Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad MIT thesis was covered by Create Digital Motion after I posted the video clip from MIT’s New Media Reader featuring Dr. Alay Kay from Xerox PARC give a lecture on Sketchpad. The video clip has since garnered over 10,000 YouTube views and other “instances” of the film on video sharing sites — so appropriate given Sutherland’s contribution of the idea of a “master” and “instances.” His contributions to computer aided design history extend well into its origins and beyond its final outcome.

Peter Kirn says it best — what I think, he was able to say about this…

Additional Demonstration Footage Also Emerged

This Sketchpad film on YouTube: Part 1

The computer has been, in a sense, nothing but a very elaborate calculating machine. But, now we’re making the computer be more like, almost like a “human assistant” and the computer will seem to have some intelligence.

It doesn’t really. Only the intelligence that we put in it.

{Emphasis added.}

Professor Steven Coons
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT
Co-Director of The Computer Aided Design Project

It has been awhile since posting to mercurious. However, we’ve been hard at work updating our academic site. This site now documents recent student work:

• Freshmen Processing work
• Muzzi, the digital pet —music player hybrid
• Info Wraps, a mobile informatics research project

It also now features a commercial work samples page that highlights an eight-year career in the interactive media industry. Perhaps the most interesting additions include ancient works from the vault, some almost a decade old.

In fact, getting this site together in this manner has been long overdue.

» New and improved professorial site on parsons.edu

Space Time Play — Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level

» Book Website (spacetimeplay.org)
» Table of Contents (PDF)
» Introduction (PDF)

Available to the US in November 2007 from Birkhäuser and edited by Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz, Matthias Böttger, Space Time Play — Computer Games, Architecture and Urbansim: The Next Level offers readers 62 concise essays and interviews interspersed between 64 game, film and science-fiction book reviews, and 48 game research projects, all brilliantly organized into 5 ascending levels, sequenced into topics that build upon the theory of the editors, that video gaming has come of age as one of society’s most crucial and influential cultural artifacts. Richly illustrated and well populated with important and influential theorists, designers and academics, Space Time Play multi-tasks as a scholarly tome, coffee table guide to gaming, and manual of pop culture memes driven by gaming industry.

Steffen Walz, friend and editor of the collection, generously sent me an advance copy, and I’m thrilled to share the news of this exciting addition the growing library of scholarly treatments of gaming on culture, art, media and urbanism. The text is especially unusual in the way it will appeal to gamers and scholars alike, exemplifying how the subject matter is no longer relegated to fringe discussions of gaming’s profound influence on contemporary humanity. Every reader will find at least one game review that resonates within him or herself, whether it’s Katie Salen’s perfectly worded analysis of Alexey Pajitnov’s timeless classic Tetris or the de-mystification of the first alternate reality games (ARGs) to emerge such as EA’s Majestic reviewed by Kurt Squire, or The Beast reviewed by Dave Szulborkski, used by Spielberg to promote A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Readers will enjoy remembering classics such as Asterioids through Jesper Juul’s reframing it as a “forgotten futurism” or considering if SimCity informs and influences notions of urban planning and governance or simply reveals itself as simulated simulation.

Levels 1 and 2 situate the history of computer games as interactive play spaces and connect these basic ideas to the framework of the Ludic Metropolis, or City of Play. Along with the physical representations of space in video gaming, the urbanist modes of exchange and social intercourse are examined with many specific game and research projects. In the end, we discover how narrative environments like World of Warcraft shape identities through an interconnection of an architecture of play, socially immersive design, and timeless storytelling.

In Level 3, Ubitquitous Games: Enchanting Places, Buildings, Cities and Landscapes, the Ludic City is crafted as an actual real-life play space, broken out of the computer console, but no doubt influenced by its tendencies, parameters and tools. Examples like geocaching, locative games, ARG advertising, augmented realities, mobile media, Parkour, and others evoke an idea of gaming within true social space, the city as a game board, and the separations between game and life fully blurred.

In Level 4, Serious Fun: Utilizing Game Elements for Architectural Design and Urban Planning, the Ludic City is envisioned as a proving ground and design tool. Architects and urban planners, embracing the organic, player driven models of gaming, employ its modes towards generative and evaluative instances of complexity management and design research. Here especially, the editors posit the newly respected role of game technologies for the social causes of urbanism and design towards the common good. Skeptics of the value of gaming will certainly be challenged in this chapter, their views perhaps not resistant to the well articulated examples of how game design and technologies have already proven their value off the living room couch.

In the final chapter, Level 5, Faites Vos Jeux: Games Between Utopia and Dystopia, the editors collect examples of how games and war play an uneasy partnership on the battlefield for hearts and minds across societies, present and future-minded. This chapter also examines virtual economies, such as the Chinese Gold Miners of World of Warcraft, and in-game advertising’s rise to importance.

