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Just for backup reason a summary of my Twitter messages. It is always a nice way to re-experience the developments of a certain time period. For this reason my most important Twitter messages from April 2016 until June 2016. Read more...

Just for backup reason a summary of my Twitter messages. It is always a nice way to reexperience the developments of a certain time period. For this reason my most important Twitter messages from September 2015 until March 2016. Read more...

Some time ago, I posted a ‘making of’ series about the low-budget project wasfuttern.de. This time I will blog about the development process of the current bigger (3-5 years) web project in the field of medical engineering in Germany. My writings intend to give Interaction Designer and User Experience specialist an insight view what I have learnt from this project.

Background

When I started end of 2012, the publication Website: Nationaler Strategieprozess "Innovationen in der Medizintechnik" appeared and stated Germany needs more informational transparency about the medical engineering industry. The medical engineer stakeholders should be better connected to each other. And on-going, start-ups, small and mid-sized businesses need more support during their certification process within EU.

As one solution for these problems an online platform for the medical engineering community in Germany was proposed.

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Some findings of my master thesis about biosensing are published in the new book:

The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World

Edited by Patrícia Vieira; Monica Gagliano and John Ryan

Together with Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, we wrote the chapter 13 The Art of Human to Plant Interaction. If you want to see videos of these featured Human Plant Interaction, please check: Biosensing for Human Computer Interactions

Please feel free to post your Feedback about our chapter!

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The previous chapter explored the possibilities of biosensing with plants. Partially, it reveals some methods for translating plant perceptions into electronic signals (e.g. “Pulsu(m) Plantae”). Movement and locomotion are always connected with perception [Ingensiep2001, page 303; Chamovitz2013, pp. 15]. The perception signal and the movement abilities of a living organism define how the movement will be performed. This interaction has an explosive power in philosophy.  These two abilities (perception and movement) determine the differences between plants and animals. More or less, the latest scientific findings reveal that plants are able to perceive their environment and react on these circumstances [Chamovitz2013]. These results cast doubts on our philosophical classification of plants and animals. This topic has an enormous impact for our ethical consciousness. If we put plants and animals to an almost equal level, than we cannot destroy and treat plants like we used to do. It is important to have this background for understanding the ideas behind the listed artworks. Furthermore, I will focus on the locomotion capabilities of plants and less on their movement capabilities. The artistic expression related to movement and kinetic gestures were discussed in “3.1. Visualizing techniques with plants”.

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During my research for my master thesis, I got some nice book recommendations about plants, nature, art and environment.

Natural artworks

These books provide a good overview how plants are used in Fine Arts over the last 100 years. Furthermore, it addresses and describes the environmental impacts of these design and art approaches. Pretty useful for an art history overview.

• [Bartel2001] Bartelsheim, Sabine. Pflanzenkunstwerke: Lebende Pflanzen in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Schreiber, 2001
• [Nemitz2000] Nemitz, Barbara. trans plant. Living Vegetation in Contemporary Art. Hatje Cantz, 2000
• [KastnerWallis2010] Kastner, Jeffrey; Wallis, Brian. Land and Environmental Art. Phaidon Press, 2010
• [WiMaMe2010] Witzgall, Susanne; Matzner, Florian; Meder, Iris. (Re)Designing Nature - Aktuelle Positionen der Naturgestaltung in Kunst und Landschaftsarchitektur. Hatje Cantz, 2010
• [Haeusler2015] Häusler, Minh. The Fusion of Flora and Art. Hirmer, 2015
• [Ost2015] Ost, Daniel. Der Meister der Blumenkunst. Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag, 2015
• [Wagener] Wagener, Klaus. Architektur und Pflanze: Interior design with plants. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, 2012
• Phaidon editors (2016). Plant: Exploring the Botanical World. Phaidon, 2016.

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A small summary of my Twitter messages from February 2013- June 2013:

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In relation of my masterthesis and my interests in location-based mobile apps I read the book "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" by William H. Whyte. The book is quite old and the first edition was published around 1980. My research focus was in particular in exploring how people behave in urban environments WITHOUT mobile communication technology. I am digital native, so I have no real idea how the world was before mobiles, walkmans and Game Boys. The book delivers a really good insight how people meet and behave in small urban places (plazas and small parks). Furthermore, it describes the vital elements of these plazas. How they correlate to each other  and how to design them. The target groups of this book are more or less architects, city planners and landscape architects. But even for urban activists and street artists the book has some value. The elements of small urban spaces haven't changed much since 1980. Almost each element has his own chapter:
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During my research on Human Plant Interfaces I stumbled on the book "Nature" published by MIT Press and the Whitechapel Gallery. It is a collection of texts (essays, interviews, etc.) about the Contemporary Art history related to the topic Nature. This book is a nice inspiration source for every artist, scientist, developer who is dealing with nature. In my special case I was mainly interested into plants. You can read a short summary of my readings for my master thesis in Human Plant Interfaces: Read more...

A small summary of my Twitter messages from July 2012- January 2013:

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