Unrvl2020

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UNRVL 9: Sense of Connection

An encouraging squeeze of the hand, an amical arm around your shoulder, a comforting hug, the warm breath of someone looking over your shoulder ... such normal, matter of course (in dutch, vanzelfsprekende) gestures have evaporated from our current reality. Sensing the room - feeling (and feeding off) the energy of the group? Neither are truly feasible in the current shared online spaces in that we rely on to 'meet' or 'convene’.

Douglas Rushkoff writes; Digital Media Still Isn’t Very Good at Connecting People— at least not in a way that the body and brain recognize as real. Neuroscientists have now established, human beings require input from organic, three-dimensional space in order to establish trusting relationships or maintain peace of mind.

Sure, we can see and hear each other. But are we able to connect?

In a year in which online/networked technologies and platforms have become a seemingly indispensable mode of communication, the 9th annual Unravel the Code International Workshop aims to tackle the missing haptic responders that are so essential to our sense of connection. Can we prototype a sense of proximity by proxy? How might we deliver a push, pat, or pinch notification? And what new forms of tele-present tenderness will emerge? These questions will be unraveled and built back up into responsive works by an interdisciplinary group of students of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Sint Lucas Antwerp, and the Willem de Kooning Academy.

Unravel the What??


UNRVL 9: Sense of Connection takes place in Antwerp, Baltimore, Rotterdam, and signal traffic in-between, from October 12-16th. The UNRVL platform aims to opens up creative understandings of emerging technologies through intensive international workshops. By historically examining the making of technologies, as well as leveraging interdisciplinarity, the goal is to foster students to reach out for new socio-technical perspectives, as well as build back concrete skills respective to the areas of their expertise.

About the Collaborating Progams


Unravel the Code WDKA is a project that brings students across the Commercial, Autonomous and Social Practices together, it's heart and home is in the Stations, and it still abides by its original Manifesto.

Unravel the Code MICA is a course draws upon traditional crafts to explore emerging technologies of making. The UNRVL students come from a rich variety of majors and backgrounds, and the content of the class is also spans a tremendous range.

The premaster program of Sint Lucas Antwerpen focuses on the development of an art or design practice within the domain of digital technology. Alike MICA & WDKA, the approach of Saint Lucas program emphasises interdisciplinarity, encourages and research-driven work.

History

UnravelTheCode History2012-13.jpg UnravelTheCode History2014-2015.jpg UnravelTheCode History2016-2018.jpg

Recommended reading, watching, listening for UNRVL 9

  1. Digital Media is'nt very good at connecting people
  2. Team Human podcasts
  3. Sex and touch during the coronavirus
  4. Dreaming and Doing Haptics
  5. https://haptipedia.org/ an online, open-source, visualization of a growing database of 105+ haptic devices invented since 1992
  6. The Senses: Design Beyond Vision - free downloadable epub

Our (tele)communication channels will be...

  1. ZOOM : to meet, show and tell (zoom links will be emailed to you)
  2. Discord : for inbetween banter, troubleshooting support, hanging out, team chats (you will receive an invite from us)
  3. Wiki (the one that you're in right now!): for information about the workshop
  4. Github : repository for downloads of files & code (link to be added)
  5. Google Docs : for collecting and organizing documentation per group & final presentations (link to be added)
  6. ...

Schedule Overview (subject to frequent changes)

Oct 12 - Awkward Zoom Room

When (Central European Time) When (Eastern Standard Time) What Where
21:40 (In Dutch we call this 10 after half to 10! #Awkward) 15:38 (Who uses military time? And why are we meeting 2 minutes earlier then the Europeans? #Awkward First Impressions - Awkward Zoom Room

Who is part of your UNRVL Workshop group? In this randomly generated group call you will find out with whom you will will be working with. Since remote colabs are never smooth from the start, we aim to make this the most awkward 15 minutes of your entire workshop week. Please follow the strict format for the call:

1. Join the room at precisely 21:40 CET / 15:38 EST

2. Commence 5 minutes of silent staring. Whom ever makes the first peep, becomes the dedicated note-taker for all your future meetings.

3. Introduce yourself by sharing a photo from your past that would fit under the title “the awkwardness was palpable!”

4. Discuss each of your your super-powers - a skill, talent, affinity for a material/medium, the crux of your artistic practice, and/or any unusual knowledge that you might hold.

5. Discuss each of your coping mechanisms for feeling close to those you can not physically meet.

6. Agree on a youtube karaoke number and a dedicated person to share their screen. You know what to do next.

7. End the call 5 seconds before the song finishes

Check your email Monday Oct 12th for your Zoom Room Link

Oct 13 - Telepresent Greetings & the Telepresence of Touch

When (Central European Time) When (Eastern Standard Time) What Where
14:45 - 15:30 08:45 - 09:30 Welcome to the first day (mandatory for all participants)

Words of welcome, awkward zoom room recap, and overview of the workshop week

15:30 - 17:30 09:30 - 11:30 Telepresence of Touch Tutorial Part 1

How do we know we have been touched? How can we communicate that sense of touch to someone who is physically distant from us? We need a touch-sensitive input, some sort of signaling, and a way to get information from one place to another. In this tutorial you will lean about the five inputs of the Circuit Python (express or blue fruit) and write some python scripts to make use of them.

Zoom Tutorial - Link:
17:30 - 19:00 11:30 - 13:00 Disconnect
19:00 – 21:00 13:00 - 15:00 Telepresence of Touch Tutorial Part 2

We will extend the touch project to communicate with a partner's device. The telepresent partner will receive those five inputs, which will show on the distant device in the four lights corresponding to the touch-pads.

