Snare, Bass and “The 80’s” - GroupLoops Design Review 2

Getting ready for the Gallery opening next week has spurred GroupLoops to throw together a really exciting prototype - check it out in the footage of their design review!

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Bright Lights, Big Progress - Design Review 2 for August 23

Helmets, wire maps and gallery design - check out the August 23, 1966 team in their second design review.

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Rapidly Developing World Of Sound - Design Review 2

The world has shifted for the Our Changing World of Sound team as the prepare for the gallery opening. Check out their design review from March 27.

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ReFab Design Review

What do MC Escher, Champagne Mist (a color of Dodge Ram Trucks in 1965), and pneumatic drill presses have in common?

Check out the ReFab Design Review to find out!

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Our Changing World of Sound Design Review

Our Changing World of Sound led us in an engaging discussion about the history of sound scapes and showed us a plan and prototype for their final installation.

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Digitizing Knoweldge - Design Reviews 1 AND 2!

Digitizing Knowledge has finished not one but two design reviews in the past few weeks. Their first review is recapped here, but the videos have finally made their way onto the interwebs.

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In episode two, the team shares the results of their interviews and subsequent presentation about digitizing archives.

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GroupLoops Design Review 1

Is it more fun to imitate an instrument we already know on the iPhone, or to build something completely different? We take a look at a few existing music aps for the iPhone and respond to some possible GroupLoops functions.

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Slowly Ambient Design Review 1

Slowly Ambient’s first design review featured a model of the pavilion’s joint structure, complete with actuating parts.   The team’s questions gathered thoughts and ideas about the nature of an “entrance” for the structure, weighing, especially, whether there should be a door-like part, and whether or not it should move itself in response to a human presence.

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Assessing the Loss - Digitizing Knowledge’s Design Review

Thanks to the Digitizing Knowledge team for taking the leap and hosting the first design review. Here’s a brief recap of what was discussed:

Colleen represented the “user” of the archives and spoke to us about her own experiences researching the US participation, and specifically the role of the University community, in the colonization of the Philippines. She talked about the “aura” and ephemeral nature of archives, and the ability to stumble upon related pieces of information when searching through a physical archive. She also introduced the power diagram the team created, and talked about the political ramifications of creating an archive. Many archives are created from the personal collection of documents donated to an institution, and the issue of who is included and who is excluded from the history that they capture is paramount.

Ricky gave a small presentation of digitizing archives, focusing on the choice to “go digital” rather than the actual technical process of turning things digital. Verifying access was a large concern - who can access the archive? How do we verify their intetions? Do we need to verify their intentions? Another large point was the privileging of textual documents in archive collections. The team hopes to focus on the digitization of images, which will help to increase the identification rate of these materials.

Kiara introduced the interview questions that the team hopes to use in the next stage of their project. As opposed to a traditional interview set up, they have constructed their questions to maximize the creation of a dialogue between the user of the archive and the creator of the archive, two groups that may not have been able to dialogue previously.

Urmilla then focused the group towards two areas of feedback the team was soliciting: the usefulness and structure of the presentation given here to help the team give the presentation in an extended format in March, and the format and content of their interview questions. Any feedback on the wrap was also welcome.

What did the group say? Check out the video in Bluestream!

Any further feedback for the team can of course be sent to the team, or to grocs.info@umich.edu

This week is a more laid back affair for the entire group to bond, chat informally and challenge one another in the epic arena of Rock Band.