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SOMEWARE
Exploring place computing.
Someware explores the concept of place computing.

Using place making as a tool to understand and augment our immediate context.

Its objective is to awcknowledge a place as a computing entity. Primarily to make the distinction between the internet as a world wide computer and the phone as a compact personal computer, this mutual computer stands somewhere in between.

Place computing is something that grows from the ground and not just the cloud. It a hybrid between the precence of what's there physically and virtually.
Translating Realities

I scanned and took 360 images of my room to use as a base for virtual content.
Using the 3D scanning app 'Display.Land'.
Constructed with photogrammetry tools.
In that same manner I equipped my physical space with some self-made sensors to tether the content and add environmental interactions.
Prototyping and testing the sensors.
Controlling the lights through local networks using a web interface.
Embedding them into the environment.
Interactions with my place computer

I began visualizing my room as my computer. What if I measured my furniture like I measured storage in my pc? What if my address was written like a link path? How would I navigate my furniture's metadata?
Thethered interaction examples.
Use case exploration: What does it mean to play a video game in my room computer?
My floor becomes the map and the environment my controller.

I created this first prototype to test the gameplay.
CLICK HERE TO TESTB PLAY THE GAME DEMO →
The objective of this project was to highlight the potential and importance building something like this on the web. Due to my limited abilities and the given moment, I'm using Unity.
Layering realities and place identity.
As I explored alternate realities living in my room, it became clear that the hybrid prescence was my identity. What I do inside my room both physically and virtually.

This exploration lead to the idea of places as platforms, place wide web and place computing. Bringing close attention to the word augmenting, rather that mixed realities, to slowly build our habitats into computers ourselves. As well as, helping to understand and bring awareness of computing entities that already surround us and how they affect our behavior in them.
Content into Context

Implementing a distributed back-end of things that anchors content into context.
Exploring alternate hybrid tethering and data flows.
Multiplicity of Interactions

Crossplay and scales of interaction as something to explore further. The objective is the virtual content in the sense of a prescence. The means of interaction could vary from different environmental inputs, game mechanics and purposes.
Everyone can participate.
In Hindsight

Despite being an often visited topic with different names, ubiquotous computing or smart homes, I think the conversation will evolve with the coming advances in web3. The pandemic has also normalized the aspects of a hybrid, or rather phygital, presence in every aspect of your life.

I'm interested in the use cases this new trends could arise, where descentralization as the explotion of hardware and software I had expressed before, and the more impactful descentralization of finance and governance, open the doors to a new reality that defies our traditional notions of the physical world.
Thank you for your time.

More about me here → isaulgarcia.com

→ Email [ isaulgarcia@protonmail.com ]