Activate Switch To Operate

Four stories, four short-films

2011-12-19T02:07:00.018Z

As part of the course Interactive Media/Project in our Masters programme in Interactive Media, students are required make video productions. This year, we decided to start from existing stories and we were kindly given permission by Bock The Robber to use some of his stories.

For the screening, Bourke's Bar in Limerick City agreed to host the event and we also exhibited and sold some of the photographs the students had made during the course.
All proceeds collected were in aid of the Irish Cancer Society's Action Breast Cancer.

The original stories, on Bock the Robber's site, were:

Paul Tarpey was our Master of Ceremonies of the evening. Here's his introduction to the event:
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Faction a filmic translation
Here we experience 4 films that interpret the stories of a 20th century author who is a well known physical and other presence in Limerick and beyond. By other, we mean a 21st century nagging virtual presence who combines forceful news reporting with creative storytelling. But he is as yet not a published storyteller in a traditional sense. Perhaps his tales were meant for a different platform.

Bock the Robber. His very name conjours up both response and meaning adapted as it is from the name of a mythical Limerick bogeyman. Faction is an extension of the process where the character has posted fiction alongside news items on bocktherobber.com. In this collaborative film showcase with the University of Limerick's Interactive media students, we now focus on Bock as an expansive worker who's identity now begins to take the form of a flickering live presence.

The drafts for these films tonight are rooted in real life. There is the short physical tale of Munster – Gloucester, a tense retelling of the famous rugby game focused on Bock's shoulders but voiced by his son. This take on a well known event is balanced with the debauched memories of the band Blind Gun Dog's festival escapades. Broader interpretations feature also. Scary fantasy appears in the draft of Him and claustiphobia and desperation meet us in the intense draft of Whiskey. Same author - different weights.

These are 4 expressions grounded in a 20th century reflection of life as it was lived by the author and his friends. The tales are stylistically imagined by Bock and we view their finished state now as a collaborative hand over.

After he has channeled his stories - containing in them more than a hint of a filmic imagination - the interactive media film makers began to shape the work within their own sense of 21st century realness. This translation is the crux as experience and cultural knowledge are exchanged and mediated from one generation of creatives to the next.

We often trade reflective experience using the language of film. Many of our life fragments are positioned in retelling like that bit in Easy Rider. This collaborative experience has collectively created the final draft for these films. They have illustrated and drawn out the familiar in the 21st century styles of documentary and horror that has lurked in the 20th century tales of Bock.

The students have certainly displayed a familiarity and confidence with these styles in their interpretations. They have now put digital flesh on Bock's virtual bones.

Paul Tarpey
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Here's the small-screen version of the excellent work the students produced:

Him

Blind Gun Dog

Munster v Gloucester

Whiskey

2 Events in the Nomadic Work/Life Seminar Series

2011-10-19T17:23:00.000+01:00

The 4th NWL International Seminar Series was concluded by public talks by two international visitors.Dr. Mark Perry, Brunel University (UK) presented "Work Around - Practices around Technology, Space and the Ever-changing Nature of Organisational Life". Dr. Perry is an interdisciplinary researcher with interests spanning cognitive science, computing and social science and 'user studies'. He was originally trained as a psychologist (BA (Hons.), Cardiff University), a cognitive scientist (MSc, Cardiff), and an interdisciplinary PhD (Brunel), having worked at a variety of places along the way, including Goldsmiths College (London), Hewlet-Packard Research Labs (Bristol), Stanford University (USA), and the Appliance Studio (Bristol). For the past few years, most of his research has revolved around the use of mobile information and communications technology, and in the use and design of ubiquitous/pervasive computing and networked information appliances.

The final talk was delivered by Professor Barbara Czarniawska, University of Gothenburg (Sweden): "Nomadic Work as Life Story Plot". Professor Czarniawska is a professor in Managing Overflow at the School of Business, Economics and Law, Gothenburg Research Institute University of Gothenburg; a Visiting Research Fellow at the Sloan School of Management, MIT, USA, London School of Economics and Political Science and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin; a Scholar-in-Residence at Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy; a Fellow at Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University; and a Visiting Professor at Università di Roma, La Sapienza.She holds a MA in Social and Industrial Psychology, Warsaw University, 1970 and a Ph.D.in Economic Sciences, Warsaw School of Economics, 1976. She is also member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Royal Engineering Academy, the Royal Society of Art and Sciences in Göteborg and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. She received the Lily and Sven Thuréus Technical-Economic Award for internationally renowned research in organization theory, 2000 and a Wihuri International Prize in 2003, "in recognition of creative work that has specially furthered and developed the cultural and economic progress of mankind." In 2003 she has been elected to an Honorary Fellow of the European Institute of Advanced Studies, Brussels. Stockholm School of Economics bestowed on her the title of Oeconomiae doctor honoris causa in September 2005; Copenhagen Business School made her Doctor Mercaturae Honoris Causa in March 2006; Helsinki School of Economics made her an Honorary Doctor of Science (Economics) in May 2006. Her latest books in English are Shadowing and other techniques for doing fieldwork in modern societies (2007) and A theory of organizing (2008).

The 4th NWL International Seminar Series: ‘Work practices, Nomadicity and ICT Mediation’ was organised by Fabiano Pinatti and Dr. Luigina Ciolfi on behalf of the Nomadic Work/Life in the Knowledge Economy project team. The seminars were co-sponsored by the Interaction Design Centre – Department of Computer Science & Information Systems and by the Department of Sociology of the University of Limerick. Full information on the events and the project can be found on the NWL Website

Upcoming Design Week 2011

2011-10-19T12:32:00.000+01:00

The Interaction Design Centre will participate in a number of events during Design Week 2011, including demos, talks and a 2nd "Connected Limerick" workshop hosted by IxDA Limerick. Check out the Design Week 2011 Website for a full schedule!

NWL Seminar with Prof Gloria Mark

2011-09-15T13:02:00.001+01:00

The first in a series of international seminars on the topic of "Work Practices, Nomadicity and ICT Mediation" and organised by the Nomadic Work Life Project was held yesterday, 14th of September 2011.The speaker was Professor Gloria Mark from the University of Californa Irvine. Gloria spoke about "Managing Work in a global Context: the Role of Infrastructure".Professor Mark is pictured below with the NWL team: (l/r) Dr. Breda Gray (Sociology), Prof Gloria Mark, Dr. Luigina Ciolfi (IDC) and Fabiano Pinatti (IDC)

Congratulations to Dr Marc McLoughlin!

2011-08-26T11:50:00.003+01:00

During the conferring ceremony that took place yesterday, 25 August 2011, our colleague Marc McLoughlin was officially awarded his doctorate!

The title of Marc's thesis was:

Designing for Public Interaction: Extending, Applying and Reflecting on the Principles of "Assembly"

Marc is pictured here with his supervisor, Dr Luigina Ciolfi, after the ceremony.

The best of luck to Marc in his future career!

Cristiano Storni presents at Sheffield Hallam University

2011-06-16T14:24:00.003+01:00

Thursday the 9th of June - Cristiano Storni presents the 'Reassembling Health research and design agenda' as part of the User Centred Healthcare Design seminar series (UCHD www.uchd.org.uk). Cristiano reports on the FutureComm project research and design activities, describes the TiY design concept and discusses directions for future research in the area of self-care practices and technology in chronic disease.

