This document discusses cognitive artifacts, which are artificial devices designed to serve a representational function and enhance human abilities. It examines how such artifacts are used in urban subcultures and how they construct meaning. The document presents examples of gesture-based technologies that can reengage the use of the body as an interface. It discusses how artifacts can display virtual representations of the world and how communities of practice, like graffiti crews, develop shared representations through their participation.
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Cognitive artifacts and urban subcultures
1. Cognitive ARTifacts
Examining sociocultural and cognitive dimensions in STS practices
through urban subcultures, as a basis for researching new modes/models
that construct meaning.
CS 7697 Cognitive Models of Science and Technology
Investigator: Nettrice R. Gaskins
2. General Problem Statement
For many years, the importance of cognitive artifacts – artificial devices designed
to serve a representational function – and their use to enhance human abilities has
been ignored within much of cognitive science despite earlier scientific inroads.
Cognitive scientists have paid little attention to how artifacts are invented,
acquired, or transmitted across individuals or generations, especially in groups
outside of accepted criterion applied in a particular branch of learning.
3. The Cognitive-Computer Artifact
A cognitive artifact is an artificial device designed to maintain, display, or
operate upon information in order to serve a representational function.
4.
5. The Representation
Gesturing is a robust phenomenon, found
across cultures, ages, and tasks. Susan
Goldin-Meadow examines the gesture when it
stands on its own, substituting for speech and
clearly serving a communicative function.
Here, artist/performer Doze Green performs
the motion of an “s,” a modal symbol (analog
representation) that retains perceptual aspects
of all "s" letter forms, such as the general
outline shape.
Gesture-based technologies and interfaces can
re-engage the use of the body, i.e. hands, as
well as the eye. Green also uses other parts of
his body to perform symbolic gestures.
6.
7. The Representing World
The computer interface provides users
with ways to generate representations
of their world. More specifically, this
paper investigates the virtual creation
of symbolic or representational
gestures and movement of the body in
physical space.
Graffiti Analysis demonstrates the “raw
form of human motion with code on
top,” as a data visualization. The line
quality is based on speed; the faster
the user moves or gestures the thinner
the line gets.
8. Displays of the Representing World
Susan Goldin-Meadow suggests that
gestures (artifacts) serve both as a tool
for communication for listeners, and a
tool for thinking for speakers.
There are several ways in which
artifacts display the virtual world,
including the presentation of a virtual
object, iconic representation, or world
upon which operations are performed,
eventually to be reflected or overlaid
onto real objects – where they can be
read by others.
9. Graffiti Research & Software Design
The letter "s", one of the more
commonly written letters in
graffiti –this simple, single line
gesture shows the way
hundreds of different writers all
treat the letter to see the
diversity of thought and intent in
a community of practice.
When disabled graffiti artist
TEMPT1 creates a letter with
the motion of his eyes he is, in
fact, constructing modal
representations that reactivate
parts of his brain that recall
experiences when he was able
bodied, in his graffiti crew in Los
Angeles.
10. Communities of Practice
A recent academic study of
graffiti crews in southern
Mexico City reveal certain
characteristics with gangs or
urban tribes, but more with
„„communities of practice‟‟:
they live in the „„figured world‟‟
of graffiti, a community of
practice at the local and
global level. Through
participation, group members
learn the language, technical
and social skills, and values
of this figured world.
11. Shared Repertoires
Effective community design is
built on the collective
experience of community
members. Only an insider can
appreciate the issues at the
heart of the domain, the
knowledge that is important to
share, the challenges their field
faces, and the latent potential
in emerging ideas, tools and
techniques. This requires more
than community "input." It
requires a deep understanding
of community issues.
12. Free Culture & Open Innovation
EyeWriter enabled disabled graffiti
artist TEMPT1 (Tony Quan) to
contribute work to “Getting Upper,” a
poster project and exhibition that
examines how typography, language
and communication continue to affect
and be infected by theories around
deconstruction and the visual
experience of graffiti and street
art. This work was recently on view at
the Pasadena Museum of California
Art.
Notes de l'éditeur
Also, more research needs to be done in order to understand information-processing roles played by artifacts and how they interact with information-processing activities of their users.
Donald Norman investigated artifacts that mediate directly between the person and the object, orpresent a virtual object or world upon which operations are performed, eventually to be reflected onto a real object; the object might actually exist outside the computer, but be created or operated upon through the virtual world of the artifact; in these cases there are several layers of representation: (a) the representation itself; (b) the represented world of the real object; (c) the representing world within the artifact; (d) the way the artifact displays the virtual world; and (e) the mental (or symbolic gestural and performative) representations of the human.
