[00:00.000 --> 00:01.760]  I like this one.
[00:03.620 --> 00:05.380]  Did you put this one here?
[00:05.820 --> 00:07.120]  It might be that one.
[00:07.880 --> 00:08.280]  It doesn't matter.
[00:09.500 --> 00:11.040]  I need cooties.
[00:14.040 --> 00:16.180]  So thank you very much for coming today.
[00:16.720 --> 00:29.280]  This is Electric Bodies and Possible Worlds using virtual reality, augmented reality, and alternate reality gaming to explore self-expression, empowerment, and community building.
[00:30.600 --> 00:37.120]  And this is a presentation that I've slowly been building the materials for for a while now.
[00:37.300 --> 00:40.420]  So I'm really happy about having the opportunity to present this to you folks.
[00:40.820 --> 00:48.460]  A lot of people know that I presented Last HOPE talking specifically about virtual reality glove and some work that I was doing.
[00:48.720 --> 00:50.400]  This sort of expands on that.
[00:51.160 --> 00:57.020]  So the first thing I want to do is give you this quote.
[00:57.020 --> 01:04.240]  And this was passed on to me by my friend, Arwolf, who used to see Sun Ra at the Blues and Jazz Festival in Ann Arbor.
[01:04.700 --> 01:06.740]  And the quote is, you think you're a human.
[01:06.980 --> 01:08.820]  What if you an angel instead?
[01:09.480 --> 01:14.600]  And what I take that to mean is we have little boxes that we live in.
[01:14.760 --> 01:30.580]  We have forms that we adhere to in society, that we adhere to personally because of fear, because of not knowing how to express ourselves, and because of not really knowing sometimes how to connect with people in our community.
[01:30.580 --> 01:41.260]  And we have an opportunity now with increased technology to explore the things in ourselves that maybe we haven't had an opportunity to do before.
[01:41.260 --> 01:48.700]  And we also have a chance to take some of those things that we haven't been able to put into words or image or sound.
[01:49.540 --> 01:52.620]  Things that we've tried to communicate with people before but haven't.
[01:52.900 --> 02:00.900]  With new technologies, we now have the ability to create environments, create things where we can express ourselves to other people.
[02:01.520 --> 02:10.580]  So we're going to start out with myself talking about an overview of virtual and augmented reality and really what that means.
[02:10.580 --> 02:17.620]  And then we're going to talk about DIY technology so that you can create these things yourself.
[02:17.960 --> 02:25.800]  I see many, many discussions online and panels and movies and all these things about augmented and virtual reality.
[02:25.900 --> 02:27.700]  And they're all very sort of distant.
[02:27.900 --> 02:35.800]  And they're all sort of for either large companies or for people who are incredibly technically knowledgeable on certain things.
[02:35.940 --> 02:37.660]  People that are sort of uber geeks.
[02:37.660 --> 02:47.720]  And this is actually something that even people who haven't had programming experience before or anything like that can do and can create for themselves.
[02:48.080 --> 02:52.640]  Then Micah is going to talk about auto nets and some of her other related projects.
[02:52.840 --> 03:00.620]  And then Cayden, he's going to talk about radical and liberatory education and alternate reality games.
[03:00.620 --> 03:08.240]  So essentially moving from the history of VR and augmented reality to some of the technical aspects of it.
[03:08.380 --> 03:19.580]  Then moving into actual real life examples of how we are able to express ourselves and communicate with ourselves and change ourselves through these things.
[03:19.960 --> 03:25.440]  So let's start out with my little overview here of augmented and virtual reality.
[03:25.440 --> 03:28.140]  A little bit of a way of explanation.
[03:28.460 --> 03:33.700]  I run a company called Sensory Research in my spare time from my day job working in education.
[03:33.980 --> 03:45.980]  My company does work in augmented reality, virtual reality, and writing different types of applications and creating systems for people to be able to communicate with each other and express things to each other.
[03:46.540 --> 03:48.320]  So what is virtual reality?
[03:49.520 --> 03:56.200]  How many people have actually used a virtual reality device of some kind before or some sort of system?
[03:56.580 --> 03:57.600]  Let me see a show of hands.
[03:57.940 --> 03:59.580]  We got a fair amount actually.
[03:59.700 --> 04:00.960]  That's a good number right there.
[04:01.740 --> 04:05.700]  So virtual reality is an immersive 3D generated environment.
[04:07.280 --> 04:09.500]  And it could be generated in a lot of ways.
[04:09.680 --> 04:12.400]  It's become computer generated for the most part.
[04:12.400 --> 04:19.680]  And the environment can be created with animation and or photography and sound and tactile feedback.
[04:20.080 --> 04:21.740]  Different types of haptic feedback.
[04:22.780 --> 04:29.820]  And in a virtual environment, there are avatars that are representations of people here in the real world.
[04:29.820 --> 04:47.720]  And those avatars can navigate through the environment and can grasp objects and do things through devices here in the real world that are used basically as input to the virtual environment.
[04:47.720 --> 04:52.640]  And these input devices can be gloves, joysticks.
[04:53.600 --> 05:01.920]  And recently, sensors have become very popular and they're very inexpensive and easily accessible to people.
[05:02.000 --> 05:03.480]  And we'll be talking about that as well.
[05:03.860 --> 05:04.600]  Motion sensors.
[05:05.240 --> 05:06.960]  So what is augmented reality?
[05:07.260 --> 05:14.020]  Well, augmented reality is a little bit different than virtual reality in the sense that augmented reality is you're taking things from the real world.
[05:14.020 --> 05:19.160]  And you're overlayering meta information on that.
[05:20.160 --> 05:23.220]  So in other words, you're looking at something...
[05:23.220 --> 05:31.120]  It's generally visual right now, but I'm going to make the argument that augmented reality can be audio and sound as well, as well as just touch.
[05:31.320 --> 05:33.840]  We don't want to limit it to just visual, although it has been.
[05:34.640 --> 05:41.920]  And so you're overlayering... you're layering over the real world information with meta information.
[05:42.160 --> 05:45.480]  Information about what it is that you're experiencing.
[05:45.900 --> 05:48.340]  And it's becoming very popular with mobile devices.
[05:48.520 --> 05:58.420]  There's a lot of AR-based apps on mobile devices where you can point your phone at an object or a scene and have it recognized.
[05:58.420 --> 06:04.780]  And then you'll see information overlaid over that image about what it is that you're seeing or hearing.
[06:05.060 --> 06:06.420]  That's augmented reality.
[06:07.020 --> 06:08.940]  Now what are the uses of this, right?
[06:09.480 --> 06:13.820]  So you can simulate the real world in a virtual environment.
[06:13.960 --> 06:18.460]  In other words, you can create a mock-up of the real world in a virtual environment.
[06:19.420 --> 06:25.420]  And in augmented reality, you can identify and provide information about something in the real world.
[06:25.420 --> 06:32.460]  And the uses for this are physical and psychological research and rehabilitation.
[06:32.740 --> 06:35.400]  So physical rehabilitation, people moving.
[06:36.440 --> 06:39.900]  Psychological rehabilitation, people getting over fears of different things.
[06:40.660 --> 06:43.650]  And also education and training, learning how to do tasks.
[06:44.380 --> 06:49.100]  Doctors, learning how to do surgery by practicing in a virtual environment.
[06:49.220 --> 06:55.180]  Or doing actual surgery with augmented reality where they're seeing information about what they're working on.
[06:55.180 --> 06:59.300]  Actually layered over the live image of the patient.
[07:00.140 --> 07:01.320]  And also for communication.
[07:01.580 --> 07:03.020]  Virtual reality is used...
[07:03.020 --> 07:14.700]  You can think of it in the smallest sense of things like the avatar image that you have for different online games or social networking.
[07:14.700 --> 07:16.880]  You have your little image that represents you.
[07:17.160 --> 07:24.160]  Now expand that to think of an actual character that's representing you in an environment.
[07:24.160 --> 07:25.500]  So it could be communication.
[07:25.840 --> 07:28.380]  And what I'm going to focus on here today is...
[07:28.380 --> 07:30.140]  And I think is the most important one.
[07:31.000 --> 07:34.160]  Is personal exploration and expression.
[07:34.940 --> 07:36.460]  And building community.
[07:37.020 --> 07:40.540]  And finding new ways of expressing what's inside of you.
[07:40.620 --> 07:45.120]  And actually I feel very privileged in a way to come after the panel that was just on.
[07:45.120 --> 07:49.040]  Because I think that this is actually something that can help people.
[07:49.820 --> 07:51.820]  To be who they want to be.
[07:52.440 --> 07:54.520]  To express themselves to others.
[07:54.800 --> 07:56.080]  And to lose fear.
[07:57.180 --> 07:58.840]  In being who they are.
[07:59.020 --> 08:00.080]  And expressing themselves.
[08:00.280 --> 08:00.820]  And exploring.
[08:01.060 --> 08:02.340]  And feel comfortable in exploring.
[08:02.640 --> 08:04.260]  And that's the thing about virtual worlds.
[08:04.320 --> 08:07.180]  Is virtual worlds you can create something that's never been created before.
[08:07.540 --> 08:08.780]  It comes out of your mind.
[08:08.780 --> 08:11.720]  And you can create something out there that other people can see.
[08:12.420 --> 08:14.060]  So the history of immersion.
[08:14.280 --> 08:16.160]  What is the history of immersion?
[08:16.240 --> 08:17.080]  How did we get here?
[08:17.680 --> 08:18.780]  Well the first...
[08:18.780 --> 08:21.700]  Very first things that we know of are cave paintings.
[08:22.040 --> 08:26.920]  Now these cave paintings date back 41,000 years.
[08:27.460 --> 08:30.600]  41,000 years is a long time ago.
[08:30.600 --> 08:38.100]  But it was the first way for people to basically remove themselves out of time and space.
[08:38.340 --> 08:40.040]  And go someplace else.
[08:40.300 --> 08:42.440]  Or feel that they are going someplace else.
[08:42.700 --> 08:44.600]  So there are only two dimensional representations.
[08:45.060 --> 08:47.700]  But they're taking you out of your current time and space.
[08:48.040 --> 08:50.420]  And the earliest cave paintings are in Spain.
[08:50.840 --> 08:53.880]  As a matter of fact there was a paper that was just released about four weeks ago.
[08:54.000 --> 08:56.140]  About these cave paintings in Spain.
[08:56.560 --> 08:59.940]  Two interesting things came out of this paper from this research team.
[08:59.940 --> 09:07.160]  The first thing is that the cave paintings are abstract.
[09:07.340 --> 09:12.280]  They're not just like a scene of some grass and some animals running around.
[09:12.480 --> 09:13.600]  Or anything like that.
[09:13.740 --> 09:14.320]  They're abstract.
[09:14.640 --> 09:17.380]  They're representations of ideas.
[09:17.680 --> 09:18.860]  Not necessarily scenes.
[09:19.340 --> 09:23.060]  And then the other interesting thing is that these may have actually been created by Neanderthals.
[09:24.240 --> 09:25.360]  Pre-humans.
[09:25.840 --> 09:27.360]  That's fascinating as well.
[09:28.040 --> 09:30.000]  Now if you fast forward a little bit.
[09:30.800 --> 09:33.840]  There is the Florentine painter Giotto.
[09:33.940 --> 09:36.600]  Who created the first paintings to have perspective.
[09:36.960 --> 09:39.260]  The first paintings that weren't just two dimensional.
[09:39.460 --> 09:43.440]  They actually showed that something is coming out at you.
[09:43.540 --> 09:44.580]  That it's in three dimensions.
[09:45.820 --> 09:50.760]  And you can actually find out more about this trend of 2D to 3D.
[09:50.760 --> 09:52.660]  And how it meshed with science.
[09:53.000 --> 09:56.320]  There's a book by a guy named Leonard Schlain called Art and Physics.
[09:56.660 --> 09:59.220]  That actually follows through history how this happened.
[09:59.540 --> 10:06.440]  How science and our knowledge of the world around us and art continued to go upward.
[10:06.660 --> 10:08.880]  And we continued to learn more.
[10:08.880 --> 10:15.520]  In 1788 the Scottish artist Robert Barker painted a 360 degree depiction of the city of Edinburgh.
[10:16.060 --> 10:19.640]  And he actually... it was actually displayed in a circular room.
[10:19.760 --> 10:23.480]  So that you could turn and experience this.
[10:23.600 --> 10:27.000]  This was the first what they call panorama painting.
