Location: MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Room: Trustees Room, 11th floor, Tower Building *** Note Room Change ***
Date: Monday, November 21, 2011
Time: 6:30 P.M. to 9:30 P.M.
RSVP: Not required for this event, open to the MassArt community.

Abstract

Designers tell stories as a natural part of what they do. The craft and problem solving poured into any design will always have a context, conflict, logical constructs and most importantly an audience. In other words, a story. Storytelling and design are more than related, they are intertwined, reinforcing one another. This workshop will not be a survey of storytelling, but a session where designers learn the components and process of telling their story in support of their design work. Whether that work is static, temporal, analog or digital, any audience or viewer of the work will benefit from a narrative platform on which that work stands. Workshop participants will develop their own stories, applying them to design practice, and become reacquainted with the essential art that informs storytelling more than any other–the art of listening.

Speaker

Kevin Brooks is a UX Product Manager for Motorola Mobility and a professional oral storyteller. At Motorola Kevin shepherds products through design and development, helping teams of different disciplines create home entertainment products with the best user experience possible. Kevin often uses stories to express technologies as connected user-centered experiences using a variety of media. As a storyteller, Kevin tells personal tales from his urban childhood of the 60´s through to his present day parenthood. His stories for adults and family audiences resonate with humor and poignancy, and he has been a featured performer at many storytelling festivals, conferences and other venues. In 2006 he released a CD of his stories entitled Kiss of Summer and in 2010 released a co-authored book entitled Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design, published by Rosenfeld Media. Kevin received his Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, where his area of research was computational narrative and interactive cinema. Kevin has also studied engineering, computer science, creative writing and film production as an undergraduate, receiving a BS in Communications from Drexel University and an MA in Documentary Film from Stanford University. Kevin has several published papers and has given numerous workshops on storytelling and interactive story design for designers, engineers and storytellers alike.

Etc.

Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)

Parking: Parking is no longer available in the Ward Street lot. We suggest taking the T if possible or take a chance with on-street parking if you can find it. Often there are spots available after 6:00 p.m. Otherwise, there is paid parking available at the Museum of Fine Arts parking garage (expensive). If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, things can be tricky the first time you drive around this area.

Presentation Abstract

Furniture is the infrastructure for human activity, the physical things that literally support us and our social interactions. Everyday we sit down at the breakfast table, settle into our desk chairs, open cabinets and drawers, and fall into bed. How can digital technology augment these everyday rituals in subtle, natural and delightful ways? We aim to make couches more relaxing, tables more conversational, desks more productive, lamps more enlightening, and beds more restful. Collaborating with furniture companies we are designing and prototyping a line of Enchanted Furniture.

Speaker Bio

David Rose is an award-winning entrepreneur and instructor at the MIT Media Laboratory. He specializes in novel interfaces which make the physical environment an interface to digital information.  David founded and is CEO at Vitality, a company that reinvented medication packaging. He founded Ambient Devices, which pioneered glanceable technology: embedding internet information in everyday objects like lamps, mirrors, umbrellas. His work has been featured at the MoMA, in The New York Times, and parodied on the Colbert Report.

Etc.

Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)

Parking: Parking is not longer available in the Ward Street lot. We suggest taking the T if possible or take a chance on on-street parking if you can find it. Otherwise, there is paid parking available at the Museum of Fine Arts parking garage (expensive). If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, things can be tricky the first time you drive around this area.

Event Details
Location: MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Room: Tower Building, Room 312
Date: Thursday, November 18, 2010
Time: 6:30 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. (we suggest arriving a little early to get a good seat)
RSVP: Not required for this event, free and open to the public.

Abstract

In a world where mobile access and mobile action is assumed by users, how do we ideate and plan for Web and application interfaces? Small screens and limited input options frustrate UX designers but geolocation, touch screens, and real-time alerts open new doors. We will discuss how mobile devices blow up standard information architecture practice around hierarchy, organization, and navigation and how we can bring the pieces back together to construct coherent, actionable, inviting interfaces that meet user goals.

Speaker Bio

Ryan joined Corey in 1995 and since that time has played a critical role in developing Corey’s award-winning Web work and interactive work process. Ryan leads the critical process of understanding user needs and mapping those to information architecture, user experience and design. His clients include Harvard Business School, Museum of Science Boston, Tuck School of Business, Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation, MIT OpenCourseWare, Forrester Research, Northern Light, Pleasant Company, Direct Hit, and the Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services. His work has been recognized with awards from MITX and the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA). Prior to joining Corey, Ryan was a researcher at the MIT Media Lab he specialized in content-based interactive storytelling. He holds an MS (Media Arts and Sciences) and a BS (Computer Science and Engineering), both from MIT.

