augmented_studio : collaboration, interactive media and urban space

8/12/2019 augmented_studio : collaboration, interactive media and urban space

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augmented_studio: collaboration, interactive

media and urban space

Ian McArthur

School of Design StudiesCollege of Fine Art, University of New South Wales

Sydney, Australia

Brad Miller

School of Design Studies

College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales

Sydney, Australia

Andrew Murphie

School of Arts and Media

University of New South Wales

Sydney, Australia

Abstract. This paper concerns the potential for

participatory and interactive data visualisation to help

develop practices, research trajectories and models forinter-cultural design collaboration. It situates this designresearch in the context of the problem of sustainability,especially with regard to the urgency of rethinkingdesign in urban settings. The paper describes a specificproject, RARE EARTH: Hacking the City; an ongoingresearch trajectory, augmented_studio; and a series ofmodels and concepts that allow us to link design

research with research into both inter-culturalcollaboration and sustainability in design.

Based around an Interactive Media Platform (IMP)augment_me, developed by artist and academic BradMiller, RARE EARTH was the second collaboration

between architect and artist Professor RichardGoodwins innovative Porosity Studioi and The

Collabor8 Project (C8)ii, and the Institute of Fashion, Art

and Design, Donghua University (DHU), Shanghai.RARE EARTH established an ongoing researchtrajectory (augmented_studio) that explores

participatory and interactive data visualisation to createaccelerated communication pathways for buildingshared vision around complex problems in urbanenvironments. This has led to the development of amodel for Cross-Cultural Interdisciplinary Collaboration(CCIC). CCIC uses the potential of IMP as interculturalcommunication and collaborative tools to explore apliant methodology advocating sensitivity to divergent

institutional and community expectations, language

difference, and culturally based assumptions aboutlearning and creativity. CCIC highlights the crucial rolefor open, technologically augmented laboratories increating adaptive, interdisciplinary design processesand pedagogy, In these laboratories we may beempowered to reflect on meaningful ways designers,

i Professor Richard Goodwin established Porosity Studio in 1996.

ii Ian McArthur instigated The Collabor8 Project in 2003 to enable

design students in Australia and China to collaborate.

researchers, governments and citizens from different

cultures might work together in a joined up way to

envisage our as yet unimagined collective urbanfutures.

The city and its inhabitants are central in this researchin combination forming a crucial site for thinking aboutcollaborative action concerned with the transformationof design practice, design education and re-visioningwhat a sustainable urban-centric future means.However, collaboration is often complex and hard toexplain and difficult to understand from the outside. Thethemes discussed in this research encompass

questions about interactivity in public space; how IMPmediate and re-modulate relations between people andbetween people and machines; and ideas about how

people from different cultures might collaboratively useinteractive media to think about complex globalproblems using cities as labs for the future.

Keywords: interactive media, urban labs, design, China

I. RAREEARTH

RARE EARTH: Hacking the City was conceivedat The College of Fine Arts (COFA) in Sydney, andstaged in a large space in the creative precinct Bridge 8in the heart of downtown Shanghai in September 2011.It was an intensive collaborative design StudioLAB. Itwas also the second collaboration between TheCollabor8 Project (C8), architect and artist Professor

Richard Goodwins innovative Porosity Studio, and theInstitute of Fashion, Art and Design, DonghuaUniversity (DHU), Shanghai. It used the InteractiveMedia Platform (IMP) augment_me,developed by artistand academic Brad Miller. Over two intensive weeksduring September 2011, students and researchers fromThe College of Fine Arts (COFA) at The University of

New South Wales (UNSW) and Donghua University(DHU) engaged in creating dynamic content togetherusing a live database. RARE EARTH engaged thesestudents of art, design and other creative disciplines inworkshops, presentations, site visits and journeys


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interrogating a range of urban, social and cultural issuesin Shanghai. The StudioLAB worked first with themesthat emphasised experimental improvisation (the hack)and contingency and second, reflections on how artist,designers and researchers might use interactive media tofacilitate cross-cultural collaboration. The participantsuploaded and tagged their iterative responses to thestudio brief creating a audio visual database that

describes the creative processes, social and studioencounters, and the outputs of the project.