[10:28.160 --> 10:34.660]  And in 1838 the British scientist Sir Charles Wheatstone invented the stereoscope.
[10:34.660 --> 10:36.760]  Now, a little bit about this.
[10:36.860 --> 10:39.140]  When you look at something, you've got two eyes.
[10:39.260 --> 10:40.420]  They're slightly separated.
[10:40.720 --> 10:43.960]  So you're seeing things from slightly different angles from each eye.
[10:44.660 --> 10:48.220]  That is one of the components that creates depth perception.
[10:48.220 --> 10:49.960]  That creates three dimensions.
[10:50.320 --> 10:51.440]  Now it's not the only thing.
[10:51.580 --> 10:58.460]  Scientists have found out that actually if someone loses one eye, they can still see a little bit of three dimensions.
[10:58.660 --> 11:00.200]  So there's something else going on in the brain.
[11:00.300 --> 11:01.180]  Some math going on.
[11:01.340 --> 11:03.000]  But primarily it's with two eyes.
[11:03.000 --> 11:04.860]  So Charles Wheatstone figured this out.
[11:04.960 --> 11:06.820]  And he used two mirrors basically.
[11:08.060 --> 11:09.160]  And two images.
[11:09.460 --> 11:10.060]  And then mirrors.
[11:10.240 --> 11:12.700]  So that you could look at this and see in three dimensions.
[11:13.460 --> 11:19.100]  And in 1948, a Scottish scientist, David Brewster, improved on this by utilizing prisms.
[11:19.120 --> 11:20.740]  And he also made it much smaller.
[11:20.840 --> 11:23.940]  So you could actually carry this in your hands.
[11:24.540 --> 11:27.020]  Now Charles Brewster also invented the kaleidoscope.
[11:27.140 --> 11:31.820]  You folks have probably seen the tube where you turn it and the rotating colors and stuff.
[11:31.820 --> 11:33.960]  He came up with that in 1817.
[11:33.960 --> 11:35.920]  Just an anecdote that I think is really cool.
[11:37.000 --> 11:39.140]  So these are called stereoscopes.
[11:39.380 --> 11:41.100]  Devices that have two images.
[11:41.400 --> 11:46.800]  And you can actually look through little glasses and see these.
[11:47.360 --> 11:51.280]  Now I just so happen to have a stereoscope.
[11:51.620 --> 11:52.740]  This is an antique.
[11:53.200 --> 11:55.980]  And as you can see, there's a card here with two images.
[11:56.600 --> 11:59.800]  And it's placed in this little thing here.
[12:00.600 --> 12:02.200]  And then you go like this.
[12:02.960 --> 12:04.840]  And you get it to right where you want it.
[12:05.760 --> 12:07.180]  Move this... slide it forward.
[12:07.560 --> 12:10.180]  And it looks like the image is in three dimensions.
[12:11.060 --> 12:12.020]  Just like this.
[12:13.300 --> 12:18.480]  And I brought this on the plane on my lap.
[12:19.400 --> 12:20.900]  Because I wanted to bring it to you.
[12:21.400 --> 12:23.320]  And I actually am going to pass this around.
[12:23.460 --> 12:24.440]  Keep in mind, this is an antique.
[12:24.560 --> 12:25.880]  It's almost 100 years old.
[12:26.120 --> 12:28.220]  But I trust that you guys can take care of it.
[12:28.780 --> 12:30.800]  Don't pull this all the way off.
[12:30.920 --> 12:33.640]  But just pull it slightly forward until it focuses.
[12:33.920 --> 12:36.100]  And you'll actually see the image in 3D.
[12:36.100 --> 12:38.040]  So I'll start here and hand this down.
[12:38.240 --> 12:39.060]  Again, please be careful.
[12:39.360 --> 12:40.520]  But please give it a shot.
[12:40.740 --> 12:44.400]  And enjoy one of the first devices for three-dimensional viewing.
[12:46.560 --> 12:52.280]  And in 1898, the United States inventor Thomas Edison invented the kinetoscope.
[12:52.840 --> 12:55.220]  And I'm sure folks are familiar with the kinetoscope.
[12:55.220 --> 13:00.440]  Because it was the precursor to basically film as we know it.
[13:00.520 --> 13:03.640]  There were other inventors doing similar things at the same time.
[13:03.780 --> 13:05.460]  But Thomas Edison gets the credit.
[13:05.460 --> 13:09.140]  And in film and television, of course, this expanded.
[13:09.340 --> 13:20.380]  In the late 1890s, the filmmaker William Freese Green patented the first 3D movie technique using, actually, a stereoscope-type display and flickering images.
[13:20.680 --> 13:23.060]  In 1915, William S. Porter and William E. Waddell demonstrated 3D movie techniques using anaglyphics.
[13:28.340 --> 13:33.080]  Now, anaglyphics, of course, are the glasses.
[13:33.580 --> 13:34.020]  Right?
[13:34.220 --> 13:34.940]  With the two colors.
[13:35.260 --> 13:35.680]  Right?
[13:35.680 --> 13:37.900]  The idea is you do one image in one color.
[13:38.360 --> 13:39.800]  Another image in the other color.
[13:40.000 --> 13:43.240]  And then when you look, it looks like it's three dimensions.
[13:44.600 --> 13:49.560]  And throughout the 1950s and 60s, there was a lot of experimentation in film with three dimensions.
[13:50.380 --> 13:55.540]  Using the anaglyphic technique and then also using something called cinemascope.
[13:55.780 --> 14:01.920]  Which was a camera system that took a very wide shot, very wide field of view.
[14:02.180 --> 14:05.920]  And when it was projected, it felt like it was immersive around you.
[14:07.020 --> 14:11.280]  Use of 3D declined starting in the 1970s.
[14:11.460 --> 14:13.740]  And only recently, there was a few spad of movies.
[14:13.860 --> 14:16.400]  Friday the 13th in 3D, Piranha in 3D, blah, blah, blah.
[14:16.640 --> 14:19.720]  But recently, it came back into popularity because of Avatar.
[14:20.100 --> 14:24.060]  And now we're seeing lots of movies the past couple of years that are utilizing 3D.
[14:25.040 --> 14:27.880]  And so, let's go back to the history a little bit.
[14:27.880 --> 14:30.420]  So, government and military research.
[14:30.580 --> 14:41.880]  And actually, this is going to tie into a panel that's going to be happening tomorrow that I hope folks check out about military funding of technology and creating technology.
[14:42.140 --> 14:44.340]  And this brings up some interesting questions.
[14:45.740 --> 14:58.840]  So, to fulfill the need for better cockpit simulations, radar systems and information sharing systems, the government and the military started looking into virtual reality and immersive environments.
[14:59.120 --> 15:12.320]  It began in the 1940s and was inspired by the writings of Vannevere Bush, who did an article in The Atlantic about a hypothetical device called the memix, which basically is the precursor to the modern computer.
[15:13.420 --> 15:18.880]  And the research originated with people like Douglas Engelbart, Larry Roberts and Ivan Sutherland.
[15:19.100 --> 15:21.960]  A lot of people who you know as the founding fathers of computing.
[15:22.160 --> 15:28.020]  Douglas Engelbart, of course, the creator of the mouse and the inventor of video conferencing and text editing.
[15:28.340 --> 15:32.780]  And all of these guys were funded and encouraged by a guy named J.C.R. Licklider.
[15:33.960 --> 15:37.880]  And if you've never heard of Licklider, you should go and investigate this guy.
[15:38.080 --> 15:49.200]  He was at ARPA and he took a lot of money from the government and the military and put it towards these advanced research projects to create a lot of the things that we have now in terms of technology.
[15:50.140 --> 15:59.740]  And one of the things that came out, and this was in 1966 at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, was the first head-mounted display by Ivan Sutherland.
[15:59.840 --> 16:01.400]  It was called the Sword of Damocles.
[16:02.680 --> 16:05.360]  And when you look at the picture, you can see why.
[16:05.620 --> 16:07.420]  It could take off your head, really.
[16:08.040 --> 16:17.180]  It utilized small cathode ray tubes on the side, mounted along the ears, and some mirrors to basically see what was going on around you.
[16:18.180 --> 16:26.640]  And things sort of died out in terms of immersive environments for about 10 years until NASA decided to get involved.
[16:26.820 --> 16:30.100]  And they... Immersion sat dormant for a while.
[16:30.240 --> 16:36.860]  And then NASA got involved looking for a way to train pilots and for navigating robots to be able to collect samples and do various things.
[16:37.200 --> 16:46.960]  And NASA's funding of various projects ignited a virtual reality craze in the 80s and early 90s that affected both government and the private sector.
[16:47.520 --> 16:49.360]  Several important projects were created.
[16:49.620 --> 16:55.180]  Leap and View are the two most important ones that had to do with viewing and grasping things.
[16:56.040 --> 17:04.600]  And NASA research, which was public, because it was government-funded, the data had to be made public and the research had to be made public.
[17:04.760 --> 17:09.420]  That actually inspired VPL research and a lot of other companies to be created.
[17:09.420 --> 17:15.480]  Now, VPL research was started by a guy named Jaron Lanier, who's one of my heroes of technology.
[17:15.880 --> 17:24.360]  And his work and the work of a guy named Thomas Zimmerman created the first glove, the first data glove, in 1985.
[17:25.100 --> 17:28.740]  And it provided the ability to navigate in X, Y, and Z.
[17:30.580 --> 17:35.320]  So you can think of it as X and Y, and Z is depth, right?
[17:35.420 --> 17:36.180]  Like this.
[17:37.560 --> 17:40.340]  And it provided the ability to grasp objects in the environment.
[17:40.500 --> 17:46.480]  And it utilized flex information from bent sensors and sometimes light sensors, depending on the different versions that they had.
[17:47.560 --> 17:52.740]  And let's talk a little bit about the history of the encompassing environments, right?
[17:52.740 --> 17:56.800]  Things that are the whole environment around you, not just the technology.
[17:57.340 --> 18:02.580]  So in 1960, the United States inventor Morton Heilig created something called the sensorama.
[18:03.020 --> 18:05.800]  The sensorama was a box that you would sit in.
[18:05.900 --> 18:07.000]  It was like an arcade thing.
[18:07.400 --> 18:18.420]  And it was vibration and smell and film and sound of things like a motorcycle ride and whatnot.
[18:18.420 --> 18:21.760]  And I actually have some pictures here from some advertising.
[18:21.940 --> 18:26.040]  Of course, you've always got the attractive young woman to help with your advertising.
[18:26.780 --> 18:28.840]  And this was a really interesting system.
[18:28.880 --> 18:29.760]  It didn't take off.
[18:29.860 --> 18:36.640]  It made a few appearances at carnivals and whatnot and some conferences, but really didn't get a lot of attention.
[18:37.420 --> 18:43.100]  And then in the late 1970s, a group of MIT folks created the Aspen Movie Map.
[18:43.140 --> 18:45.540]  And this is really important and it affects us a lot today.
[18:45.540 --> 18:50.600]  This was a system of video discs with images and video from Aspen, Colorado.
[18:51.060 --> 18:54.820]  And you could select on a map a particular place.
[18:55.360 --> 19:00.180]  And it would actually bring up the video and the images and play them back for you.
[19:00.180 --> 19:04.200]  So it was like you were going through this drive.
[19:04.380 --> 19:07.000]  They took a drive and filmed driving through Aspen.
[19:07.160 --> 19:10.160]  And this would actually get displayed back to you in the system.
[19:10.160 --> 19:13.100]  And this is the precursor to augmented reality.
[19:13.100 --> 19:17.520]  And it's also the precursor to Google Maps and Google Street View.
[19:17.980 --> 19:22.500]  And things that just now are really starting to come into popular usage.
[19:23.420 --> 19:29.360]  In the 1970s, an artist named Myron Kruger created a place called Video Place.
[19:29.480 --> 19:34.220]  And this was the culmination of several different projects on what he called artificial reality.
[19:34.220 --> 19:37.740]  And this was housed in a research lab in Connecticut.
[19:38.260 --> 19:45.320]  And it utilized multiple video cameras and projections so that you could move your body.
[19:45.580 --> 19:51.120]  And as you moved your body, you played around with these abstract shapes and colors.
[19:51.120 --> 19:53.180]  So you could draw with your hands.
[19:53.420 --> 19:55.040]  And this is the 70s.
[19:55.040 --> 19:59.600]  This is before any type of major computer usage or anything like that.