Luigina Ciolfi speaks at "Museums and Design Disciplines: Society and Participation"

2011-05-14T14:16:00.002+01:00

Luigina Ciolfi was one of the invited speakers at Museums and Design Disciplines: Society and Participation, an international seminar organised by the IUAV Doctoral School in Venice (Italy) and the Museology of Design Research Group. The programme also included talks by Duncan Grewcock, Kingston University, London, Kali Tzortzi, University of Athens, and Davide Ponzini, Politecnico di Milano.
A summary of the event (in Italian and English) can be read here

IDC Work at "Boundary Work I" Exhibition

2010-11-16T11:48:00.002Z

IDC has been invited to participate in Boundary Work I, and exhibition on the theme of technology in practice between art and science. The exhibition, curated by Paul Green on CIT Crawford College of Art, opened last week at Wandesford quay Gallery in Cork and it will run until November 27th. An overview of the work exhibited, including images is available here

Congrats to Softday on "Marbh Chrios"

2010-10-19T15:24:00.002+01:00

Congrats to Mikael Fernstrom and Softday on the recent successful performance of "Marbh Chrios", which took place on October 16th at Mooney's Boatyard in Killybegs, Co. Donegal. Congrats to Mikael and Sean on their success!

Success for the third Edition of Tweak Festival

2010-10-19T15:18:00.003+01:00

Between September 17th and 24th 2010, Limerick was yet again buzzing thanks to Tweak, the interactive digital art festival featuring an exhibition, workshops, concerts and a cinema day. Tweak is aiming to promote the understanding of the use of technology in our lives and has been curated by IDC Nora O'Murchu in collaboration with (among others) UL IDC, the Limerick School of Art and Design, the arts Council and Creative Limerick

"Reminisce" at Bunratty Folk Park going Live!

2010-08-18T12:49:00.002+01:00

“Reminisce” at Bunratty Folk Park
August 25-27 2010

Are you curious about how interactive technology can bring memories of the past to life? Then try out "Reminisce" at Bunratty Folk Park!

Researchers at the Interaction Design Centre have developed a new interactive experience, "Reminisce", which will allow visitors of Bunratty Folk Park in Co. Clare to discover, share and contribute to personal memories linked to buildings, traditions and ways of life of Ireland's past. "Reminisce" will engage visitors in a quest for memories and mementoes to add value to their experience of the cottages and activities on display at the Park.

The IDC is a multidisciplinary research group in the Dept. of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Limerick, focused on the design, use and evaluation of information and communications technologies from a human-centred design perspective: our research is focused on enhancing and supporting people's activities and is grounded on the context of the users' experience. The IDC has conducted extensive research on the use of ICTs in museums and exhibitions during the past 10 years, with successful installations at The Hunt Museum, Shannon Airport and Limerick’s Milk Market.

"Reminisce" is part of a research project exploring the utility and potential of technologies such as smart phones, augmented reality and location-based services in outdoor exhibition sites, and it has been supported by Failte Ireland and the University of Limerick Seed Funding initiative.

"Reminisce" is easy to use, doesn't require any specialised equipment and is completely free. It will be available for trials at Bunratty Folk Park from the 25th to the 27th of August 2010.

If you would like to try out "Reminisce", please contact luigina.ciolfi@ul.ie or marc.mcloughlin@ul.ie, or get in touch through our Facebook page or Twitter

Congratulations to Dr Erik and Dr Anders!

2010-04-29T18:08:00.000+01:00

This week, Anders Sigfridsson and Erik Lövquist successfully completed their PhD vivas.

Dr. Annette Aboulafia (Erik's supervisor), Erik Lövquist, Prof Liam Bannon (Anders' supervisor) and Anders Sigfridson.

Interaction Design Talks: Fernando Orellana

2010-03-02T23:10:00.004Z

The Interaction Design Talks series continues this semester with a talk by Fernando Orellana.

Fernando will speak about his recent artwork relating to robotics, anthropomorphism, dreams, generative art, automobiles, and Play-doh.

He was one of the artists featured during the 2nd edition of Tweak in September last year.

Currently an Assistant Professor developing an electronic art program at Union College in Schenectady, NY, Fernando Orellana uses new and traditional media as a way of transmitting concepts that range from generative art to social-political commentary. He has recently exhibited at the Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY, Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Buenos Aires, Argentina, The Mandeville Gallery, Schenectady, NY, Exit Art, New York, New York, LABoral, Gijon, Spain, The Tang Museum of Art, Saratoga Springs, NY, Glass Curtain Gallery, Chicago, IL, The Ark, Dublin, Ireland, and The Biennial of Electronic Art, Perth, Australia.

The talk will take place this Wednesday, 3 March 2010, 2:30pm in KBG13 (Kemmy Business School), and everybody is welcome!

On Wednesday evening, Fernando Orellana will also give a talk at the IxDA Limerick meetup in the Absolute Hotel. The meetup starts at 7pm as usual. All are welcome!

Interaction Design Talks: Nicholas Polley

2010-02-01T22:20:00.002Z

Wednesday, 3 February 2010, the Interaction Design Talks series continues with a talk by Nicholas Polley, the founder of the Dublin-based company 3rd Dimension.

The talk, titled Inside 3D Visualisation, is scheduled for 2:30pm in KB119, and everybody is welcome.

3rd Dimension's Visualisation and Animation studios are based in Blackrock in Co Dublin. The company is focused on creating design solutions that include 3D visuals, photomontages, visual impact assessments and 3D walkthroughs meant to support their clients planning and marketing strategies.

Nicholas will speak about his company's past and ongoing projects, referring to the processes and technologies involved. He will also focus on the advances in 3D visualisation technologies over the years and the vital role played by these in many industries (Architecture, Engineering, Design, Games Development).

On Wednesday evening, Nicholas Polley will also give a talk at the IxDA Limerick meetup in the Absolute Hotel. The meetup starts at 7pm as usual. All are welcome!

Reassembling Health: exploring the role of the internet of things

2009-12-17T13:03:00.003Z

Last Friday, the 4th of December Cristiano Storni led a workshop at LIFT@Home under the event 'Are you ready for the Internet of Things' where the Think tank 'The Council' launched.

Workshop description can be found here;

Workshop report can be found here (draft);

Some of the Workshop material can be found here (presentation), here (concept map), and here (inspirational booklet);

The Council website can be found here;

The LIFT event link can be found here.

'Problematizing Design' Panel with Cristiano Storni and Aphra Kerr

2009-11-24T09:25:00.003Z

Cristiano Storni has participated to the Workshop 'Ethnography, Creativity and design' as part of the Anthropology seminar series in collaboration with Intel last November the 12th at NUI Maynooth. Cristiano Storni was part of the panel 'Problematizing design' with Lecturer Aphra Kerr. In his presentation (The politics of design inthe Health Care dispositif), Cristiano has shared some of the finds of his research on self-care practices and technology. He argued for the limit of the medical model in self and home care practices and the need to create room for more dialogical collaborations between lay persons and expert practitioners in care. Aphra Kerr has presented her research on the game industry by problematize the relationship between producers and users in the digital game domain. Intel hosted part of the seminar and provide a series of presentations regarding the Independent Living project and the related Tril centre (www.trilcentre.org).

Program available here

Event brochure available here

Interaction Design Talk: Macdara Butler

2009-11-17T23:38:00.001Z

Wednesday, 18 Nov 2009, at 2:30 pm, Macdara Butler from Tricycle Interactive, will give a talk titled "Designers & Programmers - Crossing the Divide in Interactive Media Development" in room CSG001.