In accentuating the use of interactive media andexperimental improvisation RARE EARTH createdunique opportunities for the participants to explore theirideas for the future of cities, immersive environments,and transcultural collaboration. The project also strivedto create a open space to think beyond possibilities [1]while experiencing the significance of culture amid theemergence of Asias rapid urbanisation, and thiscenturys reconfigured geopolitical relationships.

II. RARE EARTH AIMS

The more formal intent of the producers of theStudioLAB was to further extend and refine theadaptive pedagogic model for Cross-CulturalInterdisciplinary Collaboration (CCIC) established inearlier C8 research projects. The previously developedStudioLAB process would be augmented with adatabase driven IMP. Specific aims for the studioincluded:

meshing the thinking of artists, designers andother disciplines in contemporary problemsassociated with cities;

stimulation of strategies promoting collaborative

practice and cultural literacy in real and digitalspaces;

mitigation as far as possible of issues related tolanguage, culture, assumption, prejudice in orderto re-language/co-language collaborative

practices between actants from diverse culturalbackgrounds;

integration of online and social technologies asarmatures for conceptualisation, communication,collaborative interaction, documentation ofideation, design propositions and processes, anddisplay and archiving of deliverables;

using the IMP to create and exhibit a collective

data visualisation of the StudioLAB process atthe conclusion of the program;

deployment of objects, the body, community,digital networks, public space and architecture assites for transformations taking into accountissues of social construction, politics andsustainability.

The project outcomes were also intended tostrengthen existing links between COFA and DHU and

promote a sustainable COFA presence within China.

We will now give a little background to the project,

both to the notion of the city itself as laboratory, and the

difficulties of challenging the status quo when it comesto the role of designers in social events. We then discussthe history and design philosophy (including theconcept of metadesign) that informs The Collabor8Project (C8). We will then give a more detailed accountof the IMP. After this, we return to a detailed accountand analysis of RARE EARTH, followed by anoutlining of implications and future possibilities at the

junction of design research, interactive media,collaboration and sustainability in urban contexts.

III. THE CITY AS URBAN LABORATORY

Cities are crucial sites for research concerned withthe transformation of design practice, design educationand a re-visioning of what a sustainable urban-centricfuture means. Chinese megacities, of which Shanghai isthe most populous

iii, have a particular significance for

the planet given current trends and the forecast forfuture urbanisation. The McKinsey Global Institutesreport Preparing for Chinas Urban Billion (2009)forecasts a scenario where there will be 8 megacities, 11economic clusters of on average 60 million people each,and over 900 smaller citiesin China by 2050.

Predictions that by 2050 75% of all people will livein cities confirm the need for urgent collaborative actionaround the role of the designer in urban environments[2]. The complex challenges and opportunities emergingfrom this extraordinarily rapid urban development areunprecedented in scale and have profound globalimplications socially, economically, environmentallyand geopolitically. Our activities as practitioners andeducators must reflect the joined-up nature of ourrelationships to the world and be cognisant of theorganic, biologic nature of the cities humans create. Incontrast to this metabolic conception of design,Modernism has catastrophically treated the world as ifhumans (and their cities) existed outside nature asomnipotent overseers. However, the human position, defined outside nature and controlling nature is areligious construct and fraught with problems [3].Rejecting Modernisms mechanical-object ethos freesdesigners to approach cities as complex living systemsand to tend them accordingly.

IV. CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO

The role of designers in society has evolved into amultidisciplinary hybrid characterised by ubiquitousnetworked digital processes that permeate industry and

societies around the world. Within industry, strongdisciplinary skills are taken as given and problemsolving abilities, communication skills, collaborativestrengths, creative and innovative thinking have all

become mandatory within information economiesiv

.These professional qualities as they pertain tocontemporary design are most commonly deployedwithin contexts aligned to the global industrial goals ofongoing economic growth, capital, GDP, and

iii The 2010 Census recorded Shanghai Municipality had a

population of 23,000,000 inhabitants.

iv This was identified in a study of FTSE 200 companies (Gillingson

& OLeary 2006)


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shareholder returns. To meet the demands of industryand the global economy, design education programseducate graduates to adopt the appropriate values, skill-sets and practices in order to enter the workforce in theservice of this system.

