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.

IDC Christmas Celebrations

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

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

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"

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

Minister Éamon Ó Cuív TD visits Abaltat offices

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

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

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

New IDC publications at ICHIM 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

Daniela Petrelli visiting the IDC

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

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.