Macdara Butler, the MD of Tricycle Interactive Ltd., has graduated from UL in 2003 with a Business degree in Economics, Finance & French. He worked in the financial sector for 2 years before returning to UL for the Interactive Media Masters. In October 2006, he set up Tricycle Interactive, together with 2 fellow graduates. Tricycle Interactive provides web applications, mobile software and interface design services.

Designers & Programmers - Crossing the Divide in Interactive Media Development

It is essential that design-oriented people increase their technical skills and knowledge in order to meet the demands of industry. Equally, programmers need to embrace the principles of User Centred Design and engage whole-heartedly with the designers to achieve successful outcomes.

When designers and programmers are able to communicate effectively, work closely together, and understand each other's domains, the team will achieve great results.

Update (19 Nov 2009): Photos from Macdara's talk

IDC Team delivers "Get Connected" on behalf of the Irish Museums Association

2009-11-14T18:13:00.002Z

On Friday, 13th of November, Gabriela Avram, Luigina Ciolfi, Eamonn Finn, Olivia Kennedy an Marc McLoughlin from IDC delivered a training day on behalf of the Irish Museums Association: "Get Connected. Your Museum and Web 2.0". Participants representing museums and other exhibition spaces and cultural institutions from all over Ireland were briefed on the benefits of using Web 2.0 tools to promote and support current activities at their institution. The workshop was hosted by The Hunt Museum

Interaction Design Talks: Nicola Quinn

2009-10-26T21:24:00.007Z

Wednesday, 28 October 2009, at 2pm, the Interaction Design Centre is hosting an invited talk titled UX IA IXD - where to start? by Nicola Quinn, former member of the IDC.
The talk will take place in CSG001 and everybody is welcome!

Nicola Quinn is the Customer Experience Manager for RBS's flagship insurance brands - Churchill Insurance, Direct Line and Privilege. Her current role champions the interest of customers across the business, having a major impact on usability, and customer interaction. Previously she has worked as an Information Architect, User Experience Designer, Interaction Designer and Usability Consultant. Past clients have included Nokia, Lynx, Cornetto, Cancer Research UK, BBC, and Logitech. She has also spent time as a researcher at the Interaction Design Centre, Limerick. She recently co-authored a chapter for The Handbook of Computational Arts and Creative Informatics. She is a professional member of the Usability Professional Association, London Information Architects, and ACM Special Interest Group in Computer Graphics.

In her talk, Nicola will refer to how she got her UX/IA roles, where to begin, what to expect, types of roles, and in general to her experience of looking for and finding an interesting job in London.

(Photo: Nicola presenting the Phantom to visitors at the IDC Open Day back in June 2005)

Liam Bannon to deliver keynote at INTERACT 2009

2009-08-12T14:31:00.003+01:00

The Director of the IDC, Prof. Liam Bannon will be one of the invited keynote speakers at INTERACT 2009, the IFIP conference on Human-Computer Interaction, to be held in Uppsala (Sweden) at the end of August. Liam will deliver the conference's closing keynote presentation on August 28th.

New IDC Website is launched

2009-08-12T14:19:00.002+01:00

The new IDC website is finally live! After over a year of design, development and implementation, the IDC has a new showcase for current research, teaching and publication activities! Thanks to Nora, Anders, Conor, Colm, Gabriela, Paul and everyone else who has helped with the many tasks surrounding the creation of the website.

Liam Bannon at Frontiers of Interaction 2009

2009-06-18T16:59:00.001+01:00

Successful NWL Seminar

2009-05-20T22:26:00.003+01:00

The Nomadic Work/Life Project (jointly run by IDC and the Dept. of Sociology and supported by ISKS - The Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society at UL) hosted a successful international Seminar this week on the topic of "Mobility and Nomadicity:
Methodological Challenges and Innovations". Mobility is a key feature of globalization, interrelated with emerging technologies, socialities and labour forms. Although a wealth of studies have been addressing this reality, little has been said about the methodological dimension of mobilities research. By bringing together an international group of scholars, the goal of this seminar was to identify some of the main methodological innovations and challenges in the field of mobilities research. The seminar proceedings will be published as a special journal issue. Invited speakers were: Justin Spinney (Uinversity of Surrey), Elaine Moriarty (Trinity College Dublin), Michaela Benson (Keele University), Jo Vergunst (University of Aberdeen) and Misha Myers (University College Falmouth).

IDC seminar series: Brian Coates on Deconstruction

2009-05-20T14:45:00.002+01:00

Brian Coates has given a talk within the IDC workshop series on the notion of Deconstruction on the 5th of May. Brian has offered a wide overview of the notion by largely drawing on the work by Derrida, Lacan, Foucault and Kristeva and some of their followers. According to Derrida, Deconstruction is '…is neither a philosophy, nor a doctrine, nor a knowledge, nor a method, nor a discipline, not even a determinate concept, only what happens if it happens –'. A quotation by Barbara Johnson has further framed the notion of deconstruction within the practice of 'teasing out of warring forces of signification within (any given) the text itself'.
"The de-construction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text itself. If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another".

Instances of decostruction and of warring forces have been provided through very interesting text analysis of Derrida’s dialogues with Plato, Rousseau, Husserl and Levi-Strauss; an analysis of the binary systems in Western culture and the need to deconstruct it was also presented; poems by Yeats, Eliot and Pound evidenced the crisis of modernity; Nietszche and Barthes were quoted to point up the way in which deconstruction works. Lacan’s concept of the mirror stage, Kristeva’s chora and Foucault’s panopticon provided examples of deconstruction at work. The group worked together on a practical exercise – to deconstruct a passage from J.M. Synge’s Journey to the Western Isles and a poem by Tom Leonard, ‘Yon Night’.

A debate has followed where IDCers has tried to make connection with their experiences and interests. Mikael Fernstrom showed how the very principles of deconstruction often guide his artistic practice especially when this is driven by hijacking intended design and tinkering with possibilities (he provided the link www.softday.ie). Cristiano Storni has tried to show the warring forces related with his actual domain of investigation (Health Care) by discussing (and possibly deconstructing) the notion of Compliance. Compliance is in fact a concept developed from the point of view of the doctor and of biomedicine and it has the specific function of showing what people should do and of rendering non-compliant behavior as a form of deviation in need of an explanation and of control. His point was to show that - for instance - when designing for patient empowerment certain notion can be misleading and bring not so much to an emancipation of patient but rather to further and even more subtle forms of dependencies.
Luigina Ciolfi has found interesting connections with Philosophy of science and asked about the relationship between the work of Derrida and the critical studies of science and scientific knowledge (e.g. as in Feyerabend). Further connection where found in the work of semioticians Kristeva.

Attempt to link the notion of deconstruction with the practice of design has been sketched and we are looking forward to follow up on this matter. Just as a hint, Brian told that the notion of deconstruction has found space within certain movements in architecture such as in the work of Gehry.

Slides are available for whom might be interested. The seminar has been also recorded.