[20:00.840 --> 20:06.820]  And then later on, as you get into the 80s, you get into the cave or cave-aided virtual environment.
[20:07.060 --> 20:11.420]  This was originally developed at the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
[20:11.800 --> 20:18.620]  And it utilized multiple cameras, screens, combined with motion tracking software to create an immersive environment.
[20:19.580 --> 20:25.140]  And there was actually one at the University of Michigan up until recently where I do stuff.
[20:25.140 --> 20:32.240]  And there was probably about a dozen different cave installations throughout the United States, throughout the 80s and 90s.
[20:32.420 --> 20:42.200]  And the interesting thing about cave is that the development of cave actually led to some open-source virtual reality and augmented reality libraries.
[20:42.620 --> 20:49.460]  And frameworks that are still being maintained by people today for developing these types of environments.
[20:49.460 --> 20:56.300]  And you can actually join the group and help with the environment, the development of these environment libraries and frameworks still.
[20:57.380 --> 21:00.140]  And then, of course, fast forward even more and you get Second Life.
[21:00.680 --> 21:05.840]  Now, Second Life, of course, is a commercial virtual environment created by Linden Labs in San Francisco.
[21:06.900 --> 21:08.800]  Users can build anything from primitives.
[21:09.020 --> 21:18.940]  Your avatar takes a primitive and you can stack all these primitives to create complex objects and to interact with other things.
[21:18.940 --> 21:20.280]  The objects can be scripted.
[21:20.360 --> 21:22.700]  So if you touch an object, things can happen.
[21:22.740 --> 21:26.360]  Or if you bump objects together, you can make things happen.
[21:26.600 --> 21:28.520]  There's also a web services API.
[21:28.680 --> 21:31.040]  And this was really unique in terms of virtual environments.
[21:31.440 --> 21:38.860]  Because there was no other environments at the time, and still aren't really, that allow you to interact directly with the real world.
[21:38.860 --> 21:42.860]  So it's very easy to create tools to interact with the real world.
[21:44.340 --> 21:48.720]  And I want to dissect augmented and virtual reality really quick.
[21:49.540 --> 21:51.880]  There's a couple things that you should always have.
[21:51.960 --> 21:54.260]  Consistent rules that define the interaction.
[21:54.460 --> 21:58.440]  If necessary, provide in-world clues as to how interaction should happen.
[21:58.920 --> 22:02.400]  There should be constraints to limit an interaction for a particular purpose.
[22:02.760 --> 22:06.060]  There should be multiple sensory modes to increase immersion.
[22:06.060 --> 22:13.420]  So the more things, if you have visual things and auditory things and touch, you're more likely to have someone feeling immersed.
[22:14.660 --> 22:17.320]  And this is the basic event loop here.
[22:17.460 --> 22:21.120]  You want to sample inputs from your devices.
[22:21.800 --> 22:23.740]  You want to... from your input devices.
[22:23.900 --> 22:25.220]  You want to process that data.
[22:25.340 --> 22:29.740]  You want to update the environment and then wait another cycle before you read.
[22:30.400 --> 22:36.080]  Now for sampling, essentially you take a reading from each input to get its current value.
[22:36.380 --> 22:39.320]  The sampling rate should be appropriate for the input, the environment, and the users.
[22:39.840 --> 22:42.300]  You don't want to sample too fast or too slow.
[22:42.440 --> 22:43.040]  There will be lag.
[22:43.820 --> 22:45.640]  And each sample should be time stamped.
[22:46.420 --> 22:47.940]  And then you store it in a buffer.
[22:48.660 --> 22:49.980]  Do whatever you want to do with it.
[22:50.300 --> 22:52.300]  You can write it back to disk for recording.
[22:53.100 --> 22:57.100]  Process the data to use it to do whatever you want to do in the environment.
[22:57.600 --> 22:59.320]  And then perform operations.
[22:59.700 --> 23:01.300]  Then update your environment.
[23:01.540 --> 23:02.900]  And you can do visual updates.
[23:03.120 --> 23:04.260]  You can update audio.
[23:04.420 --> 23:08.940]  Keep in mind that when you update audio or you change audio things, it's not the same thing as changing something visually.
[23:09.140 --> 23:14.980]  It's harder for someone to really make sense of changing audio very quickly.
[23:15.140 --> 23:16.820]  And provide tactile feedback.
[23:17.020 --> 23:20.180]  You can have visual feedback, highlight something, flicker, bounce.
[23:20.540 --> 23:22.740]  You can have sound, click, buzz, voice.
[23:23.640 --> 23:24.900]  Tactile, like vibration.
[23:25.120 --> 23:26.860]  Or you can modify the resistance of something.
[23:27.480 --> 23:29.660]  And I put smell here with a question mark.
[23:30.220 --> 23:36.840]  Even since Morten Heilig's work with smell, there's not been anything else with smell.
[23:37.040 --> 23:46.980]  And I encourage folks out here to get involved with smell and see what you can do to try to create ways of creating a sense of smell in people's experiences.
[23:46.980 --> 23:51.320]  So let me talk a little bit about DIY virtual and augmented reality systems really quick.
[23:52.140 --> 23:55.840]  So you can use readily available hardware such as laptops and mobile devices.
[23:56.060 --> 23:58.440]  You can use low-cost, off-the-shelf sensors.
[23:58.760 --> 24:02.180]  You can utilize standards that are out there for data formats and communication.
[24:02.440 --> 24:05.560]  And you can design an environment based on personal creativity.
[24:07.560 --> 24:10.180]  For creating the environment, there's something called X3D.
[24:10.180 --> 24:15.680]  This is the pre... or actually it's the modern version of what was VRML in the 90s.
[24:16.020 --> 24:21.920]  This is a modeling... this is a modeling language just like sort of HTML.
[24:21.920 --> 24:26.160]  So it's tagged or just like a KML.
[24:26.720 --> 24:34.380]  So this is basically just you can have a text document and have tags and put in information into those tags and create a virtual environment.
[24:34.580 --> 24:37.340]  It's maintained by the Web3D consortium.
[24:37.340 --> 24:41.900]  It's a large community of standards, development and support.
[24:42.220 --> 24:45.180]  And it's used in pretty much everything you think of.
[24:45.280 --> 24:46.660]  Training, modeling, whatever.
[24:47.140 --> 24:49.360]  You can design things in Second Life as we talked about.
[24:49.500 --> 24:53.360]  It has all those things such as the web services API.
[24:54.400 --> 24:59.460]  And land can be purchased or it can... you can be free if you don't have any land.
[24:59.520 --> 25:00.760]  You can just navigate through there.
[25:02.020 --> 25:04.560]  And I work with panoramic photography a lot.
[25:04.560 --> 25:13.000]  Panoramic photography is when you take pictures and either take a one large picture that covers a lot of... a very large field of view.
[25:13.160 --> 25:15.640]  Or you can take smaller pictures and stack them together.
[25:15.940 --> 25:18.200]  And I'll skip past these slides on how you do that.
[25:18.420 --> 25:28.540]  But you'll be able to get all of these information... all of the different slides that I have, as well as some software and whatnot, will be available up on the website that I'll provide for you.
[25:28.540 --> 25:30.440]  And this will actually be up on the webpage as well.
[25:31.480 --> 25:36.540]  So data gloves, accelerometers, force sense resistors.
[25:37.800 --> 25:44.720]  Now, those few things, the accelerometer and force sense resistors, you can actually get these from like Adafruit and stuff for like $10, $13.
[25:45.300 --> 25:50.740]  And all of these things are very useful for creating your own virtual environment.
[25:50.740 --> 25:55.040]  And, of course, cameras are really cheap now and available on phones.
[25:56.100 --> 25:58.300]  Microphones, very cheap, available on phones.
[25:58.300 --> 26:00.440]  You can also buy external microphones.
[26:01.240 --> 26:04.960]  And, of course, GPS in all of the phones, and you can buy cheap external GPS.
[26:05.340 --> 26:06.500]  And, of course, the Arduino.
[26:06.660 --> 26:08.160]  A lot of people here are familiar with the Arduino.
[26:08.420 --> 26:15.960]  The Arduino can be utilized to capture sensor information and then send it to an application.
[26:17.260 --> 26:19.340]  And, of course, the ubiquitous laptop.
[26:19.680 --> 26:20.520]  Everyone has a laptop.
[26:20.820 --> 26:26.360]  And the laptops of today have more power in them than the virtual reality systems of the 90s.
[26:26.500 --> 26:30.400]  And they contain the cameras and the microphones and everything built right in.
[26:30.800 --> 26:35.320]  So I'm going to close out by talking about some projects that I've done with these things.
[26:35.640 --> 26:39.920]  So I used an event called Sequential Progression in 2004.
[26:39.920 --> 26:44.520]  I utilized a P5 virtual reality glove, which is this right here.
[26:44.700 --> 26:49.460]  And I'll... if you want to take a look at this and then go ahead and pass it around.
[26:49.640 --> 26:55.300]  This is a virtual reality glove that was designed by a company in the late 90s called Essential Reality.
[26:55.440 --> 26:59.020]  They went out of business, and I ended up buying their remaining stock of gloves.
[26:59.820 --> 27:01.940]  And so I work with this glove.
[27:02.080 --> 27:03.300]  It's an exoskeleton glove.
[27:03.560 --> 27:07.820]  It fits over your hands, does XYZ, and also bend, and it has triggers.
[27:07.820 --> 27:11.860]  So I used it to control MIDI sound.
[27:12.000 --> 27:19.680]  And then also connected it with the Open Sound Control Protocol, which is an open protocol for sending sound information over the Internet.
[27:19.980 --> 27:27.100]  And friends of mine in Australia were utilizing the glove to control information actually in our performance space.
[27:27.220 --> 27:31.380]  So they were in Australia moving their hands, affecting things happening in our performance space.
[27:31.580 --> 27:34.540]  I did something called the Virtual Spaces Project.
[27:34.540 --> 27:38.480]  And this was designed for a conference at the University of Michigan called Cinco 6.
[27:38.780 --> 27:48.040]  And it utilized the P5 virtual reality glove with QuickTime virtual reality, panoramic photography, and sound to create an immersive environment.
[27:48.260 --> 27:49.240]  Very inexpensive.
[27:49.500 --> 27:51.600]  Cost me under $100 to put together.
[27:52.060 --> 27:53.240]  But it really worked.
[27:53.240 --> 27:56.740]  You can see people here in these pictures are immersed, they're interested.
[27:57.280 --> 27:59.980]  And most importantly is this last picture here.
[28:00.340 --> 28:01.900]  I call this Wonder and Joy.
[28:02.140 --> 28:03.420]  You can see everyone is laughing.
[28:04.020 --> 28:06.220]  And the young kid on the right was just amazed.
[28:06.400 --> 28:10.060]  He spent about 15 minutes just navigating through this.
[28:10.180 --> 28:13.020]  And it was completely just in a sense of awe and wonder.
[28:13.140 --> 28:13.600]  It was beautiful.
[28:13.980 --> 28:21.740]  And I did some work with Second Life in a music class, where students in a grade school were able to play music on their instruments.
[28:21.920 --> 28:33.180]  That was streamed into Second Life and users in Second Life could interact with each other and also hear these students performing and select different streams from different students.
[28:33.820 --> 28:38.400]  And then I did a show last year with my band, Paradox Explorer.
[28:39.500 --> 28:48.160]  We did a show called On the Horizon, which was an event that utilized the P5 virtual reality glove to control QuickTime VR, lights, and sound.
[28:48.180 --> 28:52.620]  So as I moved my hand, I was manipulating things in the environment.
[28:52.940 --> 28:56.720]  And I'll show you a quick video of this.
[28:56.940 --> 28:57.940]  Let me scroll through.
[29:19.230 --> 29:33.530]  So you can see that I'm actually using the glove to modify small sounds and also navigating a virtual reality panorama and also shifting the lights in this environment.
[29:33.750 --> 29:35.190]  And there's a full band behind me.
[29:35.310 --> 29:36.250]  And we also had a dancer.
[29:36.970 --> 29:41.930]  And I'm developing a system for dancers so that as they move, it triggers different lights.
[29:43.590 --> 29:46.450]  And this was a really great performance and I had a lot of fun.
[29:46.450 --> 29:52.350]  And these were panoramic virtual reality movies that I took out in nature.
[29:53.410 --> 29:56.690]  And it was really nice for people to experience.
[29:58.210 --> 30:02.790]  And I also have an app that I wrote specifically for this.
