University of Babel

Our concept is about the University of Babel. We started using a wiki to collect our research and as a cooperation tool for creating the concept document. See the process at University of Babel @ jottit. Below is our current idea of the concept, the goal of the University of Babel (UoB) is to learn about other cultures.

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One university in Turkey and one university in Sweden. The Turkish university has a Arabic speaker tower to send information to other universities and can also receive messages with the tower too. The Swedish university has the same, but instead of a speaker tower they have a Christian church bell which acts in the same way. When a message is received by a speaker tower or church bell it is send to bacteria inside the university. These bacteria sit in the walls inside the university and aline in a certain pattern to display the message received by the tower on the walls. This message is in a general standard language which we will come up with. This language is a mixture of images and text, with latin letters creating the image. And thus multiple layers of the alphabet get visible (like in calligraphy with the background story and everything). For new users (that don't understand the language) there is a Primer. The Primer is a digital book explaining how to read and write the language. The book adapts to the learning curve of the user by dynamicly changing according to the questions the user has about the language. (See the book The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson for more information about the Primer.)

The messages are displayed on different walls. Every wall can represent a subject or another university, country or culture.

Inside the university the students read the messages on the walls. In this way they learn about other cultures. The environment of the message is lacking because the message in transmitted to the other university with another culture. There the teacher comes in sight. The teachers -or supervisor- will help the students by explaining the environment or the background stories behind the messages.

What this all points to is love, peace and happiness. As the students from the different universities, different countries and different cultures talk to eachother and get to know each other they can solve world problems. The UoB helps the students in reaching this goal by transmitting messages to the other university and starting a conversation between the cultures.

The love, peace and happiness (LPH) is not our goal, it might be the goal of the students. We try to create a system which supports the students in their goals, be that LPH or something else. This way we release the stress between the different countries and cultures and build bridges between the universities.

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We've got some extra ideas for combining personal messages on your own arm, retrieving and publishing messages from and to media companies, and receiving and sending messages to gods via Me.

Furthermore, we just got our first critique round from our supervisors. They thought we should be focus on one part of it (for example leave the communication between universities which we already thought of) and focusing on the interaction parts of the concept. Also they pointed us at washing hands, using OLED-displays, Peter Hoffman and the Game of Life.

Relaxing after our presentation

We've been talking about movies:
* Quatsi triology
* De zee die denkt (The sea that thinks)
* Go around twice if you're happy (link doesn't work in Turkey without some proxy..)
* And a new movie we saw about calligraphy, I'm still processing this one :)

Friday morning we went to a calligraphy artist and got our names in calligraphy too. Mine reads eco when turned upside down. And they had these living rooms there. Without chairs, you could only sit on the ground. We thought this might only be used for sitting and drinking tea. You couldn't do much else.. So the whole family would be out all day? Interesting, these 'small' things change the culture.. or are changed bu that culture?

In the afternoon we've had our first presentation. We had to present our concept until now and show where we were heading. The day before we had three main idea's but not really worked out yet. Then Friday morning I talked to Jan about our ideas and went more into the encryption and communication. This caused an old idea to be retrieved which we've thrown away before; the satellite dish on the university building. In the one hour before the presentations we've created a concept called the University of Babel. Our storyboard and the inclusion of bacteria in our concept got the biggest applause and the questions had to be stopped at some point to continue!
Some people might not have understood it, but we'll help them in the final presentation. Info about the concept will follow tomorrow.

Saturday was a relaxing day, we went to the Princess Islands. They don't allow motorized transportation there, so everyone get around by horse and carriage or by bike (nice to see some bikes again, missed them..). Together with Thomas Porathe we walked through the village and around the hill on the island and eat at a restaurant where they'd charge for service costs. All very nice and quiet.

Sunday we went to visit the Topkapı palace and to four mosques. Topkapı had some nice kitchen factories for all the people living there. The mosques were nice too, but differed a lot. Some were huge and thus a bit too much impressive, others had a nicer atmosphere. When we visited the last one they were just starting prayer. People got from everywhere, in their working clothes, ran into the mosque and started their prayer. Very nice to see.

Now the real work starts..

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