"Bridging Interaction Clouds" at ECSCW 2009

2009-05-14T23:19:00.001+01:00

**********************CALL FOR PAPERS**********************
Workshop "Bridging “Interaction Clouds”: Exploring collaborative interaction across assemblies of mobile and embedded technology"

To be held at ECSCW 2009, Vienna, Austria 7-8 September.
http://bridgingclouds.blogspot.com
ECSCW09
***************************************************************

Overview
Portable technology, particularly in the shape of mobile phones and personal digital assistants, has become a ubiquitous force in everyday life. Advances in communication technologies have also meant that we are rapidly moving towards the convergence of mobile and stationary systems: this has allowed people to use mobile technology to engage with systems embedded in the environments they inhabit, offering a greater range of interaction possibilities and patterns that we have labeled “Interaction Clouds”. By “Interaction Clouds” we mean the complex patterns of interaction, sharing and exchange that unfold around assemblies of mobile and embedded technologies.
This workshop aims at exploring such issues in greater detail, with a specific focus on the design of a coherent social and collaborative experience for people as the transverse an “assembly” of technologies. The notion of Interaction Clouds also resonates with the emergence of the internet as a resource free of device and location constraints has brought about the concept of “cloud computing”, where technology is emerging that allows people to shift between multiple contexts (mobile/embedded), facilitated by a connection to remote computing resources (clouds). This devolving of traditional interaction paradigms brings with it new challenges to support meaningful user social and collaborative experiences, specifically how such hybrid systems can facilitate salient aspects of user experiences such as collaboration and participation.
Topics of Interest
• Studies of social and collaborative activity around interaction clouds
• Design for the support of collaboration and participation across interaction clouds
• New interaction modalities in interaction clouds that support social interaction
• Theoretical issues of how to define and study interaction clouds (merging mobility-oriented and space-oriented frameworks, new conceptual approaches, development of existing frameworks, etc.)
• Explorations of settings where interaction clouds can be meaningfully deployed: e.g. public spaces (museums, urbans areas), workplaces, domestic spaces, etc.

Dates and Deadlines
Submissions are due: June 20th, 2009
Notification of Authors: 6th July, 2009
Workshop at ECSCW 2009: September 7th - 8th, 2009

Submissions
Interested participants are invited to submit position papers in PDF format with a word limit of 5000 words. Papers should be formatted according to the ECSCW template see the instructions for authors.
The .pdf files should be sent to: marc.mcloughlin@ul.ie

Workshop outline
The Workshop will run over 1 day. The Workshop call requests the submission of short position papers. However, during the workshop, we will foster debate moving away from traditional presentations, and by facilitating discussions on shared artifacts. We will invite the participants to contribute to the workshop with either posters, or demos/prototypes, or video data documenting an experience, and these materials will be the main subject of the discussion. In the afternoon session, we will lead more focused small-group discussions and brainstorming, and practical design exercises.

Publication & dissemination
Accepted papers will be included in the Workshop Webpage. During the workshop participants will be asked to prepare posters for display during the conference. During the workshop, opportunties for future publications (such as a journal special issue) will be discussed.

Organizers
Marc McLoughlin, Interaction Design Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland
Luigina Ciolfi, Interaction Design Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland
Mike Fraser, University of Bristol, UK
Eva Hornecker, University of Strathclyde, UK
John Bowers, Interaction Research Studio, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Contact Details
Workshop Webpage: www.bridgingclouds.blogspot.com
Please Contact the workshop chairs at: marc.mcloughlin@ul.ie

Softday at INFECTIOUS in the Science Gallery

2009-04-18T10:49:00.006+01:00

Softday (a.k.a. Mikael Fernström of IDC and Sean Taylor of LSAD) is showing their work Nobody Leaves Until the Daphnia Sing in the Science Gallery at TCD in Dublin.

The project was developed in collaboration with the National Water Toxicity Laboratory in Shannon, Co. Clare.
We built the prototype in the IDC laboratory at UL and finally installed the full works in the Science Gallery in Dublin.

The exhibit has four stations (bass, tenor, alto, soprano) each with a Petri-dish with Daphnia Magna whose movements are detected by a web-cam and converted into visuals and sound with a custom-designed PD/GEM-patch.

Saturday the 18th of April 2009, the Daphnia will sing together with a human ensemble of musicians recruited from the 3rd year students in Music, Media and Performance Technology in CSIS at UL.

The exhibition runs until the 17th of July 2009.

Also, thanks to Apple for some really great support

IDC Showcase at Irish Museums Association Conference 2009

2009-03-22T18:49:00.003Z

The 2009 Conference of the Irish Museums Association was held at the City Hotel in Derry (Northern Ireland)from the 27th of February to the 1st of March. The theme of the conference was "The Museum: a Dialogue in Shared Histories and Common Heritage". Thanks to the support of IMA Chair Dr. Marie Bourke, IDC projects on the theme of museums and public exhibitions were showcased during the Conference to a number of delegates.

Lui and Liam jointly delivered a talk "The potential of new technology to encourage visitors to interact with the history and heritage of museum collections", while Marc looked after the exhibition area where demos and archive material documenting a number of IDC projects were displayed.

Highlights of the conference included keynote presentations by Professor Nigel Roulfe (Royal College of Art, London), Fintan O'Toole and Dr. Elaine Heumann Gurian.

Highlights from Tweak

2009-02-25T10:45:00.002Z

john bowers + ryan jordan @ tweak 2008 from tweak on Vimeo.

UL CSIS joins iPhone Developer University Program

2009-02-20T19:42:00.000Z

iPhone Developer University Program
Originally uploaded by bluepelican

The Computer Science department, thanks to Mikael's efforts has officially joined the iPhone Developer University program. It is a free program designed for third level education institutions who are introducing development courses for iPhone or iPod touch applications. It will allow up to 200 students, provide group management, and allow publication of the applications to the AppStore. This has also been done in collaboration with the Technology Transfer Office in UL so thanks are also due to Paul D for his help.

As they say, keep watching - there is more in the pipeline but you'll have to wait and see.

Failte Ireland Thematic Grant successfully concluded

2008-12-11T12:59:00.000Z

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

2008-12-05T10:30:00.000Z

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

2008-12-01T23:08:00.002Z

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

2008-11-19T10:58:00.000Z

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

2008-10-20T12:04:00.000+01:00

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

2008-10-06T10:43:00.000+01:00

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

2008-09-25T01:01:00.001+01:00

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

Tweak 2008

2008-09-24T10:21:00.000+01:00

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

2008-09-15T20:00:00.001+01:00

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

2008-09-09T10:43:00.001+01:00

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

2008-09-08T09:53:00.000+01:00

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

2008-09-03T09:26:00.000+01:00

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

2008-09-03T09:09:00.000+01:00

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

2008-08-31T13:28:00.000+01:00

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

2008-08-06T17:50:00.002+01:00

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

2008-07-29T00:29:00.002+01:00

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

Nina Project

2008-04-27T00:54:00.000+01:00

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

2008-04-03T01:52:00.001+01:00

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

2008-03-07T11:58:00.000Z

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

2008-03-07T11:50:00.000Z

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

2008-02-28T01:16:00.001Z

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

2008-02-14T11:04:00.000Z

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

2008-02-13T19:13:00.000Z

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:

Congratulations to the Interactive Media and Music Technology Classes!

2008-01-24T10:26:00.000Z

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"

2008-01-09T18:01:00.000Z

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.

IDC Christmas Celebrations

2007-12-18T17:22:00.000Z

The IDC has celebrated the Holiday Season in style last night at the Shannon Rowing Club in Limerick City.
As usual, good food, drink, conversation and music features heavily in the proceedings!

Guests from Tip IT

2007-11-30T12:27:00.000Z

Yesterday, we had a group of Creative Multimedia students from Tiperarry Institute of Technology, together with their lecturer as visitors in the IDC.

All started a few good weeks ago, with Bernard following the Jaiku channel used by Gabriela and her students (Bernard recalls jaikus about Doug Engelbart received on his mobile phone while he was walking his dog:).