The now highly visible consequence is that mostdesign produced within the dominant, market-driven,economic framework has proved itself unsustainable.Capitalisms overt predisposition to commodify tends todisregard the diversity of life[4]. Burketts (1999) oftencited [5, 6, 7] assertion that the, ecological threatsemerging, through the ever-expanding essence ofcapitalism are also seen to trigger a crisis that will leadto the moment for change, proves redolent ofcollapsing social, economic, political and environmentalsystems in Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

Nolan [8] claims that driven by the extremes,contradictions and consequences of wild capitalismChina, Islam and the West are on a collision course.Unless these diverse models of culture and capital findconstructive engagement, economic, social andecological collapse are realistic scenarios. Theimplications for cities globally depend on how well ourcultures learn to understand and work with each other.C8 aims to demonstrate how immersing design studentsin collaborative, situated and networked cross-culturallearning and teaching, creates a transformational spacefor sharing knowledge, culture, wisdom, visions andaspirations. This is important in nurturing the desire forchange. If there is no desire for change because ofdistance, ignorance, lack of interest or fear of theunknown, change cannot occur. By manifesting Borges

powerful declaration that, the Other often turns outto be no other than the Self, [9] immersive, cross-

cultural processes challenge limiting perceptions ofcultural otherness and prejudice. Such approachescreate environments where people from diverse cultural

backgrounds begin to realise their common ground as abasis for collaboration. We argue that it is vital that thisprocess is instigated within the design school because,as Manzini

v asserts [10], design schools are the

laboratory of the new and if this project of socialtransformation does not happen in the design schoolwhere will it happen?

Being complicit in the creation of a plethora ofwicked social and ecological problems [11], designersand design educationalists are confronted by the ethics

of the design professions servitude to industry. There isnow abundant evidence confirming that industry in toomany instances has an agenda that is not in the interestsof humans and other species inhabiting our increasinglyfragile ecosystems. Recent high profile industrialcontroversies such as the BP Gulf oil spill andFoxconns worker suicides underline the realities ofcapital-driven agendas to prioritise and increase brandand shareholder profit while simultaneously depletingour natural, social and cultural cosmologies.Industrialist delinquency contributes significantly to

v Ezio Manzini made this statement several times when speaking at

different venues at the 2010 Cumulus Conference in Shanghai.

evidence that the material abundance promised inunending global economic growth is fundamentallyunsustainable. Petter Nss points out that,

there is a fundamental contradiction between aprofit-oriented economic system and long-termenvironmental sustainability. The solutions that are

proposed by mainstream environmental economists aswell as their ecological economy colleagues do not

solve the central problems, but serve to further highlightthe difficulties of changing capitalism towards

sustainability. In a profit-oriented economy, capitalaccumulation is a prime driving force, and non-growth

for the economy at large tends to result in seriouseconomic and social crises [12].

To many designers the deep structural challenges tosustainable practice seem too complex to deal with sothey continue as they have done. Others take refuge indenial. Design education largely remains focussed on

preparing students to enter industry as a unit ofproduction within the ailing business-as-usualeconomic environment. However, as actors within

broader socio-cultural and geo-political contextsresponsible designers must change, respondingdecisively from a position of ethical optimism temperedwith a sense of reality, or risk redundancy as themiscreants of the profession. Before we can see how tochange we must want to change.

V. BECOMING ACTIVE:ATRAJECTORY OFINTERCULTURAL ENGAGEMENT

It was in the context of these urgent issues that C8was initially established in 2003 as a platform forcollaborative transcultural design education betweenstudents in China and Australia. The first C8 studios

were online and used email and basic websites to fostercollaborations between project participants. Over thecourse of a decade the research has evolved to developinsights pertinent to a matrix of cultural andcommunication issues encountered during online andface-to-face studio interactions between students inChina and Australia.