Parking and Driving Directions

Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)

Parking: Parking is not longer available in the Ward Street lot. We suggest on-street parking if you can find it. Otherwise, there is paid parking available at the Museum of Fine Arts parking garage (expensive). If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, things are tricky the first time you drive around this area.

Event Details
Location: MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Room: Tower Building, Room 312
Date: Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Time: 6:30 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. (we suggest arriving a little early to get a good seat)
RSVP: Not required for this event, free and open to the public.

Abstract
Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard generate a staggering amount of data each day. The challenge is to benefit from this data deluge without being overwhelmed. Visually representing data offers insights that can lead to new understanding, wether the purpose is communication or data analysis. No other approach conveys as much information. This presentation will draw on examples from Broad’s Data Visualization Initiative, aimed at establishing processes for creating informative visualization models. It will also highlight the DNAtrium, an exhibition space that relies on large-scale media wall and multi-touch smart tables to enable people to explore the human genome.

Speaker Biography
Bang Wong’s work focuses on the visual expression of scientific concepts. He is currently the creative director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Art as Applied to Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 2001, Bang founded ClearScience, a design firm that concentrates on the visual communication of science. At the Broad, he led the effort to design and build the DNAtrium, a museum space dedicated to the exploration of the human genome. Through unique exhibits and content, the museum showcases how genomic science is propelling progress in biology and medicine. Working with researchers, Bang is looking for ways to enable discovery by visually representing large-scale data sets. He established the Data Visualization Initiative at the Broad to create processes for informative visualization models, provide functional prototypes, and build a community of people who apply visuals in their research. As a contributing writer to Nature Methods, he writes a monthly column on applying principles of art and design to scientific figures and data visualization. Bang received a Masters degree in Immunology and a Masters degree in Medical and Scientific Illustrations both from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He blogs at bang.clearscience.info.

Parking and Driving Directions

Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)

Parking: Parking is not longer available in the Ward Street lot. We suggest on-street parking if you can find it. Otherwise, there is paid parking available at the Museum of Fine Arts parking garage (expensive). If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, things are tricky the first time you drive around this area.

Abstract
In a design seminar, the master architect Louis I. Kahn once famously asked, “What does a brick want?” It was the right question to open a discussion on the built environment. Here, I borrow the spirit of this question to ask, “What does simulation want?” Simulation wants, even demand immersion. Immersion has proved its benefits. Architects create buildings that would not have been imagined before they were designed on screens. Immersed in simulation, we feel exhilarated by possibility. We dream of such things as Bilbao, iconic for what can happen to buildings when the hand and eye are joined by the computer. But immersed in simulation, we are also vulnerable. Sometimes it can be hard to remember all that lies beyond it or even acknowledge that everything is  not captured in it. This talk explores “discontents” about simulation in design, not in the service of putting it down, but of remembering to use it better by taking its limitations into account.

Event Details
Free and and open to the public.
Location: MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Room: Kennedy Building, Room 406 (on the corner of Huntington and Longwood Avenues)
Date: Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Time: 6:30 P.M. to 8:00 P.M.
RSVP: Not required for this event (we suggest arriving a little early to get a good seat)
Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)
Parking Information: at the end of this post

Speaker Biography
Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the founder and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts. Professor Turkle received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.

Professor Turkle is the author of numerous books, including the landmark titles The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Seminars and workshops at the Initiative on Technology and Self in recent years have led to four edited collections: Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, Falling for Science: Objects in Mind, and The Inner History of Devices, and Simulation and Its Discontents. These four books share a set of themes important to thinking about our relationships, emotional and intellectual, with digital culture and the world of objects beyond. And most importantly, at how the payoff is to look at the cognitive and the emotional together.

Professor Turkle has written numerous articles on psychoanalysis and culture and on the “subjective side” of people’s relationships with technology, especially computers. She is engaged in active study of robots, digital pets, and simulated creatures, particularly those designed for children and the elderly as well as in a study of mobile cellular technologies. Profiles of Professor Turkle have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Scientific American, and Wired Magazine. She has been a featured media commentator on the effects of technology on a wide range of media outlets.

