Miller (USA), Gregory Shakar (USA) Nigel Power (UK) and Peggy Sylopp (Berlin).

In addition to this we have a number of live electronic performances including a live circuit bending night and a performance by renowned digital composer Trevor Wishart (In association with Soundings - www.soundings.ie)
There is additional information available and full program listings at the website at www.tweak.ie.
Tweak is created and run by IDC's own Nora O'Murchu, and sponsored by the University of Limerick

iHCI 2008

These coming Friday and Saturday, 19-20 of September, University College Cork will play host to iHCI 2008 Cultures of Interaction, the second Irish Human-Computer Interaction Conference. UL IDC proudly hosted the first meeting last year, so it's great to see the Irish HCI community growing stronger!
The conference is jointly organised by Dr. John McCarthy and Dr. Jurek Kirakowski (Dept. of Applied Psychology) and Dr. Ian Pitt (Dept. of Computer Science).
The updated programme is now available on line and features a fine selection of UL contributions.

FutureComm meets in Maynooth

The FutureComm project have had a two day meeting at the Hamilton Institute in Maynooth. Good and intense discussions and interesting scenarios emerging.

Exhibition of paintings by Enda O'Donoghue

Paintings by Berlin-based artist and former IDC member Enda O'Donoghue are currently being exhibited at the Limerick Printmakers Gallery. The exhibition, entitled "After Joe_Blogs" will remain open until September 25th.

DAWN 2008

DAWN 2008 - Digital Arts Week Now opens officially on September 3rd 2008.
DAWN is the end of year showcase of students' work on the Interactive Media and Music Technology Masters programmes.
This 8th edition of DAWN will feature as usual exciting examples of interactive technologies and musical creations, mixing technical innovation and creative flair. This year's Interactive Media final projects include a "Robotic Ballet", "ID" - an interactive art installation, "Music2" an interactive game for teaching maths through music. The Music Technology students will present work such as real-time applications for live clarinet performance, "Til Human Voices Wake Us" - a composition inspired by brainwave patterns, and "Abstract Amen" The search for new rhythm aesthetics in groove-based music. This year's exhibition will also feature joint Interactive Media and Music Technology projects such as the non-linear film "Missing"
The official opening will take place on Wednesday 3rd September 2008 at 18h00 in the Atrium of the Computer Science Building. Refreshments will be available, and you will be able to visit the interactive exhibition as well as touring the new state-of-the-art media production facilities recently completed.
A concert will be performed by the Music Technology students which will take place immediately after the opening, in the Performing Arts Centre located in the Foundation Building at 19h00
The exhibition is open to the public from Monday, September 1st until Thursday 4th of September (10h00 – 16h00) and is located in CSG-025, CSG-027 and CSIS Atrium.

Congrats to Dr. Ian O'Keeffe

The IDC celebrated a new PhD last week: Dr. Ian O'Keeffe was conferred his Doctorate at the graduation ceremony for the Faculty of Science and Engineering.
Congrats to Ian and to his proud supervisor Dr Annette Aboulafia.

Wireless dataglove with vibrotactile feedback

Giuseppe, Conor and Mikael visited the Tyndall National Institute to have a look at the first prototype of our latest joint project, a wireless data glove with bend sensors on all fingers and vibrotactile feedback, based on Tyndall's WIMU unit.

IDC Demo at TechnoThreads

Check out the video highlights of "TechnoThreads", a recent exhibition held at the Science Gallery in Dublin, which include Conor Higgins describing the IDC "Pointing-At" demo based on Giuseppe Torre's work. Well done to Conor and Marc on getting the demo ready!

Pre-hearing SpADE

Today, we had a pre-listening to our new Spatialisation and Auditory Display Environment.

Nina Project

the Nina Project was featured on RTE Radio 1 this evening. Good stuff!

Now we all know, as Filippo told us, that if you're interested in music and want to do a PhD, IDC and UL is the best place to go/be.

Film will never be the same

Caoimhe Doyle and her Foley Show gave it their absolute best to day at UL. We all had a great time and about 12 volunteers came on stage to contribute with their sounds under Caoimhe's direction. Film will never be the same again :-)

Mobile Methods Workshop at Lancaster University

Lui "virtually" presented a paper on "Walks, paths and maps: discovering the lived geography of mobility" at the workshop on "Mobile Methods", recently hosted by Monika Buscher at Lancaster University. The workshop website has abstracts and details of the speakers for those who are interested.

National Gallery of Ireland Research Day

Marc McLoughlin presented some IDC work on design for public environments (from the SHAPE, Shared Worlds and Bunratty projects) in his talk "Interactive Exhibits in Public environments: Designing for Meaningful Interaction" for the National Gallery of Ireland Research Day in Dublin yesterday.
The event was organised by the NGI Education Department directed by Dr Marie Bourke, and the discussion chaired by Professor Roger Stalley, TCD.
Other technology-themed talks included presentations of semantic cataloguing of images (Daniel Isemann, TCD) and the impact of the internet on the life of museum objects (PJ McMahon, UCC).

Two Places a.k.a. 2Places catalogue launched

Tuesday evening, we launched the exhibition catalogue of the Two Places (a.k.a. 2Places) Sound art exhibition at UL and the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast.

Kaleidoscope project features in Tafter Magazine

An interview with Filippo Fano' now features in the Italian "Tafter" magazine. Filippo explains the approach to music education applied as part of the project on the production of educational formats that the IDC is involved in, in collaboration with the University of Siena and Centro Tempo Reale in Florence.

Professor Parnas' talk

Yesterday, UL organised a lecture (and a reception) to celebrate the IEEE Computer Society's 60th Anniversary Award made to Professor David Lorge Parnas.

Hosted by Prof. Vincent Cunnane, UL's VP Research, the event included two talks, one by David Parnas himself and one by Fionn Murtagh, the new Director of ICT at the Science Foundation Ireland.

The title of Prof. Parnas' talk was:
‘Getting Lucky’ in Software Engineering Research. He spoke about his most important accomplishments and tried to explain the pattern of his successes, but also tackled a number of "sins"in software engineering research (reacting to symptoms rather than cases, reacting to papers not to real problems, reacting to funding buzzwords).
While criticizing simplistic experiments and interviews as reliable research methods("people ask people things and they believe them!"), Prof. Parnas mentioned: "That's one of the reasons why I always enjoyed having Liam Bannon around - he's a psychologist! he knows better than that".

Professor Fionn Murtagh presented a briefing entitled “An ICT View of the Current Conjuncture and the Topology of Innovation”, providing some interesting insights into current and future priorities for the SFI in the ICT field.

Update- amateur recordings of the two talks are available here:

• David Parnas
• Fionn Murtagh

Congratulations to the Interactive Media and Music Technology Classes!

At the Winter Conferrings held on January 22nd, we celebrated the Interactive Media and Music Technology Classes of 2007/2008!
Former IDC researcher Darragh Murphy also graduated in absentia with an MSc by research.
Well done everyone!

"Settings for Collaboration: The Role of Place"

Luigina Ciolfi and Liam Bannon are co-editors, together with Geraldine Fitzpatrick (University of Sussex, UK) of a special issue of the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Journal on "Settings for Collaboration: the Role of Place". The special issue features papers discussing the role and importance of the notion of place for understanding collaborative settings mediated by technology. All papers are now available on the Journal's on-line first edition. The printed issue will appear in March.