Things + Open Source (event)

Beehive Inn (18-20 Grassmarket), Edinburgh, Wednesday 24 May, 2006, 6 PM Usman Haque (artist/architect) and Julian Bleecker (technologist/artist/think tank leader) discuss the "internet of things" and "open source architecture". Hosted by New Media Scotland.

Haque Design + Research specialises in the design and research of interactive architecture systems. Architecture is no longer considered something static and immutable; instead it is seen as dynamic, responsive and conversant. Our projects explore some of this territory.
Usman Haque has created responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and choreographed performances. His skills include the design of both physical spaces and the software and systems that bring them to life. He has been an invited researcher at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy, artist-in-residence at the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Japan and has also worked in USA, UK and Malaysia. As well as directing the work of Haque Design + Research he was until 2005 a teacher in the Interactive Architecture Workshop at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London.
He is a recipient of a Wellcome Trust Sciart Award, a grant from the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, the Swiss Creation Prize, Belluard Bollwerk International, the Japan Media Arts Festival Excellence prize and the Asia Digital Art Award Grand Prize. His work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Hillside Gallery (Tokyo), The National Maritime Museum Greenwich and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. His work has also been presented at international conferences including Siggraph, VSMM (International Society on Virtual Systems and Multimedia) and Doors of Perception.

Julian Bleecker heads the Mobile and Pervasive Lab, a near-future think tank and research and development lab at the School of Cinema-TV and the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California. Bleecker is an expert technologist with over 20 years of hands-on experience. He is fluent in many modern programming languages and best-practices development approaches for distributed networked systems, desktops and mobile devices. He is Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California in the School of Cinema-TV’s Interactive Media Division and is a researcher at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Since 1988 he has been involved in a wide variety of technologies from virtual reality to mobile experience design and location-based media applications. His past and current clients include MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, Scholastic, Sun Microsystems, Volvo Cars, Barnes & Noble, MCI, The National Building Museum, Continental Airlines, The New York Sun and TheStreet.com. Bleecker’s proficiencies include emerging technology design, research and development, implementation, concept innovation, and strategy consulting. His areas of expertise include media and entertainment, mobile designed experiences, location-based media, and social software. His background in electrical engineering and computer science, coupled with his work on emerging technology design allows him to provide a unique perspective on the near-future possibilities of technology-based mobile, location-based, social and networked applications, products and services.

Bleecker wrote the Manifesto for Networked Objects — Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things that I posted about previously.

Should be a good one.