[30:02.850 --> 30:10.070]  Since we're short on time and I want to make sure that everyone gets their full amount of time to speak, I'll only demonstrate this for you very briefly.
[30:10.070 --> 30:13.530]  But I actually wrote an app for this presentation.
[30:14.170 --> 30:19.070]  And it's augmented reality that you yourself can do.
[30:19.570 --> 30:21.730]  So what I have is...
[30:21.730 --> 30:24.610]  This is an Arduino, right?
[30:24.750 --> 30:28.010]  This is a small electronics project kit.
[30:28.130 --> 30:32.430]  You can actually get these down in the mezzanine.
[30:32.610 --> 30:35.070]  There's several groups that are selling Arduinos.
[30:35.070 --> 30:38.050]  It's, I think, 30 bucks or something like that, if even.
[30:38.930 --> 30:44.890]  And then I've also got a force resistance sensor right here.
[30:45.030 --> 30:58.250]  And basically, as you push this, it actually creates pressure on the sensor, which then can be read by the Arduino and then gets sent to a computer.
[31:00.390 --> 31:06.470]  And I also have this right here, which is an accelerometer.
[31:07.270 --> 31:12.450]  And the accelerometer XYZ catches motion in XYZ.
[31:12.530 --> 31:13.190]  This little thing.
[31:13.390 --> 31:21.690]  So you could put it on your hand, you could put it on your arm, put it on other parts of your body, wire it up and move and actually send that information to control other things.
[31:21.770 --> 31:24.950]  This is, I think, $13 Adafruit.
[31:28.170 --> 31:30.830]  So that information gets sent to a laptop.
[31:31.130 --> 31:32.750]  I'll go over the technical details real quick.
[31:32.950 --> 31:35.110]  The FSR and accelerometer are connected to the Arduino.
[31:35.410 --> 31:39.070]  The Arduino is connected to a laptop via USB to provide serial communication.
[31:39.590 --> 31:41.210]  I did this in Mac OS.
[31:41.930 --> 31:48.470]  And so there's an AV capture session, which is an object that reads information from your camera.
[31:49.370 --> 31:53.070]  And then there's also a layer that displays that in the application.
[31:55.450 --> 31:59.690]  And then there's a serial controller class that I opened that opens a serial connection.
[32:00.170 --> 32:04.030]  This right here, which is connected to the Arduino.
[32:04.950 --> 32:08.310]  And allows the computer to read information from the Arduino.
[32:08.590 --> 32:11.290]  And then overlay that over a visual image.
[32:11.670 --> 32:13.330]  So let's see if I can do this really quick.
[32:13.450 --> 32:17.290]  I don't want to cut into the time of the other folks much more.
[32:17.290 --> 32:19.050]  We got a late start, regrettably.
[32:19.330 --> 32:21.670]  But let's see if I can do this real quick.
[32:22.370 --> 32:22.810]  Here.
[32:42.490 --> 32:42.930]  Okay.
[32:44.470 --> 32:44.910]  And...
[32:44.910 --> 32:46.130]  Don't freeze on me.
[32:46.670 --> 32:47.310]  There we go.
[32:59.370 --> 32:59.810]  Okay.
[33:05.660 --> 33:06.100]  So...
[33:13.770 --> 33:16.310]  Sorry, this is taking a little bit of time here to boot up.
[33:19.640 --> 33:20.080]  Okay.
[33:20.300 --> 33:21.140]  So here you actually...
[33:21.140 --> 33:21.320]  Whoa!
[33:23.040 --> 33:24.020]  Okay, there you go.
[33:24.020 --> 33:25.260]  So actually...
[33:25.260 --> 33:25.580]  Let me...
[33:25.580 --> 33:27.380]  This is the force resistance sensor.
[33:27.620 --> 33:28.540]  You can see that number.
[33:28.740 --> 33:29.740]  It's scrolling at zero.
[33:30.160 --> 33:35.600]  As I apply pressure, you see the number increases as it scrolls by.
[33:35.780 --> 33:38.080]  And this is me right here.
[33:38.360 --> 33:38.460]  Right?
[33:39.000 --> 33:48.980]  So you could have this camera and this Arduino is taking information from sensors and then overlaying it over the image.
[33:48.980 --> 33:50.960]  This is DIY augmented reality.
[33:51.120 --> 33:54.940]  You can get this and put this together and code it for under a hundred bucks.
[33:55.080 --> 33:57.980]  And you're only limited by your imagination.
[33:58.320 --> 34:03.060]  By what you can do with this very inexpensive technology.
[34:03.620 --> 34:07.380]  Now this code is going to be up on the website as well.
[34:07.480 --> 34:11.820]  As well as documentation on how I did everything and the project.
[34:11.820 --> 34:18.640]  Everything will be there for you to be able to learn from this and create it yourself and explore.
[34:19.720 --> 34:23.820]  I'm going to have a few closing statements before we get to our next speakers.
[34:24.120 --> 34:25.320]  We bounce back in here.
[34:25.780 --> 34:27.920]  So a few more comments on this.
[34:28.880 --> 34:32.860]  New technologies make the old projects better that you might have done before.
[34:33.020 --> 34:34.700]  You can create new inspired projects.
[34:34.860 --> 34:38.440]  And the growth of maker culture means that there's a new development cycle.
[34:38.600 --> 34:41.040]  The development cycle of these technologies will speed up.
[34:41.600 --> 34:44.920]  More and more people are getting involved in creating electronics, home electronics.
[34:44.920 --> 34:48.660]  And so augmented and virtual reality are going to expand quite a bit.
[34:49.760 --> 35:00.720]  And there are several presentations here at HOPE that talk about people exploring individual electronics creation.
[35:01.260 --> 35:04.020]  And, of course, the Kinect came out.
[35:04.080 --> 35:06.760]  And a lot of people are using that for virtual and augmented reality.
[35:07.480 --> 35:10.560]  Coincidentally, Jaron Lanier is actually one of the people involved.
[35:11.080 --> 35:14.500]  He's actually on contract to Microsoft to do the Kinect.
[35:14.600 --> 35:19.480]  They approached him and said, hey, if we gave you the resources, could you come up with something?
[35:19.540 --> 35:19.960]  And he did.
[35:21.660 --> 35:26.220]  And there's something that just happened recently in the past couple weeks.
[35:26.440 --> 35:30.760]  John Carmack came up with something called Oculus Rift.
[35:30.920 --> 35:36.820]  He's trying to make an under $500 virtual display, virtual reality display.
[35:37.300 --> 35:42.900]  And he wants to make the first kits available to makers and hackers, people like you.
[35:43.120 --> 35:45.900]  So I'm going to have a link to it, or you can Google Oculus Rift.
[35:45.900 --> 35:47.260]  This is really cool.
[35:47.420 --> 35:53.660]  He wants people creating their own HMDs and manipulating their own head-mounted displays.
[35:53.980 --> 36:12.540]  And, of course, the Zigbee radios, which you'll see a demonstration of, are actually radios that would allow you to avoid having this cable and actually just have an Arduino and sensors on a body and people to be able to communicate and have augmented and virtual reality and communication that way.
[36:12.540 --> 36:16.060]  And, again, the materials will be up on the website.
[36:16.180 --> 36:20.380]  And that's going to be at sensoryresearch.net slash hope number nine.
[36:20.760 --> 36:26.560]  And now we're going to move over to our next talk here.
[36:28.020 --> 36:29.200]  Let me bring it up.
[36:30.220 --> 36:31.500]  And there we go.
[36:40.610 --> 36:45.010]  So we're going to move things around a little bit just so that it's not all, like, podium light here.
[36:46.550 --> 36:47.990]  Don't touch the clicker.
[36:48.290 --> 36:51.670]  I think you should be able to, if there's enough space with this cable.
[36:51.910 --> 36:52.750]  Let's give it a shot.
[36:53.110 --> 36:53.310]  Yeah.
[37:00.430 --> 37:00.750]  Sorry.
[37:00.870 --> 37:03.850]  I just need space for all these f*cking devices and hands.
[37:04.190 --> 37:05.370]  And, okay.
[37:05.890 --> 37:08.330]  How many devices does it take to do a talk?
[37:08.950 --> 37:09.430]  Okay.
[37:24.710 --> 37:25.190]  Okay.
[37:26.710 --> 37:27.190]  Hi.
[37:28.270 --> 37:29.730]  My name's Misha Gárdenas.
[37:30.070 --> 37:32.730]  And I'm really honored to be here.
[37:32.910 --> 37:36.810]  Thanks for inviting me back after last year's shenanigans.
[37:36.990 --> 37:37.950]  It's exciting to be back.
[37:38.110 --> 37:38.970]  Anyway, I love hope.
[37:41.130 --> 37:43.990]  Hacking was actually pretty much the way I got into politics.
[37:44.410 --> 37:48.350]  And, anyway, long, old loves, right?
[37:48.350 --> 37:56.130]  So, my talk is about this project I'm doing called Local Autonomy Networks, Fashion Hacking for Social Reorganization.
[37:57.250 --> 38:01.330]  And, it's so bright up here, I can't see any of you, except for you and that light over there.
[38:01.430 --> 38:01.590]  Okay.
[38:02.390 --> 38:12.110]  And so, it's a project about making a line of mesh networked clothing and trying to create networks of safety for women and LGBT people and people of color.
[38:12.950 --> 38:24.770]  But, I want to start by talking about some of my inspirations for the project and how I got there to working on it and then talk about some of the experiments that I've been doing in the project over the past year and future plans.
[38:33.060 --> 38:33.800]  Whirly wheel.
[38:36.060 --> 38:36.500]  Okay.
[38:39.160 --> 38:40.300]  Not that one, this one.
[38:41.900 --> 38:43.380]  So, that's my mom and me.
[38:44.840 --> 38:46.400]  One of my inspirations, absolutely.
[38:47.200 --> 38:51.440]  So, my mom's getting older now, she's like in her 70s and now she has to use a wheelchair to get around.
[38:52.220 --> 39:01.540]  And, I was really thrilled to see the panel before us and so excited to see people talking about illness and disability in relation to hacking and in relation to what we can do about it.
[39:02.020 --> 39:08.040]  And, really criticizing the concept of illness and who gets to be, who gets deemed ill or not.
[39:09.040 --> 39:15.560]  Because, my mom's also schizophrenic and she's a breast cancer survivor and she and I have in common that we're both diagnosed with mental illness.
[39:15.860 --> 39:19.260]  Because, being transgender is still considered an illness in the United States.
[39:19.660 --> 39:21.160]  And so, that's what I was diagnosed with.
[39:21.300 --> 39:23.800]  Even though, I would say it's a gift and not an illness.
[39:29.570 --> 39:30.650]  So, that's nice.
[39:31.670 --> 39:48.990]  So, my question for us tonight is, or today, is as we're creating the future of technology, thinking about things like transhumanism or augmented bodies or post-humanism or whatever we want to call it, why is it that we are so often presented with the image of things like contact lenses with embedded computer displays in them?
[39:49.170 --> 39:55.030]  And, not with images like wheelchairs, prescription drugs, prescription hormones, and lipstick.
[39:55.330 --> 39:58.130]  Why don't we think about those things when we think about augmented bodies, right?
[39:58.290 --> 40:05.630]  Why is it that one of those set of images is the image of marginalization and the other one is the set images of the future, right?
[40:06.650 --> 40:08.950]  And, you know, related to that question...
[40:08.950 --> 40:10.750]  Sorry, if some of you saw my lightning talk.
[40:10.870 --> 40:11.790]  Who saw my lightning talk?
[40:12.470 --> 40:13.290]  A few people.
[40:13.490 --> 40:13.610]  Okay.
[40:13.830 --> 40:15.050]  There will be some repetition.
[40:15.050 --> 40:15.650]  I'm sorry.
[40:15.850 --> 40:17.770]  You can play on your phone in that time.
[40:18.850 --> 40:29.210]  So, and related question is, why is it that we have better technology to share pictures of what we have for lunch or download our favorite TV shows than we do to keep each other safe?
[40:29.550 --> 40:30.390]  Why is it...
[40:30.390 --> 40:32.990]  What's the priorities there that results in those things?
[40:32.990 --> 40:37.150]  Because sexual assault is a real problem.
[40:37.450 --> 40:38.950]  So, I'm going to talk about sexual assault in this talk.
[40:39.090 --> 40:41.610]  If that's triggering to you, you should maybe...