C8 research relates the global significance ofChinas re-emergence to a concomitant need for formsof cross-cultural design education reflecting thenetworked future of practice in what has been referredto as the Asian Century

vi. The research design has

increasingly focused on orchestrating situated

experiential learning where students and faculty fromAustralia and China inevitably confront troublesomeknowledge and difficult threshold concepts together andindividually, in what become symbiotic, liminaltransformation spaces [13].

vi The expression Asian Century gained prominence during the

late 1980s, and is attributed to a 1988 meeting with People's Republic

of China (PRC) leader Deng Xiaoping and Indian Prime Minister

Rajiv Gandhi. Its earliest appearance dates to a 1985 US Senate

Committee on Foreign Relations hearing and has been subsequently

reaffirmed by Asian political leaders, and is now a simplistic but

popularly used term in the media.


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This has contributed to advancing pliantmethodologies for facilitating Cross-CulturalInterdisciplinary Collaboration (CCIC) in designeducation. The research indicates ongoing mutually

beneficial, trusting collaborative relationships in cross-cultural academic environments are often elusive butremain vital to progressing a constructive engagementaround Metadesign as a realistic global design ethos.

VI. METADESIGN

The form of lived experiential studio learningencouraged in C8 is deeply congruent with thetheoretical approach to design activity and thinkingdescribed as Metadesign. Wood (2010) has describedMetadesign as,

an emerging conceptual framework within whichdesigners will be able to work together in a morecoherent and holistic wayWe need more joined-upways to feed, clothe, shelter, assemble, communicateand live together. This will mean re-thinking the waythat designers are taught, practice and organize

themselves[1].

Jones and Wingfield [2] affirm that, Metadesign isa systemic, interdisciplinary and emergent design

process aimed at transcending existing specialistboundaries to create more joined-up solutions for thebenefit of society and nature. Building on thesetheories, C8 research argues that development ofholistic approaches to all aspects of the designers roleand its relationship to the world presents an ongoingglobal design project in design education. This

proposition is modeled in our prototyping of optimisticopen environments where students are encouraged toco-vision the unthinkable a culturally inclusive,

socially and ecological sustainable future for all.

In his essay Metadesign, Maturana [14] reflectsthat the changes we want or need to make are in ourown hands. Maturana [14] argues, our conscious andunconscious desires, determine the course of our lives,and the course of our human history. We are not thevictims of circumstance and change is in fact up to us tochoose.

We live a culture centered in domination andsubmission, mistrust and control, dishonesty, commerceand greediness, appropriation and mutual manipulation... and unless our emotioning changes all that willchange in our lives will be the way in which we continuein wars, greediness, mistrust, dishonesty, and abuse ofothers and of nature.[14]

Our desire and our desire to be responsible for ourdesires is absolutely central to the question of whetheras designers and design educators we are willing to

begin the transition from design as status quo towardsdesign as Metadesign. We cannot blame technologicalevolution, structural determinism, the market, or ourcultural context.

We human beings live in conversations, and all thatwe do as such we do it in conversations as networks ofconsensual braiding of emotions and coordinations of

coordinations of consensual behaviors. In these

circumstances...we become one kind of being or anotheraccording to how we live.[14]

Maturanas inference is that although we become thekinds of people we become because of the way we livewithin a culture, as reflective beings we can also chooseto become aware of the way we live and the kind ofhuman beings, or in our case, the kind of designers wewant to become. C8 posits that conversations betweenstudents, faculty and institutions based in the sharing ofimages, stories, experiences and culture itself begins toenable the requisite levels of trust that can create theconditions for cross-cultural collaboration to emerge.Should we desire, design educators have the capacity toindividually and collectively facilitate outcomesreflecting a diversity of optimistic countervailingstrategic positions in relation to the dystopia of thecatastrophic consumption machine the professionfeeds. With all this in mind, one of the aims of the

project is to rethink the role of technical platforms in thecontext of collaboration and design.

VII. THE

INTERACTIVE

MEDIA

PLATFORM

(IMP)The IMP uses a database of images, sound and

videos to display content as an immersive environment.As participants upload their tagged content to thedatabase, the IMP is updated and evolves. These datamoments are animated by custom software and a livevideo camera feed and then sequentially embedded intostrips of images presented as a dynamic horizontal flow.The platform employs synchronised projections in alarge-scale installation format supported by multi-channel sound that responds to a machine-visiontracking system. The interactivity of the system enablesusers to control the display of individual visual elementsof content by slowing and enlarging an image or videoin response to audience movement and position.

