MAS.890
Workshop in Community-Maintainable Collaborative Online Spaces

Michael Bove, Stefan Aganamolis

 

This seminar explores concepts of spatial and temporal remoteness, and how they relate to computationally-mediated collaborative activities, especially expressive and creative activities beyond the scope of traditional "cooperative work'' research. It focuses on community issues including anonymity, privacy, presence, and togetherness, as well as the design of environments that can evolve with the users' needs. Particular emphasis is given to time and the impact of time zones and network latencies. The course also delves into technical issues ranging from the construction and operation of modern communication networks to the limitations of popular input and output devices as interfaces between the physical and virtual environments. The course itself is an experiment in its own subject matter as it is held simultaneously at both the MIT Media Lab and Media Lab Europe and involves assignments and class projects in which students in both locations must collaborate.


Final project: Networked improvized Music