Parking and Driving Directions
Parking will be available to attendees who drive in the Ward Street lot if you enter the lot between 5:30pm and 6:30pm. If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, finding the Ward Street Lot can be tricky the first time.

If you’re traveling west on Huntington Avenue from Downtown, as you pass the main campus on your right, take a left at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, crossing over the trolley tracks. Go straight to the stop sign and turn left, then immediately turn right onto Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

If you’re traveling east on Huntington Avenue from Bringham Circle, take a right at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, then a quick left at the stop sign and right on Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

The gate should be open for this event. If it is not, ring the emergency button on the guard house and security will answer. Tell them you’re here for Media Tech Tonic, they should have it on their list of events for the evening.

Abstract
The “digital age” has become shorthand for a host of changes in the lives of virtually everyone on the planet who lives in the company of other humans and who, at least occasionally, uses a tool or device powered by electricity. Artists, along with everyone else (cabbies, pilots, organic farmers, Navy Seals, grocery clerks everyone!!) have had to adapt to the complex and burgeoning intrusions of computers, electronic media, and communications technologies into our personal and professional lives. And whatever euphoria or despair we may have experienced because of the resulting changes in our own work, we all know there is no going back. This evening we will consider what artists in particular are doing about, and with, the endlessly rising tide of bits and bytes. And we will ask whether the legendary, ancestral human hand really matters any longer.

Event Details
Free and and open to the public.
Location: MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Room: North Building, Pozen Center (entrance on Tetlow Street, from the corner of Huntington Avenue and Evans way in front of “The Tower,” walk down Evans, stick to the side of the road that Mass Art is on, that becomes Tetlow Street)
Date: Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Time: 6:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M.
RSVP: Not required for this event.
Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)
Parking Information: at the end of this post

Speaker Biography
Frank R. Wilson is the author of The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture. He is a neurologist whose clinical and research interests for nearly 30 years focused on human hand skill, he was a founder of the Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of California, San Francisco and its medical director from 1996-2000. Dr. Wilson was Clinical Professor of Neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine from 2001-2004. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Big Picture Learning (BPL), a national nonprofit organization of inner-city high schools, and has been working with BPL and other organizations for the past two years to establish a national program for science learning based on unsolved problems in human hand and arm prosthetics. A new book is in preparation, drawing on his long clinical experience with artists to frame a developmentally-oriented critique of contemporary educational practice. Dr. Wilson is currently the Medical Director of the Peter F. Ostwald Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco.

Parking and Driving Directions
Parking will be available to attendees who drive in the Ward Street lot if you enter the lot between 5:30pm and 6:30pm. If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, finding the Ward Street Lot can be tricky the first time.

If you’re traveling west on Huntington Avenue from Downtown, as you pass the main campus on your right, take a left at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, crossing over the trolley tracks. Go straight to the stop sign and turn left, then immediately turn right onto Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

If you’re traveling east on Huntington Avenue from Bringham Circle, take a right at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, then a quick left at the stop sign and right on Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

The gate should be open for this event. If it is not, ring the emergency button on the guard house and security will answer. Tell them you’re here for Media Tech Tonic, they should have it on their list of events for the evening.

Abstract
Leah Buechley will discuss the work of her High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab including the LilyPad Arduino. This event is co-presented by the Dynamic Media Institute and the Studio for Interrelated Media at MassArt.

Event Details
Free and and open to the public.
Location: MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Room: Tower Building, Trustees Room (11th floor)
Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time: Reception @ 6:30 P.M., talk starts @ 7:00 P.M.
RSVP: Not required for this event.
Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)
Parking Information: at the end of this post

Speaker Biography
Leah Buechley is Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and directs the Media Lab’s High-Low Tech research group, which investigates the integration of high and low technology materials, processes, and cultures with the goal of engaging diverse groups of people in developing their own technologies. She is a well-known expert in the field of electronic textiles (e-textiles), and her work in this area includes developing a method for creating cloth printed circuit boards (fabric PCBs) and designing the commercially available LilyPad Arduino toolkit. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Popular Science, CRAFT Magazine, Journal of Architectural Design, Denver Post, and the Taipei Times. Buechley received Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a B.A. in physics from Skidmore College.

Parking and Driving Directions
Parking will be available to attendees who drive in the Ward Street lot if you enter the lot between 5:45pm and 6:45pm. If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, finding the Ward Street Lot can be tricky the first time.