[40:43.250 --> 40:45.550]  That was your warning that I'm going to talk about it.
[40:45.930 --> 40:46.630]  Here it comes.
[40:49.230 --> 40:54.410]  So, sexual assault is a real current existing massive problem, right?
[40:54.570 --> 41:04.550]  So, the statistics are something like one in six women has been sexually assaulted, but combined with the statistic that only about 50% of assaults are ever reported.
[41:04.610 --> 41:08.050]  That means we could say a lot more than one in six women, right?
[41:08.470 --> 41:10.370]  And something like one in 33 men.
[41:10.810 --> 41:17.290]  So, it's something that I'm really thinking about because I am a survivor of sexual violence.
[41:17.290 --> 41:25.850]  And also because I feel like people in my community, like trans women, are very often the subject or the target of hate crimes.
[41:26.090 --> 41:31.170]  And in particular, women of color, like me, transgender women of color are like the number one victim of hate crimes.
[41:32.130 --> 41:35.930]  So, this happens all the time, and it's... I'm tired of it.
[41:36.090 --> 41:37.110]  It really pisses me off.
[41:38.250 --> 41:44.390]  And, you know, the more I read about technology news, and then I read every month that another black trans woman was killed, really disturbs me.
[41:44.730 --> 41:47.290]  So, Brandy Martell was killed in Oakland this year in 2012.
[41:49.450 --> 41:55.410]  And, also relevant to this discussion was, maybe a month after Brandy Martell was killed in Oakland, C.C.
[41:55.510 --> 42:02.870]  McDonald was another black trans woman who was attacked, but she fought back successfully and saved her own life.
[42:03.010 --> 42:04.710]  And as a result, she's in prison now.
[42:06.330 --> 42:14.010]  So, this project I'm working on, Local Autonomy Networks, thinks about how we can collectively respond to violence and prevent violence.
[42:16.930 --> 42:21.370]  So, excuse me for these slides being out of order, but I'm just going to skip back.
[42:21.370 --> 42:21.850]  Okay.
[42:22.910 --> 42:25.450]  So, that was some inspirations there.
[42:25.590 --> 42:27.310]  That took too long, and I'm going to go a little faster.
[42:27.490 --> 42:34.030]  So, another main way that I got to working on this project was, I worked previously on this project called the Transborder Immigrant Tool.
[42:34.530 --> 42:37.450]  And I worked on it with the Electronic Disturbance Theater in the Bang Lab.
[42:37.910 --> 42:55.310]  And this was a project that we worked on to take cheap cell phones off of eBay and try to turn them into life-saving devices for people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, by writing software that would allow people to access the GPS on the phones to find water caches in the desert without having cell phone service.
[42:55.830 --> 43:02.930]  So, our goal in that project was to make these phones and distribute them to people about to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
[43:04.530 --> 43:16.250]  After three different investigations, and Ricardo almost losing tenure, and the FBI showing up at our door, we have not yet distributed the phones, because we were told that distributing them is the real crime.
[43:17.010 --> 43:22.570]  Nobody's ever used them but us, but we have plans of distributing them this month, or this summer.
[43:22.850 --> 43:24.330]  So, anyway, keep an eye out for that.
[43:24.330 --> 43:34.190]  But, working on the Transporter Immigrant Tool was a big inspiration for me, because the Electronic Disturbance Theater has proposed this idea they call Science of the Oppressed.
[43:34.650 --> 43:37.790]  Which is actually a term coined by Monique Vitigue.
[43:38.590 --> 43:50.810]  And it's really related to a lot of other ideas, like Foucault's idea of subjugated knowledge, or Anzaldúa's idea of Consciencia de la Mestiza, or one that I'm a fan of is Femme Science.
[43:50.810 --> 44:07.130]  And these ideas are thinking about how science could be different, or how knowledge production could be different, if it wasn't shaped by the desires and interests of corporations and corporate funders and profit motivations, but instead was a way of responding to and preventing oppression.
[44:07.870 --> 44:16.670]  So, taking experiences of violence or marginalization or homophobia, which I experience every day, and turning that into a kind of knowledge, right?
[44:16.670 --> 44:23.430]  A kind of knowledge that not everybody has, that allows me and other oppressed people to think different.
[44:28.410 --> 44:28.890]  Okay.
[44:29.470 --> 44:31.790]  So, Science of the Oppressed and Femme Science.
[44:32.010 --> 44:43.010]  Okay, another...so one other thing that led me to this project was...so taking this idea of Femme Science, I wanted to put it together with some skills that I had, like working on wearable electronics.
[44:43.010 --> 45:03.090]  So, if you saw our rowdy panel last year, then you saw some of my work that was performance artwork using wearable electronics, and biometric sensors, and motion capture, to kind of interface our bodies to second life while we were doing erotic acts, me and my partner,
[45:03.230 --> 45:03.810]  Ellie Merrimand.
[45:04.630 --> 45:25.490]  And so, we made lots of devices like a thrust-sensing glove that would change the speed of dildos based on the amount of thrust, or proximity-sensing bra, which is the one that's in this picture, that could detect the distance between the two of us and change the quality of the sound the audience was hearing,
[45:25.630 --> 45:28.690]  or move our avatars in second life based on that distance.
[45:30.690 --> 45:34.470]  So, I wrote a bunch about that, and put the source code for that in my book, The Trans Real.
[45:34.690 --> 45:36.710]  So, if you're interested in that, feel free to follow that up.
[45:38.610 --> 45:39.010]  Okay.
[45:39.330 --> 45:44.890]  So, one last inspiration that led me to this project, Local Autonomy Networks, was going to Colombia.
[45:45.050 --> 45:53.170]  So, my father's from Colombia, and I went there for this performance art thing, and I was really, really moved by this performance by...
[45:54.490 --> 45:55.290]  Patricia Arisa?
[45:55.430 --> 45:56.130]  I think that's her name.
[45:56.610 --> 46:00.030]  Or, by meeting people who had friends who were disappeared.
[46:00.470 --> 46:05.590]  Because, all over Latin America, it's a major problem that governments kidnap people.
[46:05.870 --> 46:07.210]  And, largely because of the drug war.
[46:07.330 --> 46:11.750]  Largely because the government in Colombia gets more money based on the number of guerrillas they present.
[46:11.930 --> 46:16.230]  So, they kidnap college kids and kill them and dress them up as guerrillas, and then they get more money.
[46:18.110 --> 46:20.310]  So, this was an issue that I really wanted to work on.
[46:20.310 --> 46:24.090]  It's like, people being disappeared, or, you know, women in Juarez.
[46:24.390 --> 46:29.750]  People talk about that, like, as if it was only... the femicides only happened in the 90s, but they're still happening just as much as they were.
[46:31.810 --> 46:33.890]  So, I saw this performance about these issues.
[46:34.010 --> 46:38.090]  All these women had their husbands disappeared by who knows who.
[46:41.030 --> 46:44.200]  So, putting those experiences together, I started thinking, how can...
[46:44.630 --> 46:48.130]  Okay, that's 10 minutes, so I probably have maybe 10 or 15 more minutes.
[46:50.190 --> 46:55.570]  So, with all those experiences, I started thinking, okay, so how can I start making safety devices for myself and my community?
[46:55.570 --> 47:01.010]  So that when I walk home at night, I can feel a little safer, and not feel like I'm being hunted and something horrible is about to happen to me.
[47:01.130 --> 47:03.230]  Which often is how I feel walking home at night.
[47:05.110 --> 47:09.130]  So, I thought, okay, I could make some wearable electronic safety devices.
[47:09.370 --> 47:13.010]  And first, my plan was to use GPS module.
[47:13.770 --> 47:18.970]  And I had done things like pressure sensors, so I'm really interested in making devices that are, like, easily triggered.
[47:20.730 --> 47:21.570]  Pardon the pun.
[47:21.830 --> 47:23.430]  But that are easily activated.
[47:24.590 --> 47:29.610]  Because, you know, there's already apps for iPhone that are, like, never walk alone or whatever, right?
[47:29.610 --> 47:36.370]  There's apps that you can set up your list of contacts, and if you press the big red button, then it tells all your friends that you need help.
[47:37.950 --> 47:45.690]  But, you know, if you really are in a moment of need, then sliding the slider and typing in your passcode is probably not something that you can do, right?
[47:45.770 --> 47:49.230]  To dial 911 or open that app and just wait just a minute for it to open.
[47:49.450 --> 47:53.150]  So I wanted something that was really easy to activate and that would have, say, a GPS.
[47:53.150 --> 48:03.470]  And, I mean, ideally, in my sci-fi future visions, something that could, like, detect the proper levels of dopamine and adrenaline to know when you're in a fear state and alert your friends.
[48:04.130 --> 48:05.750]  But that's far off, I guess.
[48:06.890 --> 48:09.870]  But I had worked with Zigbee transmitters before in those performances.
[48:11.310 --> 48:14.510]  And the Zigbee transmitters are, like, a major part of this project.
[48:14.510 --> 48:20.150]  So I want to make these wearable electronic devices, and I'll show you some of them, that are mesh networked.
[48:20.150 --> 48:23.530]  So Zigbees have a range, if you get the right ones, of up to a mile.
[48:23.830 --> 48:26.570]  Or I think there's new ones that have, like, two and a half mile range.
[48:26.930 --> 48:29.650]  And they also have a built-in mesh networking capability.
[48:29.910 --> 48:37.570]  So that means that each garment that I'm making, like, their dresses or bracelets or garter belts or whatever, could transmit a signal up to a mile.
[48:37.810 --> 48:42.510]  But since they're mesh networked, then any garment that's receiving that signal could retransmit for another mile.
[48:44.530 --> 48:50.130]  So I'm thinking about working with specific...
[48:50.130 --> 48:55.030]  And these groups from the beginning are groups that are often subject to sexual violence, like sex workers and women of color.
[48:55.370 --> 48:56.630]  And so...
[48:56.630 --> 49:00.630]  And this group of artist activists in Bogota that I met in Colombia.
[49:01.630 --> 49:02.590]  And so...
[49:04.330 --> 49:06.530]  When I started, you know, I made some prototypes.
[49:06.810 --> 49:09.510]  And then I started talking to them about it and showing them the designs.
[49:09.750 --> 49:18.370]  And first, both the sex worker group and the group in Colombia were like, we don't really want to send our GPS coordinates anywhere.
[49:19.830 --> 49:22.790]  We don't really want the government or the police have any idea where we are.
[49:23.010 --> 49:25.270]  So, GPS is really freaky for them.
[49:27.950 --> 49:28.350]  Although...
[49:28.830 --> 49:29.230]  Okay.
[49:29.550 --> 49:33.210]  So that means that what my plan is to make multiple types of these devices.
[49:33.450 --> 49:35.590]  Because some people are going to want a GPS, right?
[49:35.690 --> 49:39.690]  In some cases, it would be better for the cops to show up than for them not to show up.
[49:39.690 --> 49:40.290]  Even though...
[49:40.290 --> 49:44.430]  Cops are still prone to commit sexual violence after they show up.
[49:45.070 --> 49:45.470]  Regardless...
[49:45.470 --> 49:52.890]  We figured with the trans-border immigrant tool similarly, that if somebody's dying of dehydration, it's probably still better for the border patrol to show up than not.
[49:54.030 --> 49:54.950]  In some cases.
[49:55.150 --> 49:56.330]  In a lot of cases...
[49:56.330 --> 49:57.010]  Oh, I don't know.
[49:57.450 --> 50:02.330]  But anyway, so after talking to these two groups, I decided to work on a harder problem.
[50:03.090 --> 50:03.490]  Which...
[50:03.490 --> 50:09.030]  Since there's a lot of big brainy hackers in the room, maybe people want to join me in collaborating on this project.
[50:09.030 --> 50:18.230]  Is to think about how we could make locative mesh network garments that only have Zigbee, or maybe Zigbee in a compass.
[50:19.030 --> 50:20.310]  But not a GPS.
[50:21.490 --> 50:24.670]  So it's something that I've been trying to figure out.
[50:24.850 --> 50:28.770]  Maybe you could like spin in a circle like Wonder Woman, and it would determine which direction is what.
[50:29.070 --> 50:29.870]  But probably not.
[50:29.990 --> 50:30.330]  I don't know.
[50:30.470 --> 50:32.610]  So that seems to me still like a hard problem.
[50:33.310 --> 50:35.410]  Because Zigbees don't have directional information.
