OUR MEDIATED LAB

Alex Jonsson and Leif Handberg in the Presence Lab

Our lab is a disused reactor hall on KTH main campus, KTH R1 Experimental Performance Space & Presence Lab, Drottning Kristinas väg 51.

This is a unique setting where we carry out most of our prototyping relating to presence design. We also create mediated performances, often in collaboration with musicians and artists from Stockholm University of the Arts or Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design.

The lab has a 3-party CollaborationSpace with a Mediated Sketching-table, allowing us to work closely with colleagues at, for example, TU Delft, Luleå Technical University, or UIUC outside Chicago. We think it should be easy for distributed groups to sketch and draw together in real-time, so we are developing products to support collaboration, and that allow you to sketch together both on analogue paper, and on digital surfaces.

Here you can see a filmclip from our prototyping on the Mediated Sketching-table in 2012. Architects, of course, sketch together during design work. But we think a lot of people who collaborate remotely need to make use of horizontal surfaces to create a shared drawing area for note-taking etc. It is important that you see the hand-in-action, of the person you are sketching with.

Not everything fits onto one small screen, so we need to look at the mediated workplace as a whole. Where do you want to see the persons you are collaborating with? Surely not on your crowded laptop....?

And here is a film clip from a mediated classroom-session where architect Robin Scharverbeke (Sint Lukas School of Architecture) teaches Jimmy Nyström, Luleå Technical University) how to draw. And a filmclip by students from Luleå Technical University elaborating and testing the prototype.

As part of a collaboration with faculty and students at UIUC Chicago in spring 2014, we created a Mediated Master Studio over a few weeks. Mixed teams of students in Stockholm and Chicago were designing skyscrapers together, drawing on Wacom-tablet. See a short filmclip here.

The 3-party CollaborationSpace in our mediated lab is currently equipped as follows:

Sketches by Charlie Gullström, photos and prototypes by Charlie, Leif Handberg, colleagues in EIT ICT Labs Mediating Presence and students at KTH.