#curiousrituals

Standing as if waiting for signals from another world, these men on the Djibouti shores hope for a faint cellphone signal from neighboring Somalia. (via)

Talk given at The Contours of Algorithmic Life, a conference at UC Davis -- May 15-16, 2014. Here's the abstract: Traditionally, computer scientists define a...

Hand Made is a tool to produce a collective library for future reference of everyday hand gestures, questioning how they have, are and will be shaped by technology. IDP 2013 - Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) Thesis project. Project URL http://handmadegestures.com/ Project Blog http://thefinalmadness.tumblr.com/ Project Videos http://vimeo.com/channels/597608 Hand Made Hand Made emerged from the research as a tool to allow reaching a broader audience with the study. It is a platform to produce a collective library for future reference of everyday hand gestures, with the goals of provoking, inspiring, discovering and speculating how current digital activities (e.g. sending and email or opening a file) will influence the way people communicate with their hands. If physical objects like the phone, a pen or a watch have influenced the way people use hand gestures to communicate, how will current digital activities do the same? Inspired by the research this tool took the form of a website in order to generate collaboration, sharing a discussion. Everyone can access and record their gestures, as well as see and compare with others. It is digital content provoking physical movement beyond a tap or a mouse click. Besides contributing with hand gestures for “read a book”, “send an email”, “print a file”, “open a file”, “save a file”, people have already suggested more digital activities: “logging in”, “googling” or “liking”. In the future Hand Made will track age, gender and location, to be more aware, investigate and visualise the cultural factors which are believed to influence hand gestures.