Three Interesting Talks

I attended to three interesting talks in the last week.

The first was a talk by Stelarc AKA Stelios Arcadious  in the Crawford Art Gallery Lecture Theatre in Cork and was absolutely fascinating. Stelarc is an Australian performance artist probably most known for implanting an ear created from cells into his fore-arm. He also had a wireless mic fitted into the ear so that anyone could hear what the arm-ear was hearing through the internet. He took the concept even further by implanting a small wireless speaker inside his mouth so that he could make calls through the web, speaking into the arm-ear and listening through the speaker in his mouth!  lot of his work explores the bouderies and relationships between technology and the physical body. Food for thought. Check the Stelarc site for more. A very interesting character.

The second was delivered by Fabiano Pinatti, a PhD student at the Interaction Design Centre in UL. He discussed his area of study and his research methods. He is looking at the idea of Digital Nomads and the Knowledge Economy: "how place, activities and the social world constitute the experience of nomadic users; in what way technologies are shaping people's work/life on the move; what the aspects of mobile interaction that design could meaningfully support are." It was helpful to hear his approach to choosing research paradigms and epistemological and ontological assumptions.
Nomadic Work / Life in the Knowledge Economy website.

The third talk was at the monthly IxDA event at the Absolute Hotel and was given by Prof. Mike Phillips from the University of Plymouth. He focused on sustainable interaction design and towards the end talked bout the ongoing projects by the i-DAT research group at the Centre for Art, Media and Design Research in Plymouth. I picked up some great leads that will be useful for my own research at this.