After that, Gabriela finally made it to an OpenCoffee in the Absolute Hotel and met Bernard in person. Gabriela invited Bernard to give a talk on podcasting to her students, and Bernard suggested he could bring some of his students with him.

And then all happened yesterday - Bernard spoke to the UL+TippInst students about podcasting, jobs and entrepreneurship, asked his students to talk about their own work and encouraged the audience to ask questions. The students were a bit shy in the beginning, but when he invited them to have a look at his podcasting gear, most of them couldn't resist the temptation and the ice was broken. The two groups of students had the chance to mingle for a few minutes afterwards!

After the lecture, the TippInst students visited the IDC, where Liam talked to them about the Interaction Design Centre and our way of looking at technology, and Lui spoke about previous and current IDC projects. The visit finished with the grand tour and a closer look at some of our "reliques" - the Shannon Portal, the recipe pyramid...

It was an interesting exchange and I have the feeling we all learned from it!

PTBYBO 3

2007-11-14T23:51:00.000Z

The Interaction Design Centre and the Center for Computational Musicology & Computer Music proudly present:
PTBYBO 3
Date: 21st of November 2007
Time: 14:00-17:00
Venue: Kilmurry Hall, University of Limerick
All are welcome!

PTBYBO 3 will present Hellström and Bowers’ latest efforts at circuit bending and live coding (where, respectively, hardware and software are hacked before your very eyes and ears) to explore live sound/image relations in an improvised performance. The occasion will feature the Irish debuts of Ohm-My-God (an environment in which random electronic circuits are constructed) and My Little Dreamachine (a miniaturization of Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville’s hallucinogenic Dreamachine, the behaviour of which is variously sonified and visually transformed and projected). Generally, lights will flash and circuits will blip with an uncommon intensity as Hellström and Bowers work feverishly to transport all our bodies, minds and souls from the beginning of the end. A Performance To Blow Your Brains Out, surely.

A seminar discussing the techniques in PTBYBO 3 and relating them to larger issues in interaction design and the construction of new instruments for musical expression will be given by Hellström and Bowers in Kilmurry Hall, University of Limerick, the 21st of November 14:00-17:00.

Links
http://schhh.se/
http://www.onoma.co.uk/
http://suborderly.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

Biographies
John Bowers
John Bowers is currently a Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Music, University of East Anglia, UK. As an improvising musician, John is part of Tonesucker, an improvising noise metal electric guitar duo (CD Slaughterhouse available on Onoma Research), the Gentlemen of Circuitry, a quartet who play antique and homemade electronic instruments, and the electro-acoustic improvisors The Zapruda Trio (CD Live at Smallfish available on vision-of-sound), amongst other collaborations. Solo work includes The Dial: Have you been to Hilversum? (broadcast by Resonance FM, London), Do It Yourself Silence and Silence Silenced (contributed to the CD A Call for Silence, Sonic Arts Network), and Atonement for Violin Quartet (Norwich Gallery, UK), a four day long performance-installation-webcast revisiting the instrument destruction preoccupations of Fluxus artists. John is co-founder of the Onoma Research music label. A monograph specifying John's characteristic approach to music, social science research and technical affairs, Improvising Machines, is available from http://www.ariada.uea.ac.uk/ariadatexts/ariada4.

Sten-Olof Hellström
Sten-Olof has been active as a professional composer since 1984 and gained a Masters of Music in composition at University of East Anglia, England 1990. He has been employed as a researcher and composer at the Centre for User Oriented IT Design (CID), Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) since 1997. As a researcher Sten-Olof has mainly worked in the field of Human Computer Interaction where he has been part of several major EU-funded long-term research projects such as eRENA and Shape. He is also very active in the field of sonification (representing data with sound). One example of current work is the construction and development of a computer interface for the visually impaired. Sten-Olof’s main occupation and profession is as a composer working with electro-acoustic music. His music has been performed and broadcast around the world and he is also active as a performer playing live electro-acoustic music on his own and with others such as Ann Rosén, John Bowers and Simon Vincent. Sten Olof is also part of the performance group the Zapruda Trio based in England.

Questions and queries
Please contact Mikael

Talk: "Interaction design in practice: on the construction of an interactive object"

2007-11-07T11:32:00.000Z

The IDC is hosting a research talk this Friday, 9th of November: "Interaction design in practice: on the construction of an interactive object", by Dr. Cristiano Storni, University of Trento (Italy)

Abstract:
The talk will provide an overview of one the two case studies that I have
analyzed in my research. The case is about the birth of a new Interaction
design working prototype. The work is based on extensive observations based
on the idea to map the trajectory of events and transformations that bring
from the first instantiation of an idea to its final realization.
The presentation will focus on the methodological aspects of the research by
bringing to the fore the importance of fetishistic ethnographic accounts. It
will follow an overview of some of the new concepts and conceptual
distinctions proposed in the analysis such as: pro-ferences vs. re-ferences,
sewing practices, in-jects, thing vs. objects.
The talk is aimed at provoking conversations with audience about daily
design practices and experiences.

Bio
Cristiano Storni holds a degree in Human/computer interaction from the
University of Siena and a Ph.D in Information Systems and Organization from
the Department of Sociology and Social research (Faculty of Sociology of the
University of Trento), with a Thesis on Design practices and the
construction of objects. He has worked as senior engineer in several IST
European Projects on Information systems, Knowledge Management, E-Government
and, more recently, e-Health. E-Health and Gerontechnology is the main
research area he is currently involved with. His interests range from SSIS
(Social Studies of Information Systems), HCI, Interaction Design and
Participatory Design, to Semiotics, ANT (Actor Network Theory), STS
(Science and technology studies) and Ethnography/Ethnomethodology.
He is concerned with social, organizational, existential and human aspects
of technological innovation and design. He has presented several research
papers in national and international conferences.

Time: 10.30
Venue: CSIS meeting room, Computer Science Building, CS2037

All welcome!

IDC Christmas Party

2007-11-01T11:45:00.000Z

Minister Éamon Ó Cuív TD visits Abaltat offices

2007-10-19T11:56:00.000+01:00

Éamon Ó Cuív TD, Minister for Community, Rural & Gaeltacht Affairs, visited the Abaltat offices in Spiddal on Friday 19 October.

Abaltat Express features on TVB Television Broadcast 2 Minute Drill

2007-10-19T11:51:00.000+01:00

Abaltat Express, the latest software release from Abaltat, a company started from an IDC research project, features in a www.televisionbroadcast.com 2-Minute Drill:

http://www.televisionbroadcast.com/TMD/archive/2007/101907-two-minutedrill.mp3

Abaltat Muse wins award at IBC 2007

2007-10-04T10:52:00.000+01:00

The company that was born out of the White Hunter/Metamusic research project in the IDC has won yet another award in IBC in Amsterdam...

Justin McCarthy, Technical Officer, was also interviewed on Radio IBC

www.http://www.radioibc.com/myradioibc

Click on "Abaltat - Music Composition For Dummies!" to hear the podcast

Limerick Independent

2007-10-03T20:49:00.001+01:00

New IDC publications at ICHIM 2007

2007-10-03T15:22:00.000+01:00

The IDC will be well represented at the International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting (ICHIM 07) in Toronto at the end of October. Two papers featuring IDC work have been accepted to the conference:
"Visitors' contributions as cultural heritage: designing for participation", by Luigina Ciolfi, Liam Bannon and Mikael Fernström, discusses the approach to designing interactive exhibitions that allow for visitors' interactive participation, such as "Re-Tracing the Past" and the "Shannon Portal".
"MUSTEL: Framing the Design of Technology-Enhanced Learning Activities for Museum Visitors" presents a novel frame to designing educational museums technologies developed by the MUSTEL group within the EU Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence. Liam Bannon wrote the paper in collaboration with Palmyre Pierroux and Dagny Stuedahl (University of Oslo, Norway), Kevin Walker (London Knowledge Lab), Victor Kaptelinin (Umeå University, Sweden) and Tony Hall (National University of Ireland, Galway).