The book begins and ends with references to Spacewar!, the very first recorded instance of a video game design, a creation of MIT students in 1962 for the PDP-1, the first device with a graphic monitor, instantiating the language and context of video gaming for many years to come. In reflecting upon how quickly computer games have infiltrated the collective and individualized societies of yesterday, today and tomorrow, we cannot help but imagine their inevitability in the human condition and the importance of play, time and space.

Verdict: An indispensable addition to the library of any interaction designer, game designer, social theorist, architect, urban planner, futurist, student or scholar, casual or fanatical gamer.

Web Ink for Mobile Media Curriculum

Adobe published a case study on my work with students at Parsons Communication Design & Technology in the area of mobile media design.

Read Packing Lite: A mobile media interface design primer on Adobe’s Developer Center to get my perspective how to adapt to directional-pad based devices in Flash Lite. I detail the process of transferring SWF files to Nokia Series 60 devices and analyze a 4-way menu example from Adobe’s Content Developer Kit (CDK).

» Packing Lite on Adobe.com

Article to be published on Adobe Developer Center

Packing Lite: Getting Started Designing Interfaces for Mobile Media

I wrote an article/tutorial for Adobe’s Developer Center to be published at the end of August covering how to get started designing interfaces in Flash Lite on Nokia Series 60 devices. It details how to get equipped for mobile media design using Flash and the Flash Lite platform, install Flash Lite content on Nokia S60 phones with Bluetooth or Nokia’s PC Suite, discusses the unique interface design challenges, and looks at an example, highlighting the issues.

Stay tuned, as I’ll be sure to post the link to the article when it goes live. Article pushed live at 5 PM PST, August 17, 2007←

For the uninitiated, Processing→ is an open interactive media platform published on free software license via MIT by Casey Reas→ and Ben Fry→. Originally created as a learning tool, it is maturing through a Beta phase currently while winning tremendous support within the academic and design community. It appears to be emerging as the [tag]Sketchpad[/tag]↔ of the future. Sutherland→ would be so proud of his fellow alumni.

• Download Sample Chapters→ in PDF
• MIT Press→

For those in-the-know, this MIT Press release, Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists will be noticed on August 24, 2007. A substantial amount of the book is available in PDF format now. The free preview certainly suggests how tremendous and definitive this text is going to be. Take a peak at this inspiring passage from the introduction. It begins by describing the world view of Processing and the philosophy about software it epitomizes:

Software is a unique medium with unique qualities
Concepts and emotions that are not possible to express in other media may be expressed in this medium. Software requires its own terminology and discourse and should not be evaluated in relation to prior media such as film, photography, and painting. History shows that technologies such as oil paint, cameras, and film have changed artistic practice and discourse, and while we do not claim that new technologies improve art, we do feel they enable different forms of communication and expression. Software holds a unique position among artistic media because of its ability to produce dynamic forms, process gestures, define behavior, simulate natural systems, and integrate other media including sound, image, and text. (p. 1)

The introduction continues on to beautifully frame the pursuit of aesthetics through software. The free preview includes not only complete Table of Contents and Index, but also a very solid introduction to Processing and some of fundamental concepts. It’s enough material to function as an ideal free resource for getting started, while also leaves you thirsting for more.

Indeed, a more comprehensive review is forthcoming.

Adobe Integrated Runtime demonstrated by Big Spaceship.

This afternoon, Joshua Hirsch and Jamie Kosoy from Big Spaceship, here in Brooklyn, presented Building Adobe AIR Applications with Flash CS3 on the Adobe Connect presentation service. They did an excellent job of introducing the new capabilities of Adobe’s new desktop application delivery platform. In particular, they focused on how Flash CS3 can be used to compile AIR programs. Although still in Beta, AIR remains un-implemented in Flash CS3. The online seminar walked us through the tricky process of configuring for AIR development and introduce us to the command-line tools required to build and test AIR projects. However, Grant Skinner apparently has an extension set for Flash CS3 that assists with this process as we await Adobe’s full integration into the Publish Settings of Flash CS3. The links and notes of the presentation are posted here for reference. This post is likely to be updated and fleshed out as I process and try things out myself.

What is AIR?

AIR brings Flash and other web formats to desktop standalone applications. We should start to see more ‘downloadables’ once this catches on. Probably the best way to figure out AIR is to look at some examples on Adobe Labs→I’ve been a fan of kuler→ ever since I started following the Adobe Labs, and discovered Apollo, the codename for AIR. This is a great example of how being able to break out of the browser will encourage creative technology to engage with us more deeply.

