“A biofeedback researcher at the TUe told me that they had been trying to help ex Afghanistan soldiers with PTSD. EMDR can be a very good technique for dealing with such syndromes, but the soldiers refused to talk to any psychiatrists and look at a pen being waved in front of their eyes. So the researchers developed a shooting game for the soldiers that would trigger the right kind of eye movement. Isn’t that insane/beautiful? Gunning on a screen to cure your scars of war! Its a strange world we live in.”
Chairing the morning session of the Internet of Things and Positions in Flux
May 7 in Brussels I’m chairing the morning session with lots of key EU people. Looking forward to that!
May 8 in Amsterdam chairing a session from Susanne’s Jaschko’s conference at NIMK with Nat Muller, Marcus Neustetter, Bronac Ferran and Peter György.
It is very tempting to build bridges between the two. The one dealing with recent developments in media spaces and new media projects, the other with the logistic requirements of building these kinds of connectivities in our streets, in our mundane spaces rapidly becoming mediatized, our homes.
Validated content as input
Major Dutch research institute TNO talks about a major systems approach to safety that takes into account organization, training, education, leadership and societal experience and perception. The claim is that technology should be developed hand in hand with these aspects.
So far so good. But then TNO asserts that for this specifically it has developed new methods, such as Advanced Concept Development and Experimentation Platform. What is the basis, the claim to the real of this method?: “validated content and advanced simulation and gametechnology.
Where is that sand in my shoes? Where is the gum on the pavement? The daily negociations?
The claim to the real turns out to be validated content, but validated by whom? Proabably by datamined algorhytms. Advanced simulation – not real life conversation, fights, slipping on wet pavements, trying to pick up litter in the streets only to get your hands dirty and no bin in sight, life as a messy state of messy affairs – has now become not the goal of visualizations able to make meaning as output, no, it is the input.
I know others have written about this much more clearly but I do confess it is only now that this so clearly hits me. If this reduction of the real, this neat disembodied, unsmelly, atactile, unedged – is what goes in these systems as a basis to think about upposedly real life issues in relationship with technology, then it is not hard to see that as output it is unthinkable that any real scenarios can be generated without the technology as it is framed in the first place.
from Christian: Emotional Cartography: Technologies of the Self
Emotional Cartography: Technologies of the Self Book Launch SPACE Friday 24th April 2009 6.30 – 10pm Join us for drinks and discussion at the book launch, which will include talks by the editor Christian Nold as well as Dr Tom Stafford and Sophie Hope. A number of free copies of the book will be available on the evening. ‘Bio Mapping tool is a unique device linking the personal and intimate with the outer space of satellites orbiting around the earth.’ Emotional Cartographies: Technologies of the self Exploring the political, social and cultural implications of visualising intimate biometric data and emotional experiences using technology. A collection of essays by Raqs Media Collective, Marcel van der Drift, Dr Stephen Boyd Davis, Rob van Kranenburg, Sophie Hope and Dr Tom Stafford brought together and edited by Christian Nold. http://www.emotionalcartography.net SPACE 129 – 131 Mare St Hackney London UK E8 3RH
