Category Archives: research

Abstract submitted to Fibreculture

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Emergent Network
Duncan Shingleton

The emerging phenomenon known as the Internet of Things refers to the technical and cultural shift anticipated as society moves towards a ubiquitous form of computing that facilitates the connection of everyday objects and devices to all kinds of networks. The Internet of Things creates a link between concrete objects and abstract data, producing a hybrid of physical and electronic spaces, which enables communication and interaction between people and things, and things themselves. However the Internet of Things, resulting through the convergence of identification and location technologies, is at risk of simply becoming a platform whose primary benefit is to offer improved indexing and tracking of manufactured consumer goods from cradle to grave; through manufacturer to distributor, to potentially every single person who comes in to contact with it following its purchase.

Through the combination of theory relating to Ubiquitous Computing, Human Geography, Actor-Network Theory, Semiotics and Emergence, the author aims to re-contextualise the Internet of Things, arguing how objects endowed with informational shadows can create a new layer of complex relationships that were previously not visible in our networks. Networks will be constructed, destructed and transformed by the pattern of interactions represented by how people to people, people to things, and things themselves are interconnected. As objects are treated like code, the messages they encode will be found in the pattern of social relations being expressed, allowing the Internet of things to provide the meta-data that enables clusters of data to self-organize. The Internet of Things will be the central warehouse and marketplace for all our patterns of mediated behaviour, and instead of those patterns being restricted to the invisible gaze of corporations, people will be able to tap into that pool themselves to create communal maps of all the data online. The data we wish to access will be assembled via the web out of an unthinkable number of isolated decisions created by agents both human and non human.

Abstract submitted to ISEA 2011

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Object Geography: The Internet of Things
Duncan Shingleton

The emerging phenomenon known as the Internet of Things refers to the technical and cultural shift anticipated as society moves towards a ubiquitous form of computing that facilitates the connection of everyday objects and devices to all kinds of networks. The Internet of Things creates a link between concrete objects and abstract data, producing a hybrid of physical and electronic spaces, which enables communication and interaction between people and things, and things themselves. However the Internet of Things, resulting through the convergence of identification and location technologies, is at risk of simply becoming a platform whose primary benefit is to offer improved indexing and tracking of manufactured consumer goods from cradle to grave; through manufacturer to distributor, to potentially every single person who comes in to contact with it following its purchase.

Through the combination of digital art practice and theory relating to Human Geography and Actor-Network Theory, the author aims to re-contextualise the Internet of Things, arguing how objects endowed with informational shadows could create a new layer of complex relationships that were previously not visible in our networks. This in turn could allow us to rethink our understanding of the structure and agency of a network, by examining the pattern of interactions represented by how people to people, people to things, and things themselves are connected to one another. Networking objects means we could possibly gain new insights into how we make places, how we organize space and society, how we interact with each other in places and across space and time, and how we make sense of others and ourselves in our locality, region, and world. The Internet of Things may well provide a possible framework that not only allows human agents, but also object agents to play constructive as well as destructive and transformative roles in the social production of space.

MPhil/Phd Transfer Report submitted for Examination

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Geography of the Internet of Things:
Objects as agents in the social production of space

The field of human geography focuses on ‘how we make places, how we organize space and society, how we interact with each other in places and across space, and how we make sense of others and ourselves in our locality, region, and world’. In the study of human geography we are constantly reminded of how people shape their world and of how people and places vary across time and space. Places are constantly changing and people are responsible for these changes. People create cultures, values, aesthetics, politics, economics and more, and each of these affects and shapes places (Fouberg, et al. 2010).

Objects already play a unique role in our social networks and have strong ties to identity and memory (Draaisma 2000; Henare et al. 2007; Hoskins 1998; Kwint et al. 1999; Miller 2008; Turkle 2007), space (Baudrillard 1996; Bollas 2009) and value (Appadurai 1986). Within all of these contexts a human agent is required to locate the object within a network and imbue or interpret any agency it might have. Through new technologies being introduced as part of the development in the manufacturing of objects, we can begin to see a technological framework that offers a potential for objects to express their own agency (relating to both Actor-Network Theory and Networked Objects) and become a significant actor in a network.

The thesis will focus on how the technological and cultural shift in ubiquitous computing, known as the Internet of Things, will change our understanding of an object’s role in the composition of a network. Through examining the Internet of Things in combination with Actor-Network Theory and Human Geography, this author will argue how objects that have data shadows will contribute to the social, economic and environmental production of space.