Presentation Links

How to get started with AIR and Flash CS3

• Presentation Event Details
• About Adobe AIR
• AIR Developer FAQ
• Download AIR SDK
• Download FLEX Builder
• ActionScript 3.0 Language Reference
• Get the Flash Debug Player
• Get FlashTracer extension for Firefox
• Get Grant Skinner’s AIR Panel for CS3
• Big Spaceship’s Lab

Raw Notes from the Presentation

Here are the raw notes from the presentation. I’ll try to decipher them into more sense once I get my head around it all myself.

 airglobal.swc locations: MAC:    /Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/moxie/frameworks/libs/air/airglobal.swc PC:      Program Files/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/moxie/frameworks/libs/air/airglobal.swc move and rename to MAC:    /Applications/Adobe Flash CS3/Configuration/ActionScript 3.0/Classes/playerglobal.swc PC:      Program Files/Adobe Flash CS3/Configuration/ActionScript 3.0/Classes/playerglobal.swc (you should make a backup of your old playerglobal.swc) AIR SDK: MAC:    Place all files in /Users/[you]/ PC:      Place files whereever you want. (I use c:AIR_SDK) Set environment variables: Right click "My Computer" Hit Properties. Go to the "Advanced" tab Click "Environment Variables" In "System Variables", under Path add path you put the sdk. If there is no Path var, you can add it. ADL syntax: adl myApp.xml Flash Tracer: After installing extension, Tools --> FlashTracer Click "Options" in the bottom right of the AddOn. PC Path MUST be: C:Documents and Settings[YOU]Application DataMacromediaFlash PlayerLogsflashlog.txt Mac Path MUST be: Hard Drive:Users:[YOU]:Library:Preferences:Macromedia:Flash Player:Logs:flashlog.txt If no Logs directory or flashlog.txt file is missing, you need to add them. ADT syntax: adt -package myAirFile.air myApp.xml foo.swf bar.swf icons videos etc

Between 1962 and 1964, Dr. Ivan Sutherland created Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communications System, arguably the world’s first computer graphics system, and non-procedural programming system.

Video

In this video, Dr. Alan Kay, from PARC, discusses Sketchpad and its significance in determining the nature of Object Oriented graphical interfaces.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/v/495nCzxM9PI]

Geneology

In this Computing Family Tree diagram◊, note how Sketchpad is considered the origination point for the modern operating system, as we know it.

Links

• Sketchpad, PhD. Dissertation, .pdf (3.9 MB) ↓
• Sketchpad, Wikipedia→
• Sketchpad, YouTube→
• Sketchpad, Archive.org→

See Also

Lecture: The Origins of Interactive Media ↑

Originally published in the Atlantic Monthly→, “As We May Think→” (July, 1945), a member of the Manhattan Project proposes the [tag]Memex[/tag]↔, a sort of microfilm-based knowledge desk. Many consider the Memex to be the pre-digital precursor to the idea of the Web and Internet as we know it today. It may reflect the dawn of the information age.

I am constantly referring to the Memex in my [tag]lectures[/tag]↔ and research as a significant historical precedent to modern informatics, information design, hypertext and interactive media.

A diagram depicting “Computing’s Family Tree”◊ sources the Memex at the root of all modern operating systems. See also Dr. Ivan Sutherland’s [tag]Sketchpad[/tag]↔ for the world’s first interactive computer graphics system.

Links

• Original article, Atlantic Monthly→
• “As We May Think”, Wikipedia→
• ‘Memex,’ Wikipedia→
• ‘Informatics,’ Wikipedia→

See Also

Lecture: The Origins of Interactive Media ↑

As a professor of media design at Parsons The New School for Design, I was invited on Chinese grant funds to teach a month-long intensive design workshop at the Art and Design Academy at Tsinghua University in Beijing as part of China’s recent national initiative to embrace Western modes of thinking and educational approaches. Tsinghua is one of China’s most prestigious and perhaps well-funded institutions, often compared to MIT as a bastion of brainy, competitive, but brilliant national minds. Judging by the newly opened art academy building designed by American architectural firm, 70 million RMB (US$ 9.3 million) is a small price to pay for a world-class design education facility. Indeed, compared to our cramped quarters at Parsons, somewhat scattered throughout real-estate challenged Greenwich Village, I was afflicted with space lust as I wandered, upon arrival, through a dizzying maze of studios, workspaces, classrooms, offices, galleries, art supply and book stores. The academy even sports a Starbucks-style coffee shop where baristas pull lattes for a fraction of the cost of our all-too-familiar daily grandé. The more I discovered about the Tsinghua Art and Design academy, the more I appreciated how the university, and by-proxy, the Chinese government, invests heavily in the importance of a Westernized (or maybe Globalized) higher learning design education. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if America’s investment in our own creative capital could measure up. The last time I checked back home, primary and secondary art education was being eviscerated in favor of test prep education, art college enrollments were flat and the national mood was generally complacent and decadent. Clearly, being here, it is understood that China’s globalizing ambitions imagine itself someday becoming the world’s creative agency, and not just its factory.