[50:35.410 --> 50:39.490]  They only have RSSI, or relative signal strength index.
[50:39.770 --> 50:45.670]  Which just tells you like a very rough approximation of how far the other Zigbees are.
[50:48.810 --> 50:49.370]  So...
[50:50.770 --> 50:53.270]  So like I said, I made some prototypes of these things.
[50:53.910 --> 51:04.450]  And what I've been doing so far is using these prototypes for performances that would kind of bring to life all of these different issues that I'm thinking about with this project, Local Autonomy Networks.
[51:05.390 --> 51:05.830]  So...
[51:06.270 --> 51:08.790]  Because I imagine a lot of possible uses for these garments.
[51:09.110 --> 51:09.230]  Right?
[51:09.530 --> 51:14.450]  So like I've already talked about, maybe a group of sex workers wants to collectively organize to protect each other from violence.
[51:15.390 --> 51:15.830]  Or...
[51:16.330 --> 51:21.710]  You know, a group of women, transgender and cisgender, agree to let each other know when they're walking home, and when they arrive home safely.
[51:22.370 --> 51:26.350]  But maybe a group of bicyclists want to flock together for a group ride.
[51:26.350 --> 51:32.430]  If you had a locative device that just was the press of a button and had an LED indicator of direction, then that seems useful.
[51:32.530 --> 51:32.590]  Right?
[51:33.310 --> 51:36.390]  Or maybe even protesters, say, occupying banks.
[51:36.550 --> 51:36.650]  Right?
[51:37.330 --> 51:44.130]  Because governments have shown from Egypt to San Francisco that they're perfectly willing to shut down cell phone networks to prevent protests.
[51:44.470 --> 51:50.450]  So, as far as I'm concerned, we can't rely on corporations anymore to provide us our communications infrastructure.
[51:50.830 --> 51:53.110]  And I'm sure most of the people in the room agree with that.
[51:53.110 --> 51:58.110]  That's probably like a non... non... non what?
[51:58.330 --> 51:58.830]  I don't know.
[51:59.110 --> 51:59.270]  Anyway.
[51:59.690 --> 52:00.490]  Non sequitur.
[52:02.350 --> 52:14.850]  But, I mean, I know I said too many inspirations, but that was another really early inspiration for this project was when the Pirate Bay had their... got cut off at the DNS level across the UK.
[52:15.670 --> 52:17.970]  Or WikiLeaks getting shot off at the DNS level.
[52:17.970 --> 52:19.870]  I mean, I know there's like ways to route around it.
[52:20.450 --> 52:30.230]  But those things just say to me that as long as we're relying on the Internet and the foundations of it are based in corporations, then we're subject to the whims of corporations.
[52:30.530 --> 52:38.270]  So, what I'm really interested in is lots of different mesh networking technologies that are bottom-up instead of top-down, and don't rely on telephone company infrastructure at all.
[52:39.810 --> 52:48.010]  And there's another exciting related project, which is called the Batphone, which lets you mesh network with smartphones.
[52:48.510 --> 52:50.710]  So you can make mesh network cell phone calls.
[52:50.970 --> 52:59.370]  And you can use the... not just the Wi-Fi, but you can use the actual cell transmitter in your phone to make mesh networked cell phone calls with the Batphone.
[53:00.550 --> 53:03.510]  But again, a lot of these groups I'm working with cannot afford iPhones.
[53:04.410 --> 53:11.270]  Even the group in Bogota was like, okay, so your wearable electronic safety devices are 60 bucks.
[53:11.510 --> 53:13.090]  That's totally out of our price range.
[53:14.630 --> 53:22.250]  So, I'm like working on raising grants and doing fundraising to support the project and to get these devices to people who need them.
[53:24.030 --> 53:30.210]  So, I said I was working on performances that are kind of raising these issues.
[53:30.210 --> 53:34.290]  So, I do want to just show a little smidgen of this performance.
[54:00.740 --> 54:04.720]  All the things that power and capital can't offer are right.
[54:05.640 --> 54:07.000]  How do we find...
[54:12.690 --> 54:14.550]  How do we find each other?
[54:21.090 --> 54:25.430]  Rows of black helmets with translucent face shields.
[54:26.490 --> 54:34.290]  Amber streetlights wash out all color as the crowds undulate and morph like sea creatures.
[54:36.290 --> 54:45.570]  Time shifting, speeds moving between endless waiting and running towards the line of police motorcycles.
[54:46.470 --> 54:47.350]  Creaming links.
[54:48.970 --> 54:51.510]  The riot cops have lost all the exits from the camp but one.
[54:51.730 --> 54:54.670]  I try not to lose you because I won't let you be deported.
[54:54.930 --> 54:56.450]  But we both want to be here.
[54:56.450 --> 55:00.650]  Staying close, we talk about Le Guin, the dispossessed and Uras.
[55:01.110 --> 55:04.950]  Somehow our presence adds to both the fight and the safety.
[55:21.810 --> 55:23.410]  How do we find help?
[55:23.850 --> 55:30.090]  In the moment of violence, the surprising speed of assault, the silence of disappearance.
[55:30.850 --> 55:37.510]  What if that violence is in our intimate places or in our memories or farther, out of our memories?
[55:38.050 --> 55:42.610]  Can we make networks to respond and not replicate violence?
[55:43.730 --> 55:47.890]  Can we create new logics where we stop putting people in cages?
[55:48.970 --> 55:57.410]  How do we find the ones that will sow insurrection with us, protect us from violence, love and be loved by us?
[55:58.290 --> 55:59.510]  Satisfy our bodies?
[56:00.770 --> 56:04.450]  How long do we have to grope in the indigo dark?
[56:05.010 --> 56:14.050]  Put out signals, hurl out lines before we find the one or ones who our stories will resonate with?
[56:15.370 --> 56:18.190]  Desire, dance and queer fan erotics.
[56:32.880 --> 56:39.380]  So the performances use poetry and movement to kind of evoke the issues in this project.
[56:39.380 --> 56:42.760]  And I think poetry is an important technology that I'm trying to work on.
[56:48.340 --> 56:49.480]  And what else?
[56:49.700 --> 56:51.700]  Okay, so in those...
[56:52.560 --> 56:58.580]  In that performance, I started with these prototypes that were based on EL wire or electro-luminescent wire, as you can see.
[57:01.300 --> 57:03.720]  But EL wire is not really good for wearables.
[57:03.720 --> 57:09.200]  And so that is a version, that is a round of prototypes that I'm not going back to.
[57:11.060 --> 57:18.160]  Because most wearable electronics use this thread that has conductive materials woven into it, like silver thread.
[57:18.920 --> 57:27.500]  But EL wire relies on circuit boards and DC to AC conversion with big battery packs and wires that break.
[57:27.500 --> 57:32.640]  So the technology didn't work exactly as I hoped in that performance.
[57:33.860 --> 57:37.460]  Because it's one thing to make something that's like on a table and moves around.
[57:37.660 --> 57:41.760]  But it's another thing to rehearse with dancers for three days and have them be jumping up and down.
[57:42.340 --> 57:45.240]  Be like, isn't it okay if we like fall and grab each other and jump?
[57:45.640 --> 57:47.480]  And then, anyway, whatever.
[57:47.740 --> 57:49.920]  There's only so much last-minute soldering you can do, right?
[57:51.980 --> 57:53.320]  So no more EL wire.
[57:53.580 --> 57:57.980]  So future versions, or later versions, which you will see in a minute, are just using LEDs.
[57:59.200 --> 58:02.160]  Because really, just for a directional indicator, we don't really need EL wire.
[58:02.940 --> 58:07.240]  Although, I mean, as I've been doing it, I've been thinking about lots of different possibilities for this project.
[58:07.420 --> 58:13.620]  Because, I mean, the idea now is to like communicate with your friends and that you might be in like a close situation, right?
[58:13.700 --> 58:18.300]  Like a group of sex workers working within a few blocks are close enough to come help each other.
[58:18.300 --> 58:23.380]  Or like a group of people going out to a club, or people who live close to each other, you know, could use these devices.
[58:28.500 --> 58:31.100]  But, I forgot the end of that thought.
[58:34.580 --> 58:35.060]  Yeah.
[58:35.500 --> 58:35.900]  Sorry.
[58:36.320 --> 58:36.760]  Jet lag.
[58:37.740 --> 58:38.220]  Okay.
[58:38.500 --> 58:39.180]  Moving on.
[58:39.380 --> 58:43.780]  So, here's some not very exciting code that's from those prototypes.
[58:43.780 --> 58:48.780]  So, I used this tutorial from builder.com to do the EL wire code.
[58:50.820 --> 58:56.580]  And the important thing about those prototypes was getting the RSSI information out of the Zigbees.
[58:56.960 --> 59:05.500]  And using these EL sequencer boards from SparkFun, which suck, and broke over and over and over again.
[59:05.500 --> 59:07.820]  I ordered like five, and then like two of them worked.
[59:08.140 --> 59:10.400]  And I'm not that bad at soldering, for f*ck's sake.
[59:12.220 --> 59:14.260]  So, the EL sequencer from SparkFun.
[59:14.360 --> 59:14.800]  Oh yeah, right.
[59:14.960 --> 59:16.820]  So, I used this RSSI.
[59:16.980 --> 59:19.900]  To get the RSSI out, you have to use pulse in and PWM.
[59:20.760 --> 59:25.200]  But, next versions of the prototypes I'm gonna be making, we'll all use the Zigbee API.
[59:25.760 --> 59:28.200]  Because the API has built-in mesh networking functions.
[59:28.200 --> 59:31.280]  So, you can create a packet and send it to address zero.
[59:31.400 --> 59:33.480]  And it will broadcast to all local nodes.
[59:33.940 --> 59:39.320]  And it also does all the network negotiation between the router nodes and the endpoint nodes.
[59:43.100 --> 59:48.680]  And since we're at HOPE and you probably wanna see code, here's the other gratuitous bit of code that does the EL wire fading.
[59:49.000 --> 59:52.200]  Also not very exciting, but EL doesn't fade.
[59:52.200 --> 59:58.520]  So, the only way you can do it is to simulate fading by making, like, very brief pulses that get longer and shorter.
[01:00:02.040 --> 01:00:09.760]  But, to make these garments, I mean, something that's really difficult about wearable electronics is that conductive thread is not shielded.
[01:00:10.120 --> 01:00:11.200]  Like wire is, right?
[01:00:11.280 --> 01:00:13.600]  So, wires are wrapped in rubber, but conductive thread is not.
[01:00:13.840 --> 01:00:19.060]  So, you have to sew these garments in such a way that the threads never touch or never cross.
[01:00:19.400 --> 01:00:19.500]  Right?
[01:00:20.340 --> 01:00:24.240]  So, usually when I'm making one of them, I really don't know how to draw.
[01:00:25.020 --> 01:00:30.020]  But I do really bad fashion sketches, like this one, and try to figure out where to put the wires.
[01:00:31.340 --> 01:00:35.520]  And it is a pretty consuming hand process of sewing, because you can't...
[01:00:35.520 --> 01:00:42.320]  Since both ends have to be wrapped around the circuit boards, then you can't really use a sewing machine, even though I know how to use one.
[01:00:42.720 --> 01:00:44.280]  Like the LilyPad Arduino diagram?
[01:00:44.960 --> 01:00:45.280]  Yeah.
[01:00:45.520 --> 01:00:46.320]  See, it's totally...
[01:00:50.300 --> 01:00:52.340]  Yeah, there's the LilyPad Arduino.
[01:00:53.840 --> 01:01:05.700]  But also, after making this sketch and making this hoodie with the LilyPad on the sleeve, I decided that was stupid and put it in a better place, because it's so hard to get 20 connections sewn in this tiny little sleeve fabric.
[01:01:06.460 --> 01:01:08.660]  And you have to think about that a lot, making wearable electronics.
[01:01:08.820 --> 01:01:10.480]  You have to like plan where the sewing's gonna go.
[01:01:11.300 --> 01:01:19.420]  And also, since I'm doing these like fading pulsing garments, then you can only use the PWM pins, which I have... why I have them labeled.
[01:01:19.720 --> 01:01:27.280]  And so there's only six pins available that do PWM, which is pulse width modulation, which you can ask about if you're really interested.
[01:01:29.600 --> 01:01:31.440]  Okay, so only a couple minutes, we're wrapping up.
[01:01:32.960 --> 01:01:33.920]  So what am I doing now?