The IMP in this context leverages research fromprevious studios suggesting that, within online andblended collaborations, sharing of experiences,information, images and media is instrumental in

building the level of trust required for collaboration.Participants have demonstrated an innate capacity toengage with the act of sharing which fosters mutualunderstanding and curiosity about each other and eachothers lives, interests and practices.

VIII. WHAT HAPPENED?DOES IT WORK -OR NOT?

Transcultural collaborations between individuals arechallenging at the level of the institution it is evenmore complex to co-ordinate and communicate clearly.During our search for a space in Shanghai we found themanagers of local creative clusters interested in our

proposal and willing to assist us if possible. A viablelocation was identified at Bridge 8 (Phase 2) indowntown Shanghai and rented for a nominal fee fortwo weeks. A carpenter was employed to construct alarge screen in the space for the purposes of large-scale

projection. However, despite these promising initialconditions there were significant communicationchallenges. The intercultural process is as noted byMcArthur [15] fraught with our mutual capacity for

assumption, language and cultural misunderstandings,


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structural and institutional constraints. Movingprojection equipment across borders we found to beparticularly difficult. Responding to this the hack andthe theme of contingency introduced by ProfessorGoodwin [16] as a provocation played a more complexrole than anyone involved had imagined. Conceptually,in the context of the RARE EARTH brief hacking isseen as an undocumented procedure or a creativesolution to a technical (or social/urban) problem that isin need of an urgent temporary fix.

The brief encouraged the participatingundergraduate and postgraduate students ofEnvironmental Design at DHU and visiting studentsfrom range of disciplinary undergraduate and

postgraduate programs (sculpture, design, art theory) atCOFA to collaborate in investigating and improvisingaround ideas for the future of cities. Collaboration is notcompulsory in the StudioLAB but it is encouragedthrough an initiation phase designed to allow the agentsinvolved to become comfortable with each otherthrough the sharing of experience in two preliminary

presentations. The first presentation was a PetchaKutcha-style self-introduction, and the second outlinedtheir individual thinking in response to the studio brief.Collaboration emerges aligned with the conceptsstudents developed rather than placing students in teamsand compelling them to work together.

The first week involved a diverse range of lectures,site visits, workshops and presentations withrepresentatives of Shanghais creative industries.Entities and practices covered in these encountersincluded: urban farming (Good to China), maker-culture(Xinchejian, Shanghais Hackerspace), design thinkingand innovation (IDEO), collaboration and co-working(Xindanwei), interactive digital art (aaajiao), and localdesign practices were showcased during an evening ofmini-presentations (Bee or Wasp). This provided a rich

palette of inputs informing the studio. The StudioLABwork focused on conceptual development throughindividual and small group work with tutors andmentors. The focus of the second week was on realising

the collaborative and individual projects and the stagingof an exhibition of the work produced.

In its elicitation of urban interventions the briefdirects participants to: (1) find collaborators; (2) exploreShanghai to find a situation, social context, site andscale to work at and (3) identify a problem or processwith which to interact, respond to or address. The briefchallenges participants to journey into the city to enactthe interventions they have conceived and to documentthis.

Returning to the studio with detritus from the urbanenvironment, equipment, experiences and encountersand raw digital data in the form of photographs, videofootage and sound files the agents begin to edit, refine,

discuss, argue, clarify their responses to the city. This isin many instances a confronting and transformative

process of discovery of both otherness and of self, ofnew techniques and unfamiliar ways of framing theiridea and their place in the urban environment.

Encouraged to document everything and iterativelydevelop a narrative around their activities via a processof uploading their evidence of engagement to adedicated Flickr account, participants tag their digitalmaterial simultaneously forming a collective andsearchable database of the unfolding process. Althoughencouraged to engage with the parallel process of livecoding and production underway as the system is built

by programmer and production team, participantsinvariably focused on development of their particularresponses while grappling with what it means to

produce a creative work that exists as part of a largerunfolding work (see Figure 1).

IX. SPECULATIVE DESIGN,EXPANDED MEDIA ANDINCLUSIVE SCREENS

Discussing the syntax of images, Lester [17] citesthe photographic historian Helmut Gernsheim whoargued that, Photography is the only languageunderstood in all parts of the world, and bridging allnations and cultures. Linguists resisting the notion of

image as language generally do so on the basis that

Figure 1. Screen grab of the RARE EARTH studioLAB data visualisation illustrating curated outputs.