The main research question is:

To what extent can the technological and cultural shift in ubiquitous computing, known as the Internet of Things, provide new insights into how objects that have informational shadows can contribute to the social production of space?

In a more detailed way, the research will also answer the following sub questions:

• How can actors be identified and viewed in the field of the Internet of Things?
• What affect will an Internet of Things have on the structure, agency and pattern of a network?
• If the Internet of Things means a network can be understood as being constructed by people and objects, how does the Internet of Things affect the production of time-space and place?
• How does the Internet of Things allow objects to aid human interpretation of social relationships, and allow objects to produce emergent interpretations of their own?

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Abstract submitted to Research on Education and Media Journal

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Inmemory: social memory, locative narratives
Gianni Corino & Duncan Shingleton

Locative media as a term shares with another term, the ‘Internet of Things’, the very up-to-date attempt to define the technical and cultural shift anticipated in the society as it moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and in some way connected to the Internet. Through different location based technologies, we create a data sphere for the Internet that offers up new possibilities to locate or ‘attach’ the digital to objects, space and people.

This is the starting point for rethinking our relationship with the physical world, and we can begin to imagine scenarios where the physical and digital spheres collapse onto each other. One important element in the equation refers to the kind of agency objects and spaces will have in this relationship. As a case study the article will present a project titled Inmemory, developed and presented in Edinburgh at the Inspace gallery in June 2010. Inmemory aims to explore how personal or collective stories coupled to objects and/or spaces could transform our current value system across communities and society. Inmemory main aim is to investigate in practical terms the emerging field of the ‘Internet of Things’ culturally and technologically. The creative, artistic and interactive potential of the ‘Internet of Things’ is the central point of investigation in relation to three main elements: object, memory and agency.

Paper presented at Web Studies Congress 2010

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Web Studies Congress 2010

The 1st international congress on Web Studies was held at Monterrey Tech in Toluca, Mexico. It aimed at providing a venue for researchers and professionals from different backgrounds for discussion, study, practical demonstrations, sharing, and exchange on new developments and theories regarding the World Wide Web. The congress therefore invited contributions from a heterogeneous set of fields and domains such as: Web systems, computational intelligence, human-computer interaction, digital theory, Web sociology, and well as interactive and digital arts.

Download: The Memorable: Applying the Internet of Things to Small Communities
Download: Web Studies Congress Book of Proceedings

Short Paper submitted to Web Studies Congress 2010

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The Memorable: Applying the Internet of Things to small communities
Shingleton, D., Sutherland, K.

RFID, radio frequency identification, is a technology that is now rapidly being developed by corporations and governments who see the possibilities and advantages of managing large bodies of objects. By seamlessly embedding an RFID chip into an object, it is possible to assign it a unique identification, allowing databases of specific item/location/relationship information to be generated, providing for real-time identification and tracking over the course of its life from cradle to grave.

The use of RFID in conjunction with database technologies allows us to understand a truly ubiquitous network, an Internet of Things, which offers up new possibilities in which our environment becomes a conduit of information transfer between people to people, people to things, and things themselves. This generates a new perspective in the way we view and interact with the Internet. No longer are we outside this mass of information, curating its content in a web 2.0 model of tags, keywords and trackbacks, instead we share the network with objects capable of communicating what they are, and what is going on in the space around them; active members of society, contributing not only to the social web, but also the physical world.

Abstract submitted to the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology

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You’re Part of the Global Network
Duncan Shingleton

Radio frequency identification, or RFID, is a technology that is now rapidly being developed by corporations and governments who see the possibilities and advantages of managing large bodies of objects. By seamlessly embedding an RFID chip into an object, we now assign it a unique identification, allowing databases of specific item/location/relationship information to be generated, giving each object its own identity for real-time identification and tracking.  RFID allows for more accurate inventories, automated re-ordering and improved market analysis; data capture that takes place without the need for line of sight or physical manipulation.

This paper reflects beyond the logistical benefits of the technology, and instead attempts to identify the social benefits that might arise. Tagged with an RFID chip, an object will have a unique digital identity and play a pivotal role in joining the physical world with the digital.  As this technology moves into products, sensitive documents and even the human body, an Internet of Things will emerge consisting of blogjects, spimes, cybrids, technemes, wearables and smartifacts; networked objects that are capable of communicating what they are, and what is going on in the space around them.