[01:01:34.140 --> 01:01:38.340]  So, last week, two weeks ago, I did this opening night performance at the Allied Media Conference.
[01:01:38.420 --> 01:01:40.160]  Oh my God, I love the Allied Media Conference.
[01:01:40.200 --> 01:01:40.980]  You have to go.
[01:01:41.120 --> 01:01:41.660]  Some of you were there.
[01:01:43.400 --> 01:01:48.180]  And I worked with three dancers who were from Philly, who wore those garments, and I read that poem.
[01:01:48.320 --> 01:01:50.260]  So we did a similar version of that performance you just saw.
[01:01:51.540 --> 01:01:59.480]  But what was really fantastic about the Allied Media Conference is that they're not just like talking and thinking about politics and technology, but like working on the ground with people who need it.
[01:01:59.700 --> 01:02:03.940]  So after I did that performance, three queer youth of color groups came up to me.
[01:02:04.200 --> 01:02:09.540]  The Ruth Ellis Center, the Allied Media Projects, and the Strong and Beautiful, which is a young women's group.
[01:02:09.960 --> 01:02:15.720]  And they came up and they were like, we want to get your devices to our kids, to our youth, to our people we work with.
[01:02:17.820 --> 01:02:26.560]  So that's what I'm doing next, is working with these youth groups in Detroit to actually make these devices and get them working well enough to actually help somebody and then get them in their hands.
[01:02:26.980 --> 01:02:33.020]  But also along the way, it seems to me like even if the technology worked perfectly, it doesn't...
[01:02:33.020 --> 01:02:37.340]  it's not as important as the human agreements as to what to do when somebody presses the button.
[01:02:37.340 --> 01:02:41.960]  Because I'm really interested in prison abolitionist strategies and community-based responses to violence.
[01:02:43.740 --> 01:02:47.280]  Because as a trans woman of color, I know that cops are not always my friend.
[01:02:47.480 --> 01:02:51.540]  And in a lot of cases, the cops are going to do bad, worse things to me when they show up.
[01:02:52.400 --> 01:02:54.560]  And I'm also not interested in putting people in cages.
[01:02:56.040 --> 01:02:59.200]  But I know that when we're talking about sexual violence, not everybody agrees.
[01:02:59.200 --> 01:03:02.260]  And it's like a lot, there's a lot to think about and discuss there.
[01:03:02.500 --> 01:03:13.940]  So planning, you know, all these projects to be really long-term relationships where we do multiple days of workshops and discussions to have agreements about what to do when somebody presses the button.
[01:03:14.440 --> 01:03:17.900]  And that means like trust building and relationship building and all those things.
[01:03:21.120 --> 01:03:29.960]  One other thing I'm working on is this design fiction sci-fi movie using these garments and kind of speculating about how fantastic they might be in the future.
[01:03:30.800 --> 01:03:34.240]  Which will hopefully be at the MIX Film Festival in New York, which you can see soon.
[01:03:37.720 --> 01:03:40.420]  And like I said, continuing to do these workshops.
[01:03:40.900 --> 01:03:46.600]  And so now I've done a few of them in Riverside and Detroit.
[01:03:46.900 --> 01:03:49.120]  Riverside's like out near Los Angeles.
[01:03:50.060 --> 01:03:55.520]  And so if you wanted to help and collaborate, we're working with lots of very specific people.
[01:03:55.680 --> 01:03:59.440]  So there's a Queer Youth of Color Visibility project in Riverside.
[01:04:00.220 --> 01:04:04.340]  There's this sex worker rights group called Maggie's in Toronto that we're working with.
[01:04:05.620 --> 01:04:08.260]  Who... it was amazing to talk to Maggie's in Toronto.
[01:04:08.420 --> 01:04:13.480]  Because they were like, you know, even the most basic skill share for a sex worker, we don't do them.
[01:04:13.760 --> 01:04:17.920]  Like most sex workers should have a safe call or like somebody to call if you need help.
[01:04:18.120 --> 01:04:21.720]  And like we never do skill shares about having a safe call.
[01:04:21.940 --> 01:04:27.040]  Or much less about like what to do when you call... what that person is supposed to do when you call them.
[01:04:27.760 --> 01:04:33.080]  So they're really excited about kind of using the technology in the project just even as a way to start conversations.
[01:04:33.460 --> 01:04:39.820]  And that's been my experience of working on this project for a year is that it's hard to talk about sexual violence and gendered and racialized violence.
[01:04:39.980 --> 01:04:41.320]  And a lot of people don't want to talk about it.
[01:04:41.500 --> 01:04:45.180]  And so actually about six months into it, I almost pretty much gave up.
[01:04:45.460 --> 01:04:52.240]  I was like, I'm just gonna put these Arduinos in a box and call that documentation and be done.
[01:04:52.240 --> 01:04:55.380]  Because I'm tired of being the one that has to like raise the difficult issue.
[01:04:56.320 --> 01:04:59.560]  But going to Allied Media Conference changed that actually.
[01:04:59.860 --> 01:05:04.720]  Like meeting people who were like, we need these like now was really fantastic.
[01:05:05.620 --> 01:05:12.360]  Or talking to this sex worker rights group who was like, you know, exactly what a sex worker needs is like a rip cord.
[01:05:12.500 --> 01:05:17.380]  Like a way to pull the... a way to tell their friends that they need help that doesn't look like a cell phone.
[01:05:17.380 --> 01:05:20.520]  That is not gonna like out them as calling somebody.
[01:05:21.500 --> 01:05:23.040]  So just to wrap up.
[01:05:24.200 --> 01:05:26.580]  Workshop pictures, workshop feedback.
[01:05:27.700 --> 01:05:35.440]  One thing that was really amazing and interesting was in Riverside, part of the discussion was like, what kinds of violence do we face and how could we use technology to respond?
[01:05:35.860 --> 01:05:40.700]  And it surprised me what these youth kids, people were saying.
[01:05:40.880 --> 01:05:44.440]  Like psychic violence or just images on TV being violent.
[01:05:45.160 --> 01:05:47.620]  Or gender policing or all these different forms of violence.
[01:05:47.860 --> 01:05:49.620]  And I was like, wow, there's a lot of work to do.
[01:05:51.640 --> 01:05:54.300]  But wrapping up, this brings me back to my mom.
[01:05:55.580 --> 01:06:00.800]  Because like I said in the beginning, what this project for me comes out of is this strategy that I've been using in my artwork.
[01:06:01.040 --> 01:06:05.700]  Is to take experiences of oppression and violence and kind of turn them into motivation.
[01:06:06.100 --> 01:06:09.280]  And turn them into knowledge, really.
[01:06:09.280 --> 01:06:12.400]  And use them as a basis for ways of thinking.
[01:06:14.420 --> 01:06:25.580]  And so, I think that as our bodies continue to be transformed by technology, my work urges us to consider the social marginalization of people based on the categorization of their bodies.
[01:06:25.840 --> 01:06:31.360]  In order not to replicate these patterns, but to imagine new possibilities for human freedom and autonomy.
[01:06:31.820 --> 01:06:35.020]  Based on technology, based on body extension technologies.
[01:06:35.700 --> 01:06:45.620]  And really just to say that if we want to learn about augmenting our bodies and going beyond our bodies, we should learn from transgender people like me, who have their bodies permanently biologically modified already.
[01:06:46.700 --> 01:06:53.220]  Or differently abled people, who live with technological extensions every single day of their life and have an intimate relationship with them.
[01:06:53.480 --> 01:06:58.400]  Or people who are mentally ill, so called, who have a totally different cognitive experience of the world.
[01:06:58.400 --> 01:06:58.700]  Right?
[01:06:58.840 --> 01:07:00.560]  Like people who have schizophrenia or autism.
[01:07:00.940 --> 01:07:05.300]  So that as we're making new technologies, we don't extend and worsen social inequality.
[01:07:05.580 --> 01:07:11.700]  But instead work towards a world where people who are marginalized today could instead be valued and be safe.
[01:07:12.260 --> 01:07:12.900]  Thank you.
[01:07:28.460 --> 01:07:29.500]  So, hi.
[01:07:30.100 --> 01:07:34.800]  It's weird not to be able to see you guys, which is something I'm not used to.
[01:07:35.740 --> 01:07:36.720]  My name is Cayden.
[01:07:36.980 --> 01:07:39.700]  I am... I have slides.
[01:07:42.420 --> 01:07:43.240]  They are somewhere.
[01:07:43.400 --> 01:07:44.360]  They're coming up right now.
[01:07:44.520 --> 01:07:44.840]  Excellent.
[01:07:45.700 --> 01:07:48.580]  So, the thing that I want to talk about...
[01:07:48.580 --> 01:07:50.080]  It's actually funny that...
[01:07:50.080 --> 01:07:54.020]  So, Micah brings up this issue of like having this technology, right, that...
[01:07:55.080 --> 01:07:55.640]  Thumbs up.
[01:07:56.700 --> 01:07:58.900]  Having this technology that...
[01:08:00.680 --> 01:08:03.700]  Eventually, what it really does for people is start these conversations.
[01:08:04.280 --> 01:08:09.420]  And I started my graduate program at Buffalo thinking like, I'm going to build these awesome alternate reality games.
[01:08:09.580 --> 01:08:11.360]  I'm going to use this sweet technology to do all this stuff.
[01:08:11.500 --> 01:08:17.140]  And the thing that I discovered is that the thing that, A, I'm best at, and B, that we need the most, is to actually just have conversations.
[01:08:18.680 --> 01:08:20.900]  Because we're not having a lot of really important conversations.
[01:08:21.380 --> 01:08:25.900]  And I'm going to quickly run through a couple of games that I think are doing it wrong.
[01:08:27.540 --> 01:08:30.800]  And then show you a game that is on the road to doing it right.
[01:08:31.400 --> 01:08:42.800]  And I have the express privilege of working on the next project and sort of the series of projects that started with this first game that came out in 2007 as an education researcher.
[01:08:44.100 --> 01:08:45.440]  So, I'm pretty psyched about that.
[01:08:45.740 --> 01:08:50.060]  These slides have some links in them and they will be up on my website, bodywithout.org.
[01:08:53.000 --> 01:08:54.800]  So, what are alternate reality games?
[01:08:54.800 --> 01:09:02.820]  Alternate reality games take the substance of everyday life and weave it into narratives that layer additional meaning, depth, and interaction upon the real world.
[01:09:03.860 --> 01:09:18.820]  When I played my first alternate reality game, my mind was blown at the community that was formed around this set of really strange cryptographic mysteries and middle-of-the-night cell phone calls and just general ridiculous shit.
[01:09:18.820 --> 01:09:34.240]  And I immediately saw a connection between this sort of really diverse use of like many sort of modes of technology and things I was interested in as a social justice educator.
[01:09:36.760 --> 01:09:42.840]  The first alternate reality games were largely like big studio productions that were like really high budget.
[01:09:43.140 --> 01:09:48.960]  They were produced for like as ad campaigns for big Hollywood movies, stuff like that.
[01:09:48.960 --> 01:09:57.560]  And one of the things that also interests me about alternate reality games is since that time, 2001 was sort of the first like well-known alternate reality game.
[01:09:59.400 --> 01:10:08.140]  More artists, independent producers who are doing it just because they love to do it, and educators have been using this medium to do different stuff.
[01:10:08.620 --> 01:10:16.960]  So as opposed to like something being produced by the community and then re-appropriated by Capital, it's something that Capital came up with and the community was like, you know what?
[01:10:17.080 --> 01:10:17.420]  F*ck this.
[01:10:17.540 --> 01:10:17.980]  This is ours.
[01:10:18.300 --> 01:10:19.960]  And I think that's really epic and awesome.
[01:10:22.580 --> 01:10:28.560]  So the... I'm interested in thinking about alternate reality games outside of this big studio framework.
[01:10:29.460 --> 01:10:38.760]  And I don't know, a lot of you are probably familiar with Jane McConnell's book, Reality is Broken, which unfortunately I can't tell you about all the things I find problematic about it.
[01:10:40.060 --> 01:10:52.280]  But I think one of the things that she does that is useful for us as people who are interested in looking at these technologies and creating alternate realities that are...
[01:10:53.320 --> 01:11:00.620]  that teach people things that are valuable in terms of liberating themselves is she opens up the definition of the alternate reality game, right?
[01:11:00.800 --> 01:11:04.800]  So one of the examples in the book is this game Chore Wars by Kevin Davis.
