haptic

Tiltfactor is delighted to be able to share some design methods with the public. Developed as part of the Values at Play project, the Grow-A-Game cards are widely in use in both K-12 and University classrooms. Using Grow-A-Game, groups of people brainstorm novel game ideas wich prioritize human values. While no prior game design experience is necessary, both experienced designers and those new to the field will have fun making games. In response to consumer demand, our team has created three distinct sets of the cards, with each version designed specifically to meet the needs of a particular user group. Apprentice, designed for 10+ beginners, as well as educators to use in classrooms and after school programs, focusing on digital game examples; Classic, designed for general users or those without much experience with digital games who are interested in exploring values-conscious design; Expert, geared toward advanced students for expert designers. This version is intended to complement more conventional brainstorming methods and without example games to modify. (Source: http://www.tiltfactor.org/game/grow-a-game/)

News Wheel, 2016 is an iOS app that explores the poetics of ever changing news headlines. It begins as a static disk divided into nine sections each representing a different news source. Tapping anywhere on the screen causes the wheel to spin. Another tap stops the wheel and suddenly a headline in one of nine pre-selected colors appears on the screen. This playful interface invites users to start and stop the wheel eventually filling the screen with a collage of current headlines. Individual words can be deleted and repositioned so users can create their own poems from this content. In addition, dragging one's finger across the screen creates an animated chain of fragmented and poetic text derived from today's headline news. News Wheel is a creative and poetic way to view, juxtapose and interpret world events. (Source: http://www.jodyzellen.com/newswheeltalk/)

It is overly simplistic to state that my digital poems come entirely from building/discovering interfaces. Any artist’s creative practice is a merging/melding mix of fluid events and inspirations. But with all my digital poems there is one commonality, the emphasis on interface. Rarely do I even reuse interfaces, and when I do it is only as one section of a larger work. This continual drive to create new ways to rethink the structure, organization and interactive functionality of my digital poems comes from a variety of internal influences. Most importantly is how these interfaces are not just vessels for content, they are poems in themselves. In the same way digital poetry might be best defined by the experience, rather than a description. Or similar to a digital poet and their works being described by the events and stories surrounding the creation and building process, an interface is the life, the body, and a poetic construction in itself. And through the artist performance I will explore/perform numerous of my interfaces, discussing/reading from them, eluding to how they were made, their inspirations and my thoughts on how they could be reused by other poets. But how is this a performance? This will not just be your typical reading and/or artist talks. While nearly all my digital poetry/fiction performances are highly theatric and, dare I say, engaging, I want to involve the audience more than I have in the past. Therefore, I will be shifting from interface to interface based on the audience’s commands. On the screen will be a series of titled links, around 20 total. The audience will choose which the title I read from. They can change those numbers at any time, and as often as they want. Choosing the links will happen via an ipad, being passed around the audience. The camera from the tablet will also be projected on the large screen in a small corner box. Then as the audience member changes the work, I will start reading it. And much like many of my works, the performance will be highly interactive, engaging, strange and a bit chaotic, driven, in part, by the audience’s commands. (Source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

Machines of Disquiet (iPad App) has been developed in the context of an ongoing research project at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and its goal is to create a Digital Archive of the Book of Disquiet [Livro do Desassossego – LdoD], an unfinished work written by Fernando Pessoa between 1913 and 1935. Machines of Disquiet is the name chosen for a number of experimental applications for mobile devices (iOS and Android) that aim to provide reading and aesthetical experiences based on the text of the Book of Disquiet. Every application is an attempt to find a new setting for experiencing the LdoD as sensitive matter (i.e. matter experienced in different modalities – text, drawing, sound, image, motion) and explores the expressive potential of these types of devices, particularly in terms of interface (e.g. multi-touch interactions and motion sensors). (Source: ELO 2015 catalog)