If you’re traveling west on Huntington Avenue from Downtown, as you pass the main campus on your right, take a left at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, crossing over the trolley tracks. Go straight to the stop sign and turn left, then immediately turn right onto Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

If you’re traveling east on Huntington Avenue from Bringham Circle, take a right at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, then a quick left at the stop sign and right on Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

The gate should be open for this event. If it’s not, ring the emergency button on the guard house and security will answer. Tell them you’re here for Media Tech Tonic, they should have it on their list of events for this evening.

Media Tech Tonic #13: High-Low Tech
Leah Buechley, Director, High-Low Tech Group, MIT Media Lab, Thursday, March 18, 2010, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Reception at 6:30 p.m., Talk at 7:00 p.m.), Trustees Room, Tower Building, MassArt (NOTE ROOM CHANGE)

Media Tech Tonic #14: The Artist’s Hand in the Digital Age
Frank R. Wilson, Medical Director, Peter F. Ostwald Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco. Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Room 406, Kennedy Building, MassArt.

Media Tech Tonic #15: Simulation and its Discontents
Sherry Turkle, Director, MIT Initiative on Technology and Self Program in Science, Technology, and Society. Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Room 406, Kennedy Building, MassArt.

Details on each of these Media Tech Tonic talks will be sent out in subsequent posts. If someone has forwarded this information to you, please consider visiting our web site where you can subscribe to receive Media Tech Tonic announcements via e-mail or subscribe to our RSS feed. These events are hosted by the Dynamic Media Institute (DMI) at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Media Tech Tonic #13: High-Low Tech is co-presented with the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM). Media Tech Tonic #15: Simulation and its Discontents is the MassArt DMI Annual Lecture which is being “Cross Listed” as Media Tech Tonic #15.

Abstract

Focusing on the use of sampled voices in the genre known as instrumental hip hop, this presentation considers the broader implications of the ubiquity of recorded voices throughout our musical soundscape and in our everyday lives. In reference to music by Prefuse 73, DJ Shadow, Blockhead, and the Books, and some of the software used to create, I will consider sampled voices from the perspective of writings on ubiquitous computing and ideas of the posthuman. In some examples, as I will discuss, the vocal samples are staged to produce a sense of strangeness and disorientation long associated with the recorded voice, notable even in the critical vocabulary developed to describe it: uncanny, simulacral, schizophonic, acousmatic. Yet still stranger are the many examples of music in which the remarkable act of speaking through borrowed voices is presented as absolutely unremarkable. If the experience of recorded voices as uncanny, as ‘dead’ or disembodied, depends on the belief that they once had been connected with bodies of flesh and blood, the demystified, disenchanted voices that increasingly surround us—and that perhaps are already emerging from us–are treated as if they had never been alive.

Event Details
Free and and open to the public.
RSVP: Please let us know if you’re planning to attend this event.
Location: MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Room: Tower Building, Room 312 (3rd floor, through Computer Arts Center, at end of the hall)
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Time: 6:30 to 8:30 P.M.
Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)
Parking Information: at the end of this post

Speaker Biography

Joseph Auner is Chair and Professor of Music at Tufts University. He is a musicologist whose research interests include the Second Viennese School, music and technology, turn-of-the century Vienna, Weimar Berlin, and 19th and 20th-Century Music. Auner is the author of A Schoenberg Reader (Yale), Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg, with Jennifer Shaw, Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, with Judith Lochhead (Routledge). He was formerly an editor-in-chief for The Journal of the American Musicological Society. He has received fellowships and grants from Humboldt, Getty Center for the History of Arts and Humanities, and National Endowment for the Humanities. He earned a B.A. from Colorado College and M.A./Ph.D in the History and Theory of Music from University of Chicago.

Parking and Driving Directions
Parking will be available to attendees who drive in the Ward Street lot if you enter the lot between 5:45pm and 6:45pm. If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, finding the Ward Street Lot can be tricky the first time.

If you’re traveling west on Huntington Avenue from Downtown, as you pass the main campus on your right, take a left at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, crossing over the trolley tracks. Go straight to the stop sign and turn left, then immediately turn right onto Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

If you’re traveling east on Huntington Avenue from Bringham Circle, take a right at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, then a quick left at the stop sign and right on Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

The gate should be open for this event. If it’s not, ring the emergency button on the guard house and security will answer. Tell them you’re here for Media Tech Tonic, they should have it on their list of events for this evening.