This idea is underscored when considering the process of designing many of the identity systems for China’s current national obsession: preparing for the 2008 Olympiad, as it extends its unique culture, language and hospitality to the rest of the world. Typically in the West, design products, such as a visual identity system, are outsourced to a private design agency, through an arduous and competitive design bid process. Rather than become the mother client for its homegrown but nascent design firm industry, China tapped its own universities, in keeping with its deeply historical respect for scholars. Instead of farming out the work to lowest bidding, but hottest design and branding firm, the Beijing Olympic Committee ‘hired’ its own university design professors to create for the Olympics 2008. In particular, the official mascots of Beijing 2008 were conceived and born in these shiny new halls of the Art and Design Academy under the direction of Professor Wu, a high-ranking member of the Party. Although, somewhat insipidly and overly cute by Western standards, the set of five mascots cleverly epitomize cultural memes of China, symbolize aspects of the Olympic spirit, the elements of nature, and even form a language pun in Mandarin, when their names are properly sequenced. They are unmistakably an inside job. Until the court of public opinion meets next summer along with merchandising sales and media ratings, the verdict is out on Fuwa, the Five Friendlies.
During my workshop with a group of 23 second-year Tsinghua Art Academy undergraduates, I easily encountered their reputation to be hard working, competitive, and brilliant. However, I also confirmed some of the stereotypes originating from preconceived notions about Chinese students. These students lacked some of the core conceptual capabilities notable in their Parsons counterparts, especially the ability to think critically and innovate rather than absorb and merely emulate. They also seemed to suffer from an obsession with cute character culture, an influential import from neighbors Japan and Korea.

I knew that I was brought here to broaden their perspectives, and export not only my practical experience working in the New York City interactive design industry, but also to engender an appreciation for original thinking, true creativity, and help them discover more sophisticated design frameworks that extend beyond character artwork. At the same time, I knew that it would be senseless to attempt re-education in my own Maoist ‘Cute Cultural Revolution’ and repress their love for all that is cuddly in favor of an American style hyper-pragmatism as I critiqued their design forms and motifs. Instead, I would need to devise a means to hybridize the decidedly modern but Eastern compulsion to express profound concepts through a cartoon character, with our decidedly post-modern Western fixation with design models that valorize a purity of form in a luxuriously ironic package. Perhaps, the Beijing Olympics offered the ideal opportunity to combine these two perspectives as subject matter for a design project well suited to nurture the advancement of both my Tsinghua students and my own at Parsons. My statistically insignificant dent in the trade deficit with China during this month of export — the precious resource of American ingenuity — would need to return another kind of investment. This exchange had to reinforce my understanding of what needed to be imported back to Parsons in hope of contributing towards preserving, if not reinvigorating, our own national endeavor to lead the world in idea creation.

There’s a giant generation of Chinese artists and designers starting to emerge into the global creative economy. Former Red Guards and victims of the Cultural Revolution, alike, raised these young minds. They possess a passion to succeed where their parents did not, perhaps could not. The US must acknowledge this newly emerging Red Studio in the anticipation of a marketplace of ideas and economies that will only become more intertwined with Chinese-American interests and competition. After the closing ceremonies of Beijing 2008 conclude, and the torch extinguishes, incalculable tons of unpurchased Five Friendlies Olympic junk will probably be land-filled or ‘donated’ to Africa. It may seem a colossal waste of resources on cuteness, but China’s Red Studio will enjoy having penned history’s greatest Olympic mascot, and perhaps most merchandised state sponsored character design.

See Also

Project: Olympic Mobile Visitors Guide ↑

The Origins of Interactive Media.

交互式多媒体的起源

A brief examination of two influential American scientists who pioneered the idea of interactive information systems and graphics. Dr. Vannevar Bush, The Memex↑ and Dr. Ivan Sutherland, Sketchpad↑. Their research accomplishments resonate through every aspect of modern computing. A lecture given on Thursday, June 21, 2007, 13:30, Room B413 at the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University.Sponsored by Information Art & Design in collaboration with Communication Design & Technology, Parsons The New School for Design.

Lecture downloads available below.

Lecture Images

Lecture Downloads

» Download Lecture PDF↓ (6.5 MB)

» Download Lecture PowerPoint with QuickTime video ZIP ↓ (135 MB)

» Download Lecture Poster PDF ↓ (780 KB)

» View Lecture SWF in a Popup Flash Player → (20 MB)

See Also

• Memex, The Dawn of Informatics↑
• Sketchpad, The World’s First↑