As we see what can only be defined as a truly ubiquitous network environment emerging, it offers up new possibilities where our environment becomes a conduit of information transfer between people to people, people to things, and things themselves. This generates a new perspective in the way we view and interact with the Internet. Now we are caught inside of the net, in an always-on, invisible stream of data transfer. No longer are we outside this mass of information, curating its content in a web 2.0 model of tags, keywords and trackbacks, instead we share the network with objects that become active members of society, contributing not only to the social web, but also the physical world.

Paper submitted to IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tagging: Overcoming the Public Fear of Tagging Culture.

Burke, M. Shingleton, D. Speed, C. Hudson-Smith, A. Karpovich, A. O’Callaghan, S. Simpson, M. Barthel, R. Blundell, B. De Jode, M. Leder, K Lee, C. Macdonald, J.

Abstract

Many people associate tagging with negative situations, for example, to track “criminals” or to track journeys and locations. RFID and other forms of near field tagging are being adopted for logistical purposes by commercial industries and governments alike and the UK public remain fearful of the implications of a tagging culture. This paper reflects upon the extent of “tagging culture” fears and identifies them as a significant problem that is preventing widespread public acceptance of the technology and hampering its social, economic and technical benefits.

As a form of recovery for this dire situation, the authors present information concerning an EPSRC project that uses a fresh tactic to encourage the public to actively use tagging technologies themselves and to reap the benefits. TOTeM (Tales of Things and Electronic Memory) is a three-year funded pan-UK project that focuses on the archiving of people’s memories associated with specific objects. Through the technical development of simple interfaces aimed at the home user, people are encouraged to tell a story about an object, to record the associated memory and to ‘tag’ their object in a unique way that will always associate their memory with their artefact.
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The Memory Economy: Revaluing everyday objects

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Duncan Shingleton
Edinburgh College of Art

Appadurai proposes that the circulation of commodities in social life can be summarised in the follow way.  ‘Economic exchange creates value.  Value is embodied in commodities that are exchanged.  Focusing on things that are exchanged, rather than simply on the forms or functions of exchange, makes it possible to argue that what creates the link between exchange and value is politics.’ (1986, p.3)   Since Marx and the early political economists, there has been little mystery about the relationship between politics and the production of commodities.  Economic models drive forward consumption, where goods follow the traditional teleology of cradle to grave.  This paper poses the question: what economies are created if memory, not politics, becomes the link between exchange and value?

Proust states that ‘consumer goods aren’t really consumed at all – but experienced, either in memory or right now, as key elements of identity itself’ (1927 cited in Kwint, et al., 1999, p.xiii).  In western traditions, objects serve memory in three main ways.  Firstly they furnish recollection; they constitute our picture of the past.  Secondly, objects stimulate remembering, not only through the deployed mnemonics of public monuments or mantelpiece souvenirs, but also by the serendipitous encounter bringing back experience which otherwise would have remained dormant, repressed or forgotten.  Thirdly, objects form records: analogues to living memory, storing information beyond individual experience (Kwint, et al., 1999, p.2).

It is clear that memories are intrinsically linked with objects; time and memory are embodied or encoded in our perception of everyday things.  Draaisma refers to memories as a ‘store of precious items’ (2000, p.2) and like objects they too have a lifetime, part of a persons own cradle to grave cycle.  The advancement of technology from development of writing surfaces, to photography and cinematography, Edison’s phonograph and now a days numerous ‘artificial’ memories assist us in ‘arming ourselves against the transience implicit in the mortality of memory’ (Draaisma, 2000, p.2) by recording what the eye and ear take in.

This paper examines whether the latest advancement of tagging technologies in the manufacturing process, designed to streamline economic supply chains, can unexpectedly become a new platform for memory storage and transform inert objects into vessels that allow for the imprint of experience to be shared over time.  Is this the moment where objects move beyond the material value to their owner, or the corporation that built them, and instead become desirable artefacts that challenge our ideas of value in this consumer society?

References

Appadurai, A., (1986). Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In  A. Appadurai, ed. The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 1.

Kwint, M., Breward, C., Aynsley, J., (1999) Material Memories, Design and Evocation. Oxford: Berg

Draaisma, D., (2000) Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas About the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press