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images do not contain common components that aresimilar to the written languages alphabet and the lackof a recognizable syntax. However, considered as acollection of signs, images possess qualities that areassembled by the viewer to create meaning within a

particular context. Within the syntactical theory ofvisual communication we find that when words arecombined with images powerful associations are

formed, explaining, shaping, and stimulating theimagination. Lester remarks that, Despite occasional

problems in discerning the meaning from pictures andwords the combination of the two symbolic systemsis one of the most powerful communicative strategiesknown [17]. In this research words take the form oftags functioning as units of language articulatingconcepts attached to an image, signifying intendedmeanings that can be interpreted, compared anddiscussed.

RARE EARTH participants create, tag and uploadcontent to a Flickr database. The act of research in thiscontext includes capture of initial site references,

locations, situation and circumstances as digital images,static and moving, including sound, along with writtennotes and observation and audio narratives. After initial

post-excursion discussions a tagging schema wasdeveloped by the participants and posted to all. Duringthe next 24 hours images started to appear on the Flickraccount

vii.

The naming protocol developed was simple andeasy to implement, based around whom and where,followed by descriptions of colours, objects, situations.The limitation that became apparent was that tagsshould include reference to the urban problem beingconsidered and other environmental conditions (light,

atmospheric pollution, etc.) More than 1400 images andvideo were uploaded to the project Flickr account, andan additional 576 images and videos exist on MillersFlickr account.

The IMP consists of a suite of software andhardware. The software includes a number ofcomponents:

(1) preparation and editing of pre-exhibition contentis conducted using a custom designed online interfacewe have called FlickrTool. Using a web browserFlickrTool facilitates search and retrieval from theFlickr account using tags that the Flickr interfacessupports. This helps the editing and sorting process

before committing the search calls to the mainvisualisation system. Flickr supports a standard set ofsearch expression, for example, ALL and ANY.FlickrTool also renders a preview of a search. Thissingle sequence of images we call a TileStream.

(2) Tracking software (a) RAREEARTH used 3 nearinfrared video cameras and a number of IR illuminators,each was attached to a mini computer via Firewire and acustom built application VideoTracker developedusing Processing and OpenCV library. These camerasare positioned overhead and placed equidistance along

vii http://www.flickr.com/photos/rareearthStudioLAB/

the length of the projection and approximately 5 metresfrom the surface. The software discriminates changes inthe video cameras field of view (blobs) and passes thosedifferences as a set of co-ordinates used to create acentroid (an ellipse centered around the co-ordinates) toa network socket (b) How it interfaces with the display:As actant walk into the range of the overhead cameras,centroid data passed into the visualisation software.

(3) Display software (a) How content is displayedand rendered and how the feedback is made visible: Thetracking data is represented as a magnifying lensdisplacement map distorting the images when

positioned over the TileStreams acting as a feedback.(b) Individual TileStreams move horizontally inresponse to the location of the magnifying lensfeedback and hence the real location of the change inthe field of vision, typically a person. This movementfollows a simple mapping, if you move the left from thecentre-line the TileStreams over which the magnifyinglens feedback move to the left, and similarly theopposite is true.

(4) Audio software utilising granular and generativesynthesis, mobile recording technologies, open source

platforms and protocols including PureData (PD) andOpenSoundControl (OSC) are used to createexperimental, documentary and expressive sonificationsthat are responsive to audience position and movementwithin the space. The audio consisted of a four-channelsystem located at each corner of the room and supportedspatialisation of sound influenced by participantslocation within observable camera range.

The RARE EARTH hardware and exhibitionconfiguration was a 20-metre continuous projectionscreen, consisting of 4 x 5 metre side by side

projections. We use three over-head near infrared videocameras with supporting array of infrared illuminatorsas input sensors. Forming sequences in response toaudience movement and position, the data momentsgathered are animated by the augment_me softwareaccording to a set of rules applied to a live video camerafeed, and then sequentially embedded into a strip ofimages presented horizontally. Muller observed of theIMP that,

The audience is implicated in Miller!s work,reconfiguring the relationship between artist, audienceand artwork, creating complex systems of data flow inwhich the audiences actions have a shaping effect

the participant becomes inescapably implicated in thecomplex dynamics of cause and effect constructed byeach work, one source among many in an open systemof flowing data [18].

