<!–Speaker: Chris Speed, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Date/Time: 1-2pm March 29th, 2011
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews (directions)–>
Abstract:
The term ‘internet of things’ refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and every device is connected in some way to the internet. However, many versions of the ‘internet of things’ rely upon one premise: that the thing remains in existence. This paper forecasts a near future when digital memories that have been associated with artefacts remain as the only reference to that thing, because that thing has been lost or disposed of. Remaining as entries in databases whilst its material instantiation has been crushed, burnt or tipped into a landfill, the immaterial artefact has the potential to live on within the networks society. Alive and well in the cloud, these ghosts will haunt their makers, distributors, vendors and owners forever, remaining as searchable artefacts that can be correlated against any other data from the past, present or future.
In this seminar Chris Speed will reflect upon recent research / art projects that evoke a sense of time and exhume personal memories of the past.
About Chris:
Dr. Chris Speed is Reader in Digital Spaces at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture where he teaches undergraduate, masters and supervises PhD students.

Chris has sustained a critical enquiry into how digital technology can engage with the field of architecture and human geography through a variety of established international digital art contexts including: International Symposium on Electronic Art, Biennial of Electronic Arts Perth, Ars Electronica, Consciousness Reframed, Sonic Acts, LoveBytes, We Love Technology, Sonic Arts Festival, MELT, Less Remote, FutureSonic, and the Arts Catalyst / Leonardo symposium held alongside The International Astronautical Congress.
Chris is currently working with collaborative GPS technologies and the streaming of social and environmental data. He is the lead academic on a GPS tool for historical maps iPhone application: Walking Through Time, is the leader of a large UK academic team investigating social memory within the ‘Internet of Things’ funded by the UK Research Councils and is the co-developer for the locative media application Comob Net available for download in the Apple iPhone App Store developed in conjunction with Jen Southern (independent artist) and colleagues from ECA and Uni Edinburgh.

Aaron will give a research colloquium on Information Visualisation on March 7th, 2011.
Abstract:
Societies continued reliance on information and communications technologies has resulted in organizations generating, gathering, and storing “raw data” at a rate growing each year. The ability for even a mid-sized organization to store tens to hundreds of terabytes of data is already within reach. Massive storage technologies are rapidly outstripping our ability to effectively analyse, explore, and understand such voluminous data. While research in other fields such as data mining, machine learning and knowledge management are also attempting to aid in the analysis of such voluminous data,
there is a realisation that the “human-in-the-loop” affords a visual analysis not possible through automation alone.
As such, the area of visual analytics extends the fields of scientific and information visualization by incorporating techniques from knowledge management, statistical analysis, cognitive science and decision science. This talk will outline how voluminous data is modeled, managed,
mined and hence visually presented for exploration. Several large scale data and information visualisation methods will be described and discussed along with the a number of challenges and open research questions we face as researchers in using visualisation in an attempt to present information.
More: School Website Details

Title: “Serious Games” – Metrics for the Design of Educational Computer Games
Speaker: Dr. Azizah Jaafar, National University of Malaysia.