Here are some more thoughts based on on last week's discussions and feedbacks

- Reconsidering DLGB: from a digital object to a collaborative system.
This notion has been used by Daniel Sharon in his Database Aesthetics text and basically it is about conceptual structuring, temporal development and incorporation of different participants (humans, artificial agents, algorithmic entities, associative networks).
The system is therefore "inter-authorshiped" and, I think, it has a lot to do with notions of media-ecology and social networking.

- One example of such system may be the sets of patterns already identified:

Some definitions

The data cube is a conceptual representation of database (or a subset of it) which offers fast access/views of data in any number of dimensions.
OLAP(Online Analytical Processing) cubes can be thought of as extensions to the two-dimensional array of a spreadsheet.
In database theory, an OLAP cube is an abstract representation of a projection of an RDBMS relation.

A data mart is a repository of data gathered from a database (or data warehouse) which allows the knowledge user to analyse the stored data in a more specialised way.
For instance, a company wants to analyse some of its data by time-period, by product, by location, by cost and by comparing this data with a budget.

Laurie Grove Bath House Research

Media Use: Official and Unofficial Media Use

Research Overview
I started the research with the ambitious objective of mapping all media use of the building both official and unofficial including, internet and network use. However, after inquiring with the Network services at the University I found that there isn’t sufficient equipment in the building to record this kind of information. So I have decided to focus the research on physical official and unofficial media in the building.

In a time of digital information and paperless communication, there is a surprising number of ‘physical’ forms of communication in the bath house, both official and unofficial media. I found it interesting how the occupants of the building choose to interact with the space through note postings and tagging. This research is an attempt to record and chart all the ‘physical’ media use in the building through pictures and note taking and also an attempt to see how all the media use connects to the social network in the building. A further step of the research would be to try and find a link between the social networks formed through all the physical media use in the building and the social networks formed through social net working websites on the internet by the users of the building.

Laurie Grove Baths image research - inside-out.

Student name: Iker Olabarria Larizgoitia
Date: October 13th 2007.

Objectives:

Analyze relations between subjective and objective data.
Observe the results of obtaining data from unusual reference points.
Research the possibility to (un) distinguish data obtained from alive/dead “items”.
Compare real data to processed or unreal data.
Des-optimize data collection process
Use the data extracted from reality to draw an apparently distorted reality.

Resources and strategies

1) Choose subjective and objective variables to define the way to track each item.
2) Break some data consistency rules linking subjective variables between each other even if they refer to different “properties” in items.

MA Interactive Media - Joao Wilbert

My objectives:
Map relevant sounds produced by the building on its interior/exterior (pipelines, electrical systems, doors and windows opening/closing) and by human presence inside the Laurie Grove Baths
Learn about acoustics
Learn how to work with contact microphones and capture sound
Learn how to create mySQL databases with a good level of normalization
Complete the research within the deadline

The resources and strategies I will use are:
Carefully listen sounds in different times (day and night)
Observe what sounds could be relevant to recreate the environment

Olga Panadés Massanet
October 22nd 2007.

My objectives:
o Learn more about the variables that influence how we physically experience a particular space. (For instance: amounts of light, electricity, shape of the room and the building, sound, route to access, privacy/publicity, radiation, temperature, cleanness, subjectivity, presences, height and width of walls, size of the room and shape, colour of walls, sounds, etc.)
o Map two or three of the variables that influence the energy of the different spaces in the building and cross them.
o For example take ROUTE TO ACCESS and PRESENCES. My hypothesis about the ‘route to access’ is that depending on the length, difficulty, cleanness, light of the route, number of bifurcations and therefore decisions, the space is perceived in a different way. So we could use all these information to describe a particular room.

My objectives:

• Analyse Laurie Grove Baths in terms of “ACCESS”

• Two paradigms for analysing “ACCESS”

1. Analogic Era: presence/absence (Victorian Age)
2. Information Era : pattern/randomness (Present)

1. Presence/Absence  Private/Public
2. Pattern/Randomness  Right/No Right to Enter

• Understand what is meant by “access” : social/ economic/ cultural/ political access, a way of entering, a right to use etc…
• Track any kind of access to the building (then and now)
• Research how access has changed, also in relationship to the two communities that in different times made use of the building (Local Community – Goldsmiths Community)

NOTE: This is a collection of information I have gathered and an informal critique of my progress so far regarding the Bath House Data Jam. All the results and information I have will be made available in a more utile form should anybody want or need them.

My objectives:

Think of a project to do with current and past acoustic information relating to both the building and its various occupants over time.

After gathering statistics and doing extensive research of the history of the bath house (largely through the incredibly detailed weekly minutes from the bath house committee from 1890 to the 1960’s) I found myself wanting to construct a sound piece reflecting the uses of the building with audio sources representing the various activities that took place over its history. All the statistics relating to the different activities and their respective people flows would be collated and averaged so as to provide each sound source with a volume level indicative of its usage by ‘customers’ over Laurie Grove’s history. For example, a far greater proportion of people used the building to swim in than to study so the sound source representing the former would be louder than the latter.