The platform inevitably merges digital architecturewith traditional architecture creating an electronic space

preserving the affordances one normally attributes tophysical media but augmenting this with digital mediaincreasing flexibility and adaptivity. Pang suggests thatimmersive digital spaces are physically engaging,support rich social interactions and tacit knowledge, andcan handle a truly three-dimensional vision ofcollaboration [19]. Thisprovokes models of interaction


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and design studio methods using machine vision as abasis for collaborative innovation in networkedenvironments with these dynamic screens encouragingongoing transformation, play, reflection andengagement.

In this transcultural context these visual andtechnological elements combine as a prototype forintensive co-languaging alluding to new ways to reachshared understandings, mapping responses to a brief,and (importantly) highlighting each others similarities.The links between intensive sharing and recombinationof images, video, tags and sound are seen in thisresearch as an accelerator of communication andinterpersonal engagement as the foundation ofsuccessful collaboration. Sharing introduces andamplifies disclosure within the studio interaction. Thisis significant because disclosure establishes a basis forinteraction and trust.

Guo-Ming Chen [20] acknowledges that betweenpeople from different cultures the act of disclosurecarries a dual significance regarding signaling awillingness to be open and an essential component ofrelationship building. It is a foundation for buildingtrust. We rarely collaborate successfully with those wedo not trust. In Confucius Heritage Culturesinterpersonal norms emphasise trust, holding significantstatus as a foundation on which relationships are built[21]. For many students exposure to such experiencesare threshold concepts transforming theirunderstandings and potential prejudices toward theothers they encounter in the StudioLAB environment.

Despite our best efforts to communicate clearly,collaboration between people from different cultures isinevitably subject to communication breakdowns

because our realities are comprised of differing norms,symbols, and representations reinforced througheducation [22,23]. The most bilingual students in C8

projects have consistently been those based in China.However bilingual students still face issues becauseterms and concepts dont necessarily correspond to theirunderstandings. Cognitive structures are affected bycultural cues as well as language, and have significantimpacts on the potential for complexification ofdesigned solutions.

Sharing experiences, interests and ideas throughimages or sketching (video sketching) provides a

powerful mechanism and we maintain that the sketch,

the video and the photograph emerge in this context asboundary objects [24]. These are shared objects to talkabout and to think with that different cultural groups canuse in differing ways that reflect the multiple realitiesrepresented in the StudioLAB.

Large-scale, urban, networked, immersive, screensused to facilitate collaborative, speculative and

participatory expressions of place and identity, mappingand storytelling in StudioLAB contexts enable us toconceive new understanding of what screens are for,and what they can do. The strength of the interculturalmediated StudioLAB is the opportunity to evaluate

previously untested collaborative relationships for

sustaining creativity/creating sustainability bycombining the communication and data visualisationcapabilities of computer systems with the creativity andhigh-level cognitive capabilities of people [25].

X. CONSTRAINTS AND SOLUTIONS

The inherent complexity of RARE EARTHpresented problematic situations in terms of attracting

funding, negotiating bureaucracy across tightlycontrolled international borders further highlighting thechallenges that keep humans apart. We encounteredunforeseen complexities, vagaries and opaqueundocumented processes of Chinese customs officialsthat meant that the complete installation could not beexhibited. This irrevocably altered the direction, flavorand nature of the StudioLAB and required anunforeseen hack as a contingent response. Taken toimply an improvisation or response on the fly the

producers responded in ways that allowed the process tounfold as intended but in a more disjointed format andat a smaller scale than envisaged using multiple screens.It is crucially important to recognise this impasse asemblematic of the problem of interculturalcommunication itself.