Constructing a modal representationpotentially involves a reactivation of patterns of neural activity in the perceptual and motor areas of the brain that were activated in the initial experience of drawing or performing. The ability to develop an image in the mind's eye from which to give form to artifacts in the outer world, by means of discovering appropriate states of continuously manipulated materials, should be far better acknowledged aspect of electronic art, digital craft, and computer-aided design. Gesture presents us with a generative structure upon which to successfully integrate cognitive and sociocultural accounts, to demonstrate how cognition occurs both externally between people and between people and artifacts as well as internally within individuals.
Generative structure is the beginnings of a medium largely because it invites manipulation… The structures we manipulate are more than collections of elements: they are dense notational contexts for action. (McCullough p. 99) In a generative system, symbolic processing of data structures establishes an underlying structure, which under proper conditions can take on aspects of a medium. Explorations of generative structure obtain power from hand, eye, and tools. They arise from personal knowledge, practice, and commitment of the sort in traditional handicrafts, now applied to symbolic systems… Through the abstraction of symbolic representation, practiced, playful talent finds new outlets and develops new kinds of appreciation. p. 102
One of the things that makes graffiti tags different from other types of drawing or painting is that graffiti – due to the environment in which it is created – engages fast, associative, automatic and supple gestures to create the work.Increasingly computing shows promise of becoming the medium that could reunite visual thinking with manual dexterity and practiced knowledge.Walter Benjamin's notion of the “cinematic apparatus” offers a "thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment" and an "aspect of reality which free of all equipment." To pursue this reality we must first master the technology to the point where it becomes more transparent (ex.Kinect for Xbox) which also allows the mind and body to work without any external action or apparatus.
A number of recent studies have found that ordinary listeners can reliably ‘read’ gesture when it conveys different information from speech, even when gesture is unedited and fleeting, as it is in natural communication.(Goldin-Meadow) Motion-based tags can be overlaid on or projected onto objects in natural settings, through displays within the device itself, or on buildings. This data visualization is concentrated not on ink or spray paint but on the motion (performance) of writing the tag. (Evan Roth) Visual computing has expanded our capacity to visualize abstract symbolic structures as physical images. Many high-level abstractions are made visual and dynamic by computing. Visual production demands, and visual computing increasingly supports a cultivated practice of abstraction based on direct manipulation of graphical symbols.
One of the things that makes basic graffiti different from other types of painting is that graffiti – due to the environment in which it is created – engages fast, associative, automatic and supple gestures to create the work. Recent investigations explore how themanipulation of gesture is likely to involve perceptual and motor processing.EyeWriter requires the disabled user/artist TEMPT1 to make use of his working memory to generate virtual graffiti tags, he is also, simultaneously, calling forth "stored representations" in his long-term memory that come from his participation as a graffiti writer. A well-designed interface reflects a variety of psychological factors, such as workspace context, orchestration in time, and the development of clear mental models. (McCullough p. 115)
The crew is an important community of practice. Group projects are planned at crew meetings, the occasion for crew members also to use and create tools. There are stages in practice and in learning: novices learn by participating in peripheral form or by observation (Lave, 1990). To learn graffiti they begin by doing tags, then bombs, thentry 3-D’s and finally, do realistic pieces.Graffiti artists experiment constantly with supplies and new tools/supplies. They also appropriate or create new techniques for creating representations. Projects like Graffiti Analysis and EyeWriter merge two communities: graffiti/street art and D.I.Y. maker culture.
Here, I return to Goodwin’s description of a “hybrid space”: Human cognition is a historically constituted, socially distributed process encompassing tools as well as human bodies situated in a socially organized space within which there is a "constellation" of relevant tasks and tools. This domain can help cognitive scientists address how situated practices, mental models and schemas, and artifacts extend or enhance human cognition in collaborative communities. These activities are extremely useful as far as demonstrating cognitive models of science and technology. Additionally, this research may be helpful to designers of software and human-computer interfaces. Through the abstraction of symbolic (gesture-based)representation, practiced, playful talent finds new outlets and develops new kinds of appreciation. (McCulloughp. 102)
Free culture and open innovation – as social, techno-scientific platforms and paradigms for idea generation – engage a variety of audiences, including artists, activists, game developers, audio programmers, application developers, etc. Through research we can answer the question of how local hacking behavior and a “making do” approach to innovation is connected to socioeconomic and cultural domains in under-resourced communities, i.e. through “ground up,” not “top down” practices. This work provides insights into role of design, participation, or collaboration that are situated in historical, collectively defined, socially produced, culturally constructed activities, with a meaningful, holistic intent towards their surroundings.