Zoom Tutorial - Link:
21:00 - 00:00 15:00 - 18:00 Tele-present Greetings

In this warm up assignment, each group is ask to devise telepresent alternatives to the standard form of greeting in Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States. These new telepresent greetings will be preformed as part of Wednesdays start session.

The three forms of greeting are:

1. The Belgian left-side cheek touch (with optional kissing noise)

2. The Dutch right-left-right head bobbing kiss (with mandatory over-pronounced kissing noise)

3. The North-American bear hug.

Discord


Oct 14 - Sensing the Connection

When (Central European Time) When (Eastern Standard Time) What Where
15:00 - 15:30 09:00 - 09:30 Welcome to the new day (mandatory for all participants)

What are your alternative (telepresent) ways to great each other? A round of greetings will be made before we enter the 1st brainstorm session

15:30 - 16:30 09:30 - 10:30 Brainstorm Round 1
16:30 - 19:00 10:30 - 13:00 Places of Connection - Telepresent Tourism

Sad your not taking a group selfie in the markthal? Yearning for a Bicky at de Smulpaep? Wishing you could to check off all 18 miniature unexplained death dioramas off your bucket list? You can! Over the next 2.5 hours your task is to take your group on a tour of 3 different places of your city and take telepresent selfies in Rotterdam, Antwerp and Baltimore.

19:00 – 20:00 13:00 - 14:00 Brainstorm Round 2
20:00 - 21:00 14:00 - 15:00 Sense of Connection Proposal Pitch

Oct 15/16 - 24 Hour Marathon

Central European Time Eastern Standard Time What Where
15:30 - 16:00 09:30 - 10:00 Welcome to the new day (mandatory for all participants)
16:00 - 17:00 10:00 - 11:00 Blow a fuse

Is the idea ideal? It's time for sensing the resistance, for doubting thomases, second thoughts and soliloquies.

17:00 - 18:00 11:00 - 12:00 Face your Mentor

Students discuss concept, feasibly, required tech/materials with workshop mentors.

18:00 – 19:00 12:00 - 13:00 No time for questioning

Tell us what your question is! Appoint a group member to write your central question and an 80 word project description

19:00 - 20:00 13:00 - 14:00 Disconnect
20:00 - 21:00 14:00 - 15:00 MAKE MAKE MAKE
21:00 – 22:00 15:00 - 16:00 MAKE MAKE MAKE
22:00 - 23:00 16:00 - 17:00 MAKE MAKE MAKE
23:00 - 24:00 17:00 - 18:00 MAKE MAKE MAKE
24:00 – 01:00 18:00 - 19:00 MICA MAKE MAKE MAKE....WDKA/St Lukas catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
01:00 - 02:00 19:00 - 20:00 MICA MAKE MAKE MAKE....WDKA/St Lucas catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
02:00 - 03:00 20:00 - 21:00 MICA MAKE MAKE MAKE....WDKA/St Lucas catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
03:00 – 04:00 21:00 - 22:00 MICA MAKE MAKE MAKE....WDKA/St Lucas catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
04:00 - 05:00 22:00 - 23:00 MICA MAKE MAKE MAKE....WDKA/St Lucas catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
05:00 - 06:00 23:00 - 24:00 MICA MAKE MAKE MAKE....WDKA/St Lucas catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
06:00 - 07:00 24:00 - 01:00 MICA/WDKA/St Lucas catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
07:00 - 08:00 01:00 - 02:00 MICA/WDKA/St Lucas catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
08:00 - 09:00 02:00 - 03:00 WDKA/St Lucas MAKE MAKE MAKE....MICA catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
09:00 - 10:00 03:00 - 04:00 WDKA/St Lucas MAKE MAKE MAKE....MICA catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
10:00 - 11:00 04:00 - 05:00 WDKA/St Lucas MAKE MAKE MAKE....MICA catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
11:00 - 12:00 05:00 - 06:00 WDKA/St Lucas MAKE MAKE MAKE....MICA catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
12:00 - 13:00 06:00 - 07:00 WDKA/St Lucas MAKE MAKE MAKE....MICA catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
13:00 - 14:00 07:00 - 08:00 WDKA/St Lucas MAKE MAKE MAKE....MICA catching up on Z's or burning the midnight oil
14:00 - 15:00 08:00 - 09:00 Welcome to the new day and the last 2 Hours!!! (mandatory for all participants / quick check-ins by all mentors)
15:00 - 16:00 09:00 - 10:00 Final testing hour / Presentation Prep

October 16 - UNRVL 2020 Presentations

Central European Time Eastern Standard Time Activity
16:00 - 17:30 10:00 - 11:30 Sense of Connection Presentations


Participating Students

MICA Students

  1. student name / student email adress
  2. student name / student email adress

WDKA Students

  1. student name / student email adress
  2. student name / student email adress

SLA Students

  1. student name / student email adress
  2. student name / student email adress

Participating Faculties

MICA

  1. Annet Couwenberg, acouwenb@mica.edu, instructor - 314510@edu.nl - zisxw
  2. Alan Grover, agrover@mica.edu, software engineer/educator - 314508@edu.nl - rmzja
  3. Paul Mirel, pmirel@mica.edu, system scientist/educator
  4. Vic Ekanem, vekamen@mica.edu, mechanical engineer/fashion designer/educator
  5. Chauncey Zhang, xzhang03@mica.edu, Graduate Teaching Intern (GTI)

WDKA

  1. Jon Stam, j.m.stam@hr.nl, tutor of all sorts
  2. Gabrielle Marks, g.c.c.marks@hr.nl, graphic/media design educator and tutor of all sorts

ST LUCAS ANTWERPEN

  1. Frederik de Bleser, frederik@debleser.be,
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