Although constrained by such complexities theoutcomes of RARE EARTH are clear despite beingunable to be deployed at the anticipated scale of

projection during the exhibition phase. The process didfor the researchers involved suggests that the IMP andits deployment as an interactive projection in the studiofunctions as an immersive digital pinboard. Thismetaphor is redolent of collaborative design processesas traditionally understood but in a format that isaugmented by the ability to search, compare, interact,

juxtapose in ways that expand the potential oftraditional pinboards, paper spaces [19], and the mediatypically used within these collaborative tools.

In the StudioLAB some Australian students facedtensions negotiating the relationship between their own

practice and the studio apparatus that was geared topresent a larger more social image representing thecollective work undertaken. This reveals that furtherconsideration must be given to how immersivetechnologies might enable richer studio learning servingall creative disciplines and cultural orientations such asindividualism or collectivism.

What we observed in the outcomes of the

StudioLAB suggests the IMP creates a capacity:

for sharing information in ways that correspondto the socially mediated life of the city

promoting mediated intercultural design learning

to observe each individual/component project inprogress in ways that allowed for juxtaposition,comparison with the iterative development of thework and against other works underway in thestudio

to develop a searchable database of researchmaterials (images, audio, video) accessible to all

agents in the process


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for facilitated discourse around ideas, concepts,responses, interactions

for elevated intensity of communal andintercultural involvement in the project/process

to engage in a re-languaging of the designprocess through sharing of data, imagery,experience via a socially mediated process of

interacting in the StudioLAB and online

for mapping a matrix of sites and points ofengagement with the city and it's communities

XI. IMPLICATIONS AND APPLICATIONS

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, RAREEARTH established an ongoing research trajectory(augmented_studio) that explores participatory andinteractive data visualisation to create acceleratedcommunication pathways for building shared visionaround complex problems in urban environments.augmented_studio aims to use the components ofdatabase, cameras, sensors, interactive spatialised

sonification and multi-screen projection to re-modulateparticipant engagement with complex problems, and forfacilitating relational transformation, collaborativeattention, and the building of trust via a sharing ofexperience/memory in order to, quite literally, lead todifferent, cooperative futures [26].

Via qualitative research gathered during thedevelopment of augmented_studio, we make thefollowing associations between the IMP, interculturaldesign-led innovation and studio practices:

1. Wicked problems require large collaborativeteams and throw up complex data:Globally networked

urban, social, economic and geopolitical systems meanhumans are ever more interdependent, in ever moreimmediate ways. Internationally, designers such asManzini, Penin, Gong et al. [27] argue for an urgentengagement in creating positive environments where thelikelihood of new ways of living and producing is

promoted through creativity, design thinking and co-design processes [27].

2. Immersive data visualisation can be instrumentalin facilitating shared vision around complex problems:Inventing new, immersive accelerated communication

processes based on sharing of images, video, sound andother digital media with data visualisation tools creates

an emergent culturally diverse hybrid social operatingsystem where previously unimagined design solutionsto complex problems can be accessed.

3. Immersive dynamic screens in StudioLAB contextsenable new understanding of what screens are for, cando, and the nature of collaborative interactivity andmachinic vision as enablers of interculturalcommunication: The potential of design futures can belocated at the intersection of participatory design (andwhat are becoming known as participatory IT

processes), interaction design facilitated by newplatforms, metadesign and urgent and pervasiveproblems of social, economic and urban transformation

and sustainability.

Designed to facilitate authentic relationships andconnections as a basis for collaboration theaugmented_studio allows intercultural design teams tovisualise semantic maps of complex urban design

problems focusing attention around contextual factorsand iterative phases in ways that accelerate sharedunderstanding. Images allow us to tell stories and in turnto see and hear the world in new ways. Eppler [28]

argues there arecrucial and multiple roles of imagesfor collaboration, whether they are conceived as visual

boundary objects, conscription devices, visual non-human agents, trading zones, epistemic objects, orsimply collaborative graphics. The power of the imageincludes a diverse and persuasive facility to focus theattention of a group, identify conflict or congruence,reveal implied knowledge and past experiences,highlight new or unfamiliar ways of seeing and being inthe world. RARE EARTH prototypes a sophisticatedopen networked technology that supports Cross-CulturalInterdisciplinary Collaboration (CCIC) via dynamicnetworked and immersive mediation of individual andcooperative creative processes.

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augmented_studio : collaboration, interactive media and urban space