[01:11:05.800 --> 01:11:12.600]  And Chore Wars is actually...it's really hilarious because it's a massively multiplayer online role-playing game about cleaning your house.
[01:11:14.040 --> 01:11:15.620]  Which, you know, right, is really funny.
[01:11:16.340 --> 01:11:21.600]  And for some people, especially...I don't know if any folks out here have kids who like balk at doing chores.
[01:11:21.600 --> 01:11:22.700]  Highly recommended.
[01:11:24.960 --> 01:11:28.180]  So as you see, you earn experience in gold for doing chores around the house.
[01:11:28.420 --> 01:11:32.140]  And they're all sort of, like, reframed as these, like, epic adventures.
[01:11:33.740 --> 01:11:36.580]  And so, you know, Chore Wars is kind of hilarious.
[01:11:36.720 --> 01:11:38.140]  In a way, it is an alternate reality game.
[01:11:38.140 --> 01:11:42.120]  It creates this additional layer of meaning on top of the regular world.
[01:11:42.700 --> 01:11:44.220]  It's also kind of simplistic, right?
[01:11:44.380 --> 01:11:49.920]  Like, measuring our experience points and our gold collected is well and good.
[01:11:49.920 --> 01:11:59.140]  But I'm actually interested in things that get away from this, like, sort of, brute quantification of our, like, daily lives and interactions.
[01:11:59.400 --> 01:12:00.780]  Because I think that's dangerous, right?
[01:12:00.860 --> 01:12:09.200]  And I think that, you know, that's one of the things that the kind of radical education paradigm that I'm interested in is trying to rail against.
[01:12:09.200 --> 01:12:20.240]  Because in our school systems, we see a lot, this motion toward, like, extreme quantification and only quantification of things.
[01:12:20.760 --> 01:12:24.020]  In the form of high-stakes testing and things like that.
[01:12:24.460 --> 01:12:25.820]  So that's really dark to me.
[01:12:26.200 --> 01:12:30.660]  This, like, tendency toward quantification as opposed to qualitative analysis.
[01:12:32.820 --> 01:12:38.380]  The other issue is, I think that, you know, Chore Wars is kind of awesome because it makes this everyday thing that we can't really escape.
[01:12:40.060 --> 01:12:40.940]  Hilarious and fun.
[01:12:41.140 --> 01:12:44.100]  And it makes this set of unpleasant tasks, like, much more enjoyable.
[01:12:45.380 --> 01:12:55.560]  But the reason that it makes it more enjoyable is because instead of making your chores these things that you have to do by yourself, they make it, like, this collaborative adventure with all the people who live with you.
[01:12:56.240 --> 01:12:57.680]  So it's really about the interaction.
[01:12:57.840 --> 01:13:00.080]  It's not about the game, right?
[01:13:00.180 --> 01:13:05.180]  It's about making it a mutual collaborative thing as opposed to Mom coming down on me hard for not making my bed.
[01:13:07.600 --> 01:13:14.080]  I'm also interested in, I guess, what if the difficult and unpleasant tasks are a little bit more complicated than cleaning the bathroom?
[01:13:14.620 --> 01:13:17.300]  What if they are about eradicating racism?
[01:13:18.320 --> 01:13:23.000]  That's a really, like, complicated and, for many people, unpleasant task.
[01:13:23.360 --> 01:13:30.760]  We don't want, like, in my classroom at the University of Buffalo, whenever we talk about race in video games, shit gets real awkward real fast.
[01:13:30.980 --> 01:13:31.900]  People don't want to talk.
[01:13:32.580 --> 01:13:36.800]  And students who are, like, really forthcoming at first become very reticent.
[01:13:38.400 --> 01:13:40.580]  So I guess I have to speed up because I just got the five-minute signal.
[01:13:42.740 --> 01:13:44.560]  So really quickly, I want to look at this game.
[01:13:45.100 --> 01:13:46.120]  Some of you may know it.
[01:13:46.340 --> 01:13:47.360]  It's called Third World Farmer.
[01:13:47.920 --> 01:13:49.660]  And it's, like, super problematic, okay?
[01:13:51.260 --> 01:14:05.140]  One of the issues with the game, the biggest issue with the game, is that it's sort of the strategy resource management single-player game where you play a family of farmers over there in Africa.
[01:14:05.140 --> 01:14:06.660]  They don't say where, right?
[01:14:07.200 --> 01:14:13.300]  And actually, what the game does is it randomizes the sort of, like, terrible things and awesome things that can happen to you.
[01:14:13.460 --> 01:14:20.560]  It completely removes any kind of structural critique about why there is poverty in the world from the experience of playing the game.
[01:14:20.560 --> 01:14:25.460]  In addition, it's just really, like, really unbalanced, frustrating, terrible interface.
[01:14:28.660 --> 01:14:38.180]  But the structural critique issue is important to me because I think that one of the things that resource management games can do is bring a structural critique into the game.
[01:14:38.700 --> 01:14:40.340]  And it actually avoids doing that.
[01:14:40.580 --> 01:14:48.580]  I mean, this is an early attempt by a student to create a game that was about raising awareness about poverty in the developing world, okay?
[01:14:48.580 --> 01:14:54.380]  So, you know, this is a step in a direction about educating people about social injustice.
[01:14:56.600 --> 01:15:06.120]  But one of the... for me, one of the fundamental issues here is that these are really complex, epically scaled social issues, right?
[01:15:08.500 --> 01:15:12.380]  And it's hard to say what exactly, I guess...
[01:15:13.520 --> 01:15:16.960]  I mean, I don't think that a lot of people who develop these games know what they actually want people to do.
[01:15:17.820 --> 01:15:18.220]  Seriously.
[01:15:18.860 --> 01:15:23.040]  Because Third World Farmer points you to a whole bunch of nonprofits and NGOs and are like, give money.
[01:15:23.540 --> 01:15:25.220]  And it's like, well, what does money do, right?
[01:15:25.380 --> 01:15:31.340]  Money is part of this system of, like, colonialism and capitalism that created the conditions of poverty in the first place.
[01:15:31.480 --> 01:15:32.300]  It's really complicated.
[01:15:33.260 --> 01:15:51.000]  So this researcher at the Gambit Game Lab at MIT, Konstantin Mitkuch, says that serious games, games for change, whatever, they claim to raise awareness about social and political issues like inequity, injustice, what have you, but they don't even know the terms on which they're measuring their own effectiveness.
[01:15:51.000 --> 01:15:57.540]  So there's no way we can tell how effective they are in doing the thing that they're trying to do, which is really perplexing, right?
[01:15:57.700 --> 01:16:11.520]  Like, if I'm spending all this time and energy making this game about, like, trying to educate people about, I don't know, like, the genocide in Darfur or something, I would like to know, at least for me, how that game would be effective.
[01:16:12.780 --> 01:16:23.760]  The good news is, in terms of, like, these big complex problems that are sort of hard to simulate, hard to sort of unpack, radical educators have been thinking about this for, like, over a century.
[01:16:24.340 --> 01:16:33.280]  So there are frameworks that I think are really useful in terms of looking forward from this sort of paradigm of, like, let's make a game to, like, raise awareness.
[01:16:33.900 --> 01:16:39.720]  I think awareness is really vague, and I'm not comfortable with that vagueness.
[01:16:42.320 --> 01:16:59.640]  So critical pedagogy is this framework that I'm proposing as a way to sort of think about how we build alternate realities as thinking about these games not as training and not as content delivery, but rather as facilitators for these kinds of difficult conversations that we need to have.
[01:17:00.800 --> 01:17:17.240]  So critical pedagogy, according to Henry Giroux, who's great, is an educational movement guided by passion and principle to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action,
[01:17:17.440 --> 01:17:17.700]  right?
[01:17:17.780 --> 01:17:22.640]  So it's about empowering people to sort of critique their own situation and then do something about it.
[01:17:23.200 --> 01:17:29.260]  In my opinion, giving money to an NGO is well and good, but it's not necessarily doing something about the fundamental issue, right?
[01:17:31.740 --> 01:17:42.020]  So my sort of personal background in critical pedagogy comes from this program at the University of Michigan, where I did my undergraduate degree, called the program on intergroup dialogue.
[01:17:42.360 --> 01:17:53.800]  And dialogue is designed to sort of create these speech situations, situations for conversation, that allow people to communicate across differences to reshape prevailing power relations.
[01:17:53.800 --> 01:18:06.780]  So through the act of communicating with each other, through the act of actually sitting down at a table and having face-to-face discussions about things, how can we change the way that power keeps us apart?
[01:18:08.840 --> 01:18:11.040]  Which sounds really touchy-feely, right?
[01:18:11.180 --> 01:18:12.540]  But is actually incredibly effective.
[01:18:15.640 --> 01:18:23.960]  So the game that I want to point to as sort of an example of the right direction in which to move is actually not a video game at all.
[01:18:24.180 --> 01:18:27.400]  It's a game that was played online called World Without Oil.
[01:18:28.160 --> 01:18:30.080]  It's a game about a peak oil crisis.
[01:18:30.620 --> 01:18:38.440]  Players are asked to role-play themselves in this theoretical future where suddenly oil prices spiked and availability declined.
[01:18:40.200 --> 01:18:51.700]  And what was really interesting about the game is it put players in touch with people both in their regional networks, who then communicated together about what might happen in their geographical region.
[01:18:51.820 --> 01:18:57.500]  At the time I was living in Michigan, so this was like sort of an upper Midwest, upper East Midwest sort of region.
[01:18:58.360 --> 01:19:02.740]  And everything that we talked about was reflected when the sort of game conditions updated.
[01:19:02.740 --> 01:19:08.640]  Like you see at the top there, there are like the prices for gasoline and diesel and jet fuel.
[01:19:08.840 --> 01:19:19.740]  And for each regional area, there's also a measure of like social unrest, the kinds of like economic effects of this peak oil crisis, that kind of thing.
[01:19:19.900 --> 01:19:24.620]  And so the whole game system was actually directly responsive to the players as opposed to...
[01:19:25.280 --> 01:19:26.100]  Stop, thanks.
[01:19:27.920 --> 01:19:28.440]  Okay.
[01:19:30.380 --> 01:19:33.900]  Anyway, very quickly, in conclusion, this is...
[01:19:34.340 --> 01:19:36.240]  For me, this...
[01:19:36.240 --> 01:19:44.960]  Building a system that is a game that takes the sort of like material conditions of reality and asks people to think critically about it together is...
[01:19:47.400 --> 01:19:48.280]  I guess...
[01:19:48.820 --> 01:19:52.540]  I mean, this is an opportunity for us to make a really substantive change.
[01:19:52.540 --> 01:20:00.440]  And what's actually interesting is in the research afterwards, the people who made World Without Oil point out that it's not just about raising awareness.
[01:20:00.580 --> 01:20:20.800]  It actually encouraged people to make substantive changes in the way that they lived, in the way they communicated with their communities about things like fossil fuel consumption, that made a difference in people's everyday lives as well as the way that they thought about the sort of conditions and structures of power that made those things the case.
[01:20:22.040 --> 01:20:35.220]  Just very quickly, this is sort of like my research question going forward from this, is how does our understanding of game-based learning change when we think of the game not as a means to deliver content, but rather a way to facilitate dialogue.
[01:20:35.520 --> 01:20:41.960]  As I mentioned, I'm going to be working on this new game from some of the same people who brought the world, World Without Oil, called Future Coast.
[01:20:42.080 --> 01:20:42.940]  It's about climate change.
[01:20:44.060 --> 01:20:52.460]  And this sort of thinking through a different educational paradigm is something that I'm excited to bring to this project.
[01:20:53.780 --> 01:20:57.020]  And again, these slides will be up on my website, bodywithout.org.
[01:20:58.440 --> 01:21:05.680]  But those are some of the people and things to which I refer generally, and would have in the longer version of this talk.
[01:21:06.940 --> 01:21:08.520]  So please hit me up on the Internet.
[01:21:08.680 --> 01:21:10.340]  I do want to talk to more people about this.
[01:21:10.560 --> 01:21:11.260]  So, thank you.
[01:21:13.340 --> 01:21:18.400]  Repetibly, we lost about 12 minutes because of the overrun of the previous talk.
[01:21:18.540 --> 01:21:32.540]  So I'd encourage you to go to sensoryresearch.net slash hope number nine, and I'll have links to all of the other things there so that you can follow through with the rest of what we wanted to present.
[01:21:33.140 --> 01:21:34.160]  Thank you very much.