Success for ECSCW 2007 in Limerick

2007-09-30T17:39:00.000+01:00

Prof. Liam Bannon, Director of the IDC, chaired the 10th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW 2007), which took place at the Hilton hotel in Limerick City last week. The conference was generously sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland, IBM, Microsoft Research, Limerick Travel and Limerick City Council, with support and resources from the University of Limerick.

Many other IDC members were involved in the planning and management of the event, which saw over 150 participants from all over the world converge on Limerick to attend the Conference. ECSCW 2007 featured 10 workshops, 3 masterclasses and a Doctoral Colloquium over two days; and a single-track plenary 3 days that have included presentations of 23 research papers, two panels, posters and demo exhibitions and two invited keynote speakers.

IDC members co-organised and participated in a number of workshops, including "The Challenges of Collaborative Work in Global Software Development" (Gabriela Avram, Liam Bannon, Anders Sigfridsson, Daniel Sullivan, Anne Sheehan) and "Beyond Mobility: Studying Nomadic Work" (Luigina Ciolfi).

The Student Volunteers were co-ordinated by IDC members Michael Cooke and Anders Sigfridsson, with the support of Emanuela Mazzone (University of Central Lancashire), formerly a visiting student at the IDC.
Annette Aboulafia served as demo chair and coordinated the demo exhibition.

The conference delegates were welcomed by Prof. Vincent Cunnane, UL Vice-President Research, who officially opened ECSCW 2007, and greeted by the Mayor of Limerick, Cllr. Ger Fahy, who hosted a reception at City Hall.

Other social events included the conference opening reception at the Georgian House, and the conference banquet at Dromoland Castle.
The final event of the conference also featured a UL contribution, as Prof. Micheal O'Suilleabhain, director of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, delivered ECSCW 2007 final keynote, "What makes a traditional Irish session work", joined on stage by colleagues Niall Keegan and Sandra Joyce.

The next ECSCW Conference will take place in Vienna, Austria, in September 2009.

Congratulations to Marilyn and Iride

2007-08-31T19:18:00.000+01:00

It's graduation time again, and the IDC celebrates Marilyn Lennon, PhD and Iride Bartolucci, MSc by research. Congrats to Iride and Marilyn on their achievement!

Dawn 2007 Opening on Monday

2007-08-30T18:27:00.000+01:00

DAWN’07 - DIGITAL ARTS WEEK NOW 2007 at UL, 3rd o 7th of September 2007
For the eight year in a row, the University of Limerick offers an exhibition and concert of Masters’ student work. It’s the students from the Masters programmes in Music Technology and Interactive Media that showcase their end-of-year work. The exhibition shows technology, media and music that may be the start of tomorrow’s revolution. With the freedom given to the students to envisage where current trends are going and what is possible with the latest computer hardware and software, we have the opportunity to see demonstrations and examples of what a not too distant future has to offer.
The Computer Science and Information Systems Department at the University of Limerick runs both programmes. What makes UL’s programmes so special is that they recognise the importance of interdisciplinary work, bridging traditional divisions between arts and science.
The faculty at UL teaching on the two programmes are highly enthusiastic about the exhbition. For example:
Jürgen Simpson, the Course Director of the Music Technology programme said “This is the one of the few programmes in Ireland where you can get a Masters degree in electroacoustic music composition. Some students also choose a scientific approach and do work in areas such as musical user interfaces, sound synthesis software and audio processing – which we know are increasingly important with the evolution of music and media on the Internet”.
Mikael Fernström, the Course Director in Interactive Media enthusiastically commented that “Over the last few years we have seen our students research and develop some extremely novel ideas and technologies. Some of our past students have started companies based on their ideas, others have become specialists or teachers in both technology and digital art. I have a strong feeling that many of this year’s projects may follow the same successful path.“
UL also has two undergraduate programmes, in Digital Media Design and in Music Media and Performance Technology. The Computer Science department has built a new laboratory with state-of-the-art digital music and media equipment and software to facilitate the new courses that will continue to strengthen UL’s position in an increasingly digital world.

Admission to the exhibition and to the concert is free.
Official opening: 18:00, 3rd of September, Ground floor atrium, Foundation Building.
Concert: 20:00, Performance Art Centre, Foundation Building
Exhibition: 3rd to 7th of September, 10:00-17:00, Shuman Building
For details about the works, see http://www.csis.ul.ie/imedia/dawn07/

Bridget Hickey

2007-08-19T02:49:00.000+01:00

Bridget Hickey is dead. She graduated with a 2.1 in last year's (2006)Masters programme in Interactive Media. She was last seen alive the 7th of August. She was found dead the 16th of August. Her course web site is still there. May she rest in peace.

Summer guests in the IDC

2007-08-02T18:32:00.000+01:00

Today we had not one, but two guests in the IDC. Both also gave talks at UL(organised in association with the CSCoP).

Michael Kölling from the University of Kent and Alexander Troussov, the Chief Scientist of the IBM Dublin Center for Advanced Studies visited the IDC this afternoon, after giving two extremely interesting talks at UL in the morning. Details on the talks can be found on the socGSD project blog.

Liam himself (just back from the Ferroe Islands) guided the guests in "the grand tour" of the IDC.
Future collaboration opportunities were also discussed.

Muireann leaving today...

2007-07-27T18:06:00.000+01:00

Muireann O'Brien, secondary school teacher at the Carrigaline Community School in co Cork has spent 8 weeks with us this summer, working with the socGSD team as participant in the STARs SFI programme.

As time went by, she became part of the big IDC family...

Besides finding out about the collaboration challenges in Global Software Development from the members of the socGSD team, she also had the chance to familiarise herself with the work of the other groups in the IDC.

We all hope she's taking back to her school a bag full of stories and resources!

Good bye, Muireann! It was great having you around this summer!

Dr Eva Hornecker visiting the IDC

2007-07-10T20:49:00.000+01:00

The IDC "Shared Worlds" project is hosting a Talk by Dr Eva Hornecker, Pervasive Interaction Lab, Open University, UK. The talk will take place on Wednesday, 11th of July, 2.30 PM, in ERO-008.

Title: "Social interaction in computer-augmented environments - towards an understanding of users' experience in interactive spaces"

Abstract: With technological advances, computing progressively moves beyond the desktop into new physical and social contexts. This talk will focus on the user experience in interactive spaces, which embed computing in the real world, and enable users to control and interact with computers through tangible devices and full-body interaction. Freeing users from the desktop and integrating computer output into the
everyday world in particular is expected to support collaborative activities and communication. Yet research so far has tended to focus on the technological opportunities and less on the user experience and the social effects of these new systems. The talk will explain 'tangible interaction' as an umbrella term encompassing different technical and disciplinary approaches. It will introduce a framework which contributes to understanding the user experience of 'tangible interaction' and to design approaches that address the social use context. This is exemplified through a range of practical examples.

