About
Background
Engineers often ask: “How does technology interface with a user?” But that is only a part of a larger (and more critical) question. Maybe we should step back and inquire: “How does technology interface with culture itself?”
Sociable media have introduced a shift in how we communicate by providing technological interfaces which are intuitively fitted to their users. As mobile devices become more pervasive, as society becomes more media literate, and as social software become more seamless, sociable media is seen to be fundamentally changing the cultural landscape by augmenting communication through the creation of new social links between people. But is sociable media really augmenting communication?
Social networking platforms allow users to efficiently maintain personal ties as they continue to collapse geospatial and time constraints of conversation. But as these technologies provide a new salience within existing social frameworks and appropriate the practice of face-to-face conversation toward new media platforms, it becomes imperative to not only question sociable media’s effect on face-to-face conversation, but to design sociable media which move in the opposite direction: to encourage and augment face-to-face conversation.
In unmediated conversation, language, embellished by unmediated gestures, facial expressions, and vocal inflections, provides a qualitative richness unparalleled by any synthetic means of communication. One may argue that with extra information comes extra noise, which social networking sites filter out; but there is also a flip-side: With efficiency comes qualitative loss. Replacing a manual task with an automated process reduces experiential space. As people adapt to new media platforms, what happens to their practice of face-to-face communication?
Sociable media ignore many human qualities: The rhythm in which one speaks, the eye movements that go along with it, the interplay of conversation with environmental sounds, smells, and lighting. Such qualities are important because they contain subtle, but significant, nuances of expression which are invaluable to maintaining the social fabric. As these qualities are pulled away, the fabric disintegrates. We need media which are aware of their user’s qualities.
Project
The Sociable Pint investigates the use of networked objects, not to further an impersonal trajectory of media, but to encourage and augment face-to-face conversation.
As social forums evaporate within physical space due to technological and political changes, we are corralled into private enclosures such as bars and coffee shops to converse. Because of this, the socially fertile bar is an appropriate space to investigate ways in which networked objects can augment face-to-face conversation.
Through the introduction of Pint-to-Pint (P2P) networking, bar glasses become social objects themselves, mapping themselves onto the existing network of people, in turn inserting a new layer of sociability with in the social space.
By networking pint glasses capable of sensing, recording, and interpreting gestural data, the glasses can collectively provide direct intervention onto the social fabric within the bar space.
Sensors embedded within each glass collect data indicative of how each glass is being used. Among other actions, the glasses can sense if they are being held, if they are being “cheersed,” how they are being tilted, if they are being ignored, as well as their relative proximity to other glasses, etc. Through the interpretation of sensor data, each glass has the ability to send information via wireless transceivers to the other glasses in order to gain access to the entire system of networked pint glasses.
In addition to reciprocating information among the glasses, each glass expresses itself through an RGB LED embedded in each glass. This unassuming light serves as an actuator which acts on the social fabric inside the bar space. Glasses which are used in similar ways, glasses which are in close proximity of each other, and glasses which are “cheersed” together exhibit behaviors intentionally designed to induce conversation between the bar patrons.
Data from the entire population of pint glasses is collected by a central computer. Images representing the interpretation of this data are displayed onto the televisions within the bar, providing additional feedback to the bar patrons correlating to the gestural culture of the bar space.