Human Mosaic Systems Blog

"Wicked Problems and MUVEs"

"Wicked Problems and MUVEs"

vimeo link to video presentation: http://vimeo.com/27602406

In designing instructional virtual worlds, there are 3 levels of instruction that are geared to address the “Wicked Problems” in Multi-User Virtual Environments : those unpredictable consequences of human interactions that *are* complex systems!

Learners today need to learn skills they can utilize in ever changing contexts that they have never seen before or even imagined, and be able to utilize those skills in collaborative environments.

Today, learning environments need to incorporate an understanding of
* group dynamics;
* complexity (those unseen dynamics that have dramatic impact when you least expect it!);
* and collaboration skills.

Process.org

A new way to visualize the diverse data that surrounds our world.

Free, open source programming language whose site includes tutorial on how to start designing and working with it. Imagine combining this into a 3D environment!

Link: Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.

Example of use:

The Emergence Project
by Daniel Sauter, Mark Hereld

Realtime art installation that explores how complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of simple interactions.

 

"Crowds and Clouds: Data, Sheep, and Collaboration in the Works of Aaron Koblin" by MIT World

The visualization of dynamic systems where information assumes forms both abstract and familiar...

 

About the Lecture

Where others see just data points and fodder for bar graphs, Aaron Koblin visualizes dynamic systems where information assumes forms both abstract and familiar. In this talk, Koblin shares recent projects that meld statistical science and art to convey a really big picture, while often inviting the viewer to partake in a more personal experience.

Koblin explores those “interesting traces” left after humans interact with each other and with computers -- what he calls “data trails.” One work, Flight Patterns, depicts the flow of air traffic over North America in a 24-hour period. The east and west coasts light up in sequence, and lines shoot out of great cities in swarms at busy times of day, like brain scans showing bursts of activity among neural centers.

Koblin is not simply fascinated by a bird’s-eye view of human networks. In the Sheep Market, he seeks to “juxtapose the humanity of an individual process with a gigantic, alienated system.” With the help of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, software that allows online users to contribute a tiny part of a large project for very little compensation, Koblin collected thousands of drawings of “a sheep facing left.” The result is a black and white mosaic of 10,000 Lilliputian animals, each one of which when selected emerges as an individual drawing. (Participants were paid two cents a head). Similarly, in Ten Thousand Cents, online participants drew a tiny piece of a $100 bill (for a penny). The collage, “the largest distributed forgery project on the planet,” looks remarkably like the real thing when viewed from afar, but says Koblin, “if you drill in, you can see smiley faces, stippling, and sketching” -- a wild variety of artistic styles. He has tested the crowd-sourcing concept with audio as well, creating a version of “Daisy Bell” for 2,000 sampled voices, which “sounds like a pack of gremlins,” or HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey on steroids.

Koblin’s work maps comfortably onto the music video world. His tribute to Johnny Cash features a multitude of drawings by fans, and he collaborated on a “music video without video” for Radiohead that employed laser scanners and light patterns. Koblin wants to marshal data, as well as the collective intelligence of the Internet, to create a meaningful experience on a human scale. “I nerd out on a lot of this technology stuff,” Koblin admits, but he also suggests there is no point to art without “emotional resonance.”