Bio: Dr. Eva Hornecker is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Open University and member of the Pervasive Interaction Lab where she conducts her research project which centers on the talk's theme. She was program co-chair for the first international ACM conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI'07). Before coming to the OU she was acting lecturer at the Technical University in Vienna and at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and worked as a visting research fellow on the Equator project at the University of Sussex.

Congratulations to Bruce and Luisa on the birth of their son

2007-05-24T22:42:00.000+01:00

Congratulations to Bruce and Luisa on the birth of their first child, baby Daniel, he's a strapping 8 pounds and 12 ounces. He was born today in Limerick at 17:53.

Congratulations to Dr Marilyn Lennon

2007-05-23T09:56:00.000+01:00

The IDC celebrating a new PhD! Marilyn Lennon has successfully defended her thesis "Reflective Prototyping - Concretising Reflection in Interaction Design". Examiners were Prof. Jacob Buur from the University of Southern Denmark, and Prof. Eamonn McQuade from UL College of Engineering.
Here's Dr Lennon celebrating her success with her supervisors, Prof Liam Bannon and Dr Annette Aboulafia.

Congratulations to Dr Marilyn Lennon on her achievement!

UL IDC to host first Irish HCI meeting

2007-04-18T11:11:00.000+01:00

The Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick will host a 1-Day Workshop on the topic of Human-Computer Interaction in Ireland (iHCI07) to be held at on May 2nd, 2007.
The purpose of this Workshop, which we hope will become an annual event, is to promote networking and collaboration among academics and practitioners in the broad area of people interacting with technology, and as such, the topic includes such areas as: usability studies, interface design and evaluation, accessibility issues, cognitive ergonomics, human factors in computer systems, computer supported cooperative work, human computer interaction, multimedia and interaction design.

Our intent with this initial meeting is to bring together researchers, practitioners and teachers interested in the field, to document past and current activities, and to setup a database of information in this area on an all-Ireland basis. To this end, this first Workshop will focus on brief presentations from all the participating groups.

We envisage that this Workshop will help provide a better profile for individuals and groups involved in the HCI area in Ireland, as currently, despite the size of our software industry, we have not yet developed as significant an impact as one might expect, given the importance of our topic.

New Shared Worlds Journal Publications to Appear

2007-04-17T15:21:00.000+01:00

The forthcoming May issue of IEEE Computer will feature a research paper by the IDC Shared Worlds team documenting the Shannon Portal: "The Shannon Portal Installation: Interaction Design for Public Places".
Another Shared Worlds paper by Luigina Ciolfi discussing the Shannon Airport installation from the point of view of affective computing will appear in the forthcoming issue of CoDesign, and will be presented at the Affective Communication in Design conference in Leeds in June.
And more are on the way!

The IDC to be privatized - becomes independent research institute

2007-04-01T14:41:00.000+01:00

A group of private benefactors (who would like to be anonymous) have donated an undisclosed amount to buy the entire Interaction Design Centre, its staff, faculty and students from UL, to become a fully privatized international research institute. It is believed that the amount of funding involved is at least forty-two million Euro.

One of our major discoveries that attracted the investors was a new form of computing that eventually will enable the development of computers capable of infinite improbability states. While computers up until now are based on logical gates switching between ones or zeroes (true or false), our new technology will most often use the state of “maybe”. To continue our groundbreaking work in Human-Centred Computing, it is envisaged that the emergence of femto-technology will enable us to create a pain-free diode, which is believed to be at the core of the development of humanoid robotics. Further more, the new institute’s President claims that we have a new framework for understanding the socio-technical reality that will be the foundation of the approaches to software development and communication technologies. In a comment, a spokesperson said that:

“We all know that things like email-spam and pornography has been central to the popularity of the World-Wide Web. It is now time to re-frame our thinking and look at a fundamental change in global perspectives. For example, if for each spam-message the spammer had to make a donation to a charity, or, if porn-sites changed their approach on narrative structure so that users could be enriched with an educational experience in for example anatomy and philosophy as well as looking at more evolutionary trends.”

The working title for the project is The Institute for Life, the Universe and Everything (ILUE)

Mikael invades England

2007-02-06T01:20:00.000Z

Mikael delivered the keynote at the International Workshop on Interactive Sonification 2007 in York. UK.

There were many interesting papers and works-in-progress presented throughout the day, and many really good demos.
The previous day, we had a Management Committee meeting in the COST Action ConGas. Next meeting, which is the last in this action, will be in Reykjavik in May.

Mikael on Rte Radio One

2007-01-25T16:58:00.000Z

Mikael was on today's Mooney Goes Wild on RTE Radio One, talking about sounds and the sounds people hate. You can listen to the clip here (MP3).

This year's CSIS Christmas Party!

2007-01-04T18:27:00.000Z

This year, our head of department decided to organise a big Christmas party not only for the teaching and admin staff, but also including all the related research centers! Up to 100 people showed up at the venue, and enjoyed the night!

The result exceeded all expectations! Have a look yourselves:

Thanks to Colm for taking good quality pictures and for this nice collage! You're a pro!

Winter Graduation 2006

2006-12-21T21:29:00.000Z

It's that happy time of the year - again. We had Nicola getting her M.Sc. by research and Andy his Ph.D.

The Interactive Media class received their awards, and so did the Music Technology class. We wish you all the very best!

IDC and MetaMusic in the media

2006-11-24T15:14:00.000Z

This week, there has been excellent media coverage of the IDC MetaMusic Project, led by Mikael Fernstrom.
The project featured in the RTE program This Note's For You, as well as in the Irish Times.
The video clip can be seen online on the RTE website.

It's all song and dance

2006-11-23T02:28:00.000Z

We've had a couple of interesting visitors in the IDC over the last few days. First, Todd Winkler, and we're working on the Celeritas project with Tyndall, and possible continuation. Next we had Gianpaolo Evangelista, discussing possible FP7 project on sound, haptics and interaction.

Revving up for ecscw 2007

2006-11-21T10:06:00.000Z

We'll be hosting ecscw 2007 here in Limerick next year! The website and blogs are now live, and the call for paper has been presented at the recent cscw06 conference in Banff, where Anders was the IDC official representative. The conference chairs will be Liam Bannon, IDC director and Ina Wagner from the Technical University of Vienna. The program chairs are Richard Harper and Carl Gutwin.
Preparations are well underway here in Limerick. The conference venue, the Limerick Hilton, is being built and we got a chance to visit it last night! After donning hard hats, size 8 boots and high-viz vests we were shown around by Paul, the site manager, and Hilary, the hotel sales manager. Of course, it's still a messy buidling site, but it shows great potential, especially the seventh floor, completely dedicated to business meetings, with fantastic views of the river and the city...The workshops will have o be very interesting to not let people getting distracted by the view!!!

The Portal Experience Part II

2006-10-27T16:36:00.000+01:00

Daniela Petrelli visiting the IDC

2006-10-09T15:33:00.000+01:00

Daniela Petrelli from the University of Sheffield is visiting the IDC as part of the "Memoir" Project.
At Sheffield, Daniela teaches electronic publishing, digital multimedia and web-design.
Her current research interests are:
- information access, including multilingual (searching information in many languages) and multimedia (particularly historical archives of images and videos);
- information and knowledge management for sharing in manufacturing (Rolls Royce jet engine design, building and worldwide maintenance);
- personal digital memories.

Daniela moved to the UK in 2000 and previously I was a researcher at IRST in Trento, Italy where she did research on adaptive and mobile guides for museums, natural-language based interaction, intelligent interface interaction.
In a far past (1990-1993) she was at the Italian Telecon Research centre and worked on CSCW and teleconferencing systems mainly doing interface design and development.