Death Of An Alchemist is a multimedia novel written by Big Data—a detective story generated in real-time from live online content. The installation consists of an 8m wall displaying 128 pages of projected text, symbols and charts. This content is generated by scraping Twitter, Google and social platforms for today’s headlines, social media conversations, memes and more. The text flickers and updates as new data is received, yet still creates a coherent narrative that can be read from beginning to end. This is thanks to a bespoke technique we have termed the “poetics of search”: using a combination of search operators and algorithms to mine data, then string manipulation to fit it cohesively into a new plot. In the story, readers investigate the death of 16th century alchemist Trithemius. He has left behind a supposedly magical book, Steganographia, said to reveal the “clavis magna”: the idea from which all knowledge flows. Readers must decode the book to find the clues to Trithemius’ murder. But this is no ordinary leather-bound volume… The work is an extended allegory for coercive uses of Big Data by technology companies such as Google and Facebook, which aim to create their own “clavis magna”. Death of an Alchemist is an official selection of the 2015 International Symposium on Electronic Art, to be held in Vancouver, Canada. It is also being made available as a free iOS/Android app. (source: ELO 2015 catalog)

Gateway to the World is a mobile application designed to run on an iPad2 / iPad mini or later models. This work was created specifically for the SILT exhibition, hosted in Hamburg, Germany in June 2014. I took this exhibition as an opportunity to research the city of Hamburg and discovered that it had one of the largest ports in the world; its name Gateway to the World (GttW) seemed like a great title for the app. The vast and busy port served as a metaphor for the immensity of the Internet, the flow of information and its meaning of openness and outreach to the World Wide Web. The aim of the app was to use open data from the maritime databases to visualize the routes of the vessels arriving to and from the Port of Hamburg, as well as have the vessels’ names mapped to Wikipedia entries. As the vessels move they act as writing tools to reveal a string of text creating calligramatic forms of information pulled from Wikipedia entries about the name of the vessels. The information gathered from these entries generates a remix of text going from presenting factual information about vessels (containers, cargo ships, tankers, high speed crafts) to describing their names connecting them to characters in literary works, plays and mythological stories. (source: ELO 2015 Catalog)

This is a remediation of a popular paper book about two friends whose names reflect their personalities. Jakob always says yes (ja) to everything, and Neikob always says no (nei). The interactivity that has been added to the app version works perfectly. Of course children love touching Jakob to make him say ja, and Neikob to make him say nei. The repetition of this interaction perfectly mirrors the repetition in the characters’ responses, which is the whole point of the narrative. Other features, like being able to turn lights on and off, also enhance the experience, which culminates in Jakob’s cunningly finding a way to make Neikob go along with his plans, allowing them to escape great danger involving a thief and a crocodile. (source: ELO conference catalog)

In this digital first picture book app, the reader encounters several interwoven stories connected by a thoroughly digital aesthetics that suits the different stories. The frame narrative centres around Kubbe, an anthropomorphic wooden log (kubbe is Norwegian for log) who is having a picnic with his grandmother and becomes curious about the shadows he sees. Upon hearing his grandmother’s story about how shadow theatre was created in ancient China, Kubbe decides to produce his own shadow theater: an unusal retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood”. The tablet’s affordances of back lighting, animation and visual spatiality are exploited in this app in a manner that suits and enhances the different stories’ individual characteristics. (source: ELO 2015 conference catalog)

Children’s literature can include non-fiction texts, and this app, developed by Spinfy, is an example. It is a creatively retold version of the The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Rights in a way that is aimed at young children. Each spread is read aloud, and when the reader touches one of the illustrations, a sound is heard, or the speech bubbles that many illustrations have are read out. For instance, the page explaining that all children have the right to privacy shows a girl with a diary, and when you touch the diary, a voice whispers: “Ssh, don’t tell”. The app is an adaptation of a picture book Pernilla Stalfelt’s wrote and illustrated in 2010. (source: ELO 2015 Conference Program and Festival Catalog)

The fascinating story of Moomin, Mymble and Little My comes alive in this new interactive storybook. Shake, rotate, swipe and tap the screen to discover the fabulous animations hidden on each page. You can listen to the narration or read the story yourself to your children. See what happens as Moomin travels through wonderfully illustrated adventures with his friends. Amazing interactive content and funny sound effects make the magical journey so exciting your children will enjoy this classic Moomin story over and over again. original illustrations and story by Tove Jansson eye-catching animations and funny sound effects amusing interactions on each page read-aloud narration (Source: http://www.spinfy.com/products/applications/the-book-about-moomin-mymbl…)