The Memoir project will last for 4 years and is about the capturing, storage, organization, retrieval and sharing of multimedia personal memories. Personal memories are intended at large: email, documents (word, excel, powerpoint), messages on the phone, personal pictures, videos etc. Accessing means not today but in 10, 20 or more years time.
Several people are involved:
- 4 academics from the University of Sheffield (Daniela is one of those)
- 3 research associates (just recruited, 1 HCI, 1 Video/Image, 1 IR)
- 3 senior visiting fellows for 3 months on: ethics of memories, psychology of memories, social history.

Daniela's interest in the project is about sharing memories in a family context across different generations (children, parents, grandparents but siblings and cousins are welcome too ;-)
The goal is to design a something to facilitate the capturing composition and sharing of the memories across generations of tightly connected people.

VIP visit to IDC

2006-10-05T01:03:00.000+01:00

Today, Jim and Margo Keyes visited the Interaction Design Centre at UL. They enjoyed a number of our demos, from JJ's sound sculpture, MetaMusic, Motes and the DBMT haptics.

MetaMusic (a.k.a. Abaltat) handover

2006-09-28T00:04:00.000+01:00

For the past two years, a dedicated team of programmers and computer musicologists in the Interaction Design Centre in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Limerick have been working on developing a novel software package. The idea was to create software that automatically can compose music to video clips, such as television advertisements promos and documentaries, that would otherwise cost producers a lot in terms of music royalties.

The project's team-leader Mikael Fernström, the co-originator of the project and well-known computer-music composer, commented that “I’ve been working for so many years on finding new kinds of music by means of computing, but when the Abaltat team approached us as and asked if we could do popular music, we said Why Not!“

The resulting software prototype is now being transferred to an exciting new Irish start-up company, Meiticheol Teoranta, trading as Abaltat. Abaltat is located in Spiddal, Co. Galway. The development was sponsored by Enterprise Ireland’s Innovation Partnership programme. Abaltat is also supported by Údarás na Gaeilge, The Western Development Commission and Enterprise Equity Investment Fund.

At the recent IBC trade show in Amsterdam, Abaltat previewed AbaltatMuse. The software and was nominated for the prestigious IABM Peter Wayne Award. The product was also selected as pick of the show by Broadcast Engineering magazine and has been shortlisted by TVB Europe for their IBC awards to be announced in October

Mr Justin McCarthy, one of Ireland’s most well-known video editors and Technical Director of the company said "Based on our market research and the response at the international IBC trade show, we are confident that we have a worldwide success on our hands. The future of broadcasting includes the ability to deliver programming over all media including the web. The issue of music royalties is becoming more and more of a hinderance. Our software solves this problem giving editors an exciting and creative solution. Editors can now control how the music is written, using an editing interface.

The television world will never sound the same...

Special thanks to Eoin, Ian, Tony and Brian who have worked so hard, for so long, on delivering this vision. We'll do it again, next week ;-)

Good Luck Steve!

2006-09-21T22:05:00.000+01:00

After years of service, Stephen has left the IDC for greener pastures!
Here he is pictured at his going away party, already scared by what awaits him...
Good Luck Steve, and thanks for all your work with us!

Interactive Media and Music Technology 2006

2006-09-14T22:58:00.000+01:00

It's that happy time of the year. I-media and MusTechs are finalising their projects. We're all hoping that they'll do really well, and make us proud in the DAWN2006 show.

Limerick Milkmarket

2006-09-11T02:27:00.000+01:00

So, our next design is Limerick Milkmarket. Why the hell am I writing this, it should be Parag! Anyhow, we've created an on-line cookbook.
We have spread some postcards to get people to send us their recipes. Hopefully we'll get some healthy suggestions.

More on Shannon Portal

2006-08-13T16:22:00.000+01:00

A QuickTimeVR panorama of the portal.

The Portal Experience

2006-08-10T17:02:00.000+01:00

Here's the most relevant article written on the Portal in the past couple of weeks. It appeared in the Irish Independent.
Now that the Portal's exhibition is nearly over, a brief overview of people's interactions with it can be seen here.
The images "donated" by people to the Portal Gallery can be seen here.

The Portal Up and Running at Shannon Airport

2006-07-19T23:49:00.000+01:00

The Portal is finally up and running in the transit lounge of Shannon Airport. A lot of interesting interactions around it and very positive feedback so far!

Well Done Italy!

2006-07-10T01:09:00.000+01:00

Portal getting ready for Shannon Airport

2006-07-06T00:36:00.000+01:00

So, this is it. On Tuesday, the contraptions we've built will move to Shannon. As the core team is now quite [too] small, we will probably ask all IDC:ers to help out at some stage.

ICAD2006

2006-06-26T15:43:00.000+01:00

Last week, Cyberviking and Braz were at ICAD2006 in London. Apart from presenting our paper, this year's competitive activity was to sonify a number of concepts:

Communism

Drama

Diversity

A Pint

A Dragon

C'mon England

The results of Group I can be heard here.

NomadS Seminar: Supporting Mobile Work: Approaches to designing technology

2006-05-26T11:23:00.000+01:00

On Thursday, MAy 25th, the NomadS project hosted an open seminar: "Supporting Mobile Work: Approaches to designing technology". The seminar was aimed at discussing how the design of novel technological tools could improve the lives of "nomadic" workers. The seminar was sponsored by the NomadS through its funding bodies, Science Foundation Ireland and IRCSET. The seminar saw presentations of the work conducted on NomadS, and the participation of an invited speaker: Dr. Monika Buscher, University of Lancaster (UK).

Monika is an ethnomethodologist, ethnographer and designer interested in the study of people's practical action and the design of innovative technologies. She works with landscape architects, health professionals, patients, software designers, industrial designers, and sociologists, currently in a project called PalCom, which is part of the EU’s 6th Framework Programme.

Monika's talk was entitled "Extreme nomads: Mobility and embodied conduct in emergency teamwork".
Emergency situations demand fast, effective creation/preparation/maintenance of many different work places and connecting routes under often extremely chaotic conditions. It requires collaboration between diverse actors. Police, fire services, and medical personnel need to secure the scene, create access routes and ensure they are kept free, categorise, treat and transport victims, handle hazardous materials or deal with contamination, and coordinate work with emergency service personnel in emergency vehicles, dispatch centres, and hospitals. Communication is crucial, but often difficult under immense time pressure, in extremely complex and often dangerous settings. Embodied conduct plays a crucial role for communication and the coordination of mobility and the creation/preparation/maintenance of workplaces and routes. In this paper I discuss ethnographic observations from training exercises for major incidents and some prototypes for technological support for communication and coordination in emergency situations with a focus on the role of embodied conduct.

Thanks to all who participated!

Change

2006-05-26T00:32:00.000+01:00

It's been a good day. Interesting seminar from Nomands project.
We all need to start to prepare [realise] that the IDC this autumn will be a different place, as almost half of the postgrads finish or bugger off. My ultimate fear is that I'll be the only techie left. I'll have nobody to talk to [or few].
Perhaps I should get a real job and develop Irish Homeland Security ;-)

Celeritas

2006-04-03T02:42:00.000+01:00

This past week we had a hack-fest. Tyndall's latest motes with inertial measurement units were tested together with MAX/MSP for the purpose of creating the Celeritas composition.

Todd, Cian, Cindy, Andy

Steve, Giuseppe, Cindy

Mike 30

2006-03-05T16:08:00.000Z

Great party! Good fun!