Introduction
The INCITE/RCA collaboration is a week-long event during which interaction design students from RCA Interaction design unit will collaborate with sociologists from University of Surrey and Goldsmiths College . Nina Wakeford, Lucy Kimbell and Nina Pope are the project directors of the event and Kat Jungnickel is assisting with the organisation.

The aim of the project is for participants to;
- be exposed to and make use of each other?s knowledge, skills, experience
- share their research and their ways of working
- reflect on how they research and what kinds of knowledge they produce from different ways of working

Participants
Designers - RCA
Lucy Kimbell and Nina Pope, tutors in Interaction Design at the RCA
+ MA Interaction design students

Sociologists - UniS and Goldsmiths
Nina Wakeford, Director of INCITE, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey
+ sociological researchers and graduate students from UniS and Goldsmiths.

The pairings:

Affiliated Faculty
- Bill Gaver, Senior Research Fellow, Interaction Design, RCA
- Christiane Robbins, Cross-disciplinary artist, director and scholar
- Katherine Lambert, Architect, Metropolitan Architectural Practice, USA
- Michele Chang, Interaction Design Researcher, INTEL Corporation, USA
- Wendy March, Interaction Designer and Researcher, INTEL Corporation, USA

Draft schedule
Sociologists and designers will be matched by looking at the core concepts within the sociologists? research and the students? lines of enquiry evidenced in their practice. Information about participants, their research, projects, background references and student websites will be circulated before the project starts.

Participant pairs will set a brief and work on it together over a week, on site both at UniS and at the RCA. Discussion about how to work together is part of the project. The collaborative process will be documented with video and still camera and the results will be collated on CD/website.

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Suggested readings
- The list of publications on the Publications area of the RCA main website
- The reading list in the Design Council's Interaction Design section
- Nina's article: Working with new media cultural intermediaries

Project outputs
Six projects which make sense in the context of Interaction Design practice, realised in artefacts such as prototypes, drawings, proposals, films or other objects/media. Documentation of the process undertaken (vox pops, wiki, photo or written blogs, sketches) from pairs, individual and group perspectives.

Details
Locations:
The event will be held in two locations during the week:
Friday 29th April - University of Surrey, Room 04 AD 00
Tues 3rd, Wed 4th and Thurs 5th May - Royal College of Art, Room tbc
Friday 6th May - University of Surrey, Room 04 AD 00

Timing:
On Day 1 - registration is at 14.00 to start 14.30 at the University of Surrey
Every other day will start at 10.00

Maps:
University of Surrey campus (official) map and here's one I have annotated.
RCA campus - map

Travel:
For the University of Surrey days: If you are coming from London the best way to get to Guildford is on a Southwest train from Waterloo station. Here is a train timetable. It takes about 35minutes and costs around £16 during peaktimes. (You only get student discount during off peak times).Train travel costs will be reimbursed so make sure you keep your tickets. Parking is not going to be easy on either campus so best use the train. If you want to drive please let know as she will need to organise parking. Here's a 'how to get to the University of Surrey campus' guide.

For the RCA days: The Royal College of Art is located in London on Kensington Gore, facing Hyde Park and next to the Royal Albert Hall. Here's a local street map.

Food:
Dinner out on Friday 29th April is being provided. During the day coffee (though we can't guarantee it is great) and water will be available with the odd biscuit. Participants will need to bring either their own lunches or money to buy something on campus.

Questions, questions....
More information will be added to this site over the next few weeks. If you have any questions that haven't been addressed, kat.

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Bio's
Lucy Kimbell works as an artist and interaction designer. Her recent work disturbs evaluation cultures in management, technology and the arts. Lucy originally studied engineering design and appropriate technology and later an MA in digital arts. Current work includes live art, gallery and web projects as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) Creative and Performing Arts Research Fellowship at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford. These include Pindices, a collaboration with sociologist Andrew Barry, director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths College, for an interdisciplinary show curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, enttitled Making Things Public, at ZKM, Karlsurhe, Germany. Previously she has worked as a radio journalist and designed complex online and mobile projects. From 1996-9 she co-directed the BAFTA- and Webby-award winning digital design company Soda which she co-founded.
For more details see:
http//www.lucykimbell.com
http://www.pindices.org

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Nina Pope works as an artist, and has a diverse and usually site specific practice.  She is best known for her collaborative work with Karen Guthrie, typified by the use of new technology, video, performance and broadcast media as well as their interest in audience interaction at the point of production. Most recently they have worked as co-directors of Somewhere.org.uk, an organisation which generates and promotes innovative cultural projects. Their collaboration began in 1995 with the multi-media installation ?Somewhere Over the TV?. This was followed by one of the internet?s earliest artists? project ? the groundbreaking live online travelogue ?A Hypertext Journal? in 1996. A succession of commissions for major institutions followed, including Tate Modern, Grizedale Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (for which they won the Imaginaria Digital Art Award in 1999). In 2002, Pope and Guthrie produced and curated ?TV swansong? ? a live webcast of specially commissioned artist projects. They are currently developing new work based on historical re-enactment, as well as a commission for Cinema City's new cinema in Norwich. Most recently they completed their first feature length film 'Bata-ville, We are not afraid of the future'.
For more details see:
http://www.somewhere.org.uk
http://www.swansong.tv
http://www.bata-ville.com

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George Grinsted is currently researching the impact of Free/Open Source Software communities on wider culture though the promotion of Copyleft and collaborative production models. Since leaving limbomedia ltd. in 2004, he has been working freelance on a range of projects including pindices.org, a collaboration with Lucy Kimbell that aims to visualise personal political or citizenship activity. Previous endeavours include lecturing on the University of Plymouth's MediaLab Arts BSc (Hons) course, working extensively with the Institute of Digital Art and Technology (i-DAT) and producing projects such as BlogRadio, GeekClock and HelpLinux.

Recent project - BlogRadio
Mobcasting allows you to call a number from your mobile phone and record a short message that is instantly posted as an MP3 blog entry. BlogRadio aggregates (without any editorial process) all of the current day.s audio posts and streams them online and via FM, a simple republishing of existing content that removes the burden of discovery for the user. By creating a stream of these posts, BlogRadio allows you to listen in to many disparate and often very personal views of the world. If you hear something you like then you can visit the BlogRadio website and follow a link to the original post, blog and author. In order for your posts to be heard on BlogRadio you need to have a Blogger.com account, activate audioblogging through Audioblogger.com and start posting to your blog.
For more details see:
http://www.imgeorge.org/

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Jon Ardern. My first degree was in Fine Art Sculpture, where I constructed large-scale immersive installations, which combined sound, projected images and bespoke lasers. These pieces investigated the processing, unification and translation of different forms of energy and information, such as how sound might be visualised. After graduating I continued to explore and develop my interest in the possibilities of digital technologies. Whilst working part-time in a variety
of jobs and locations (from an ambulance escort to repacking Ann Summer's rubber underwear!) I gained a great deal of practical life experience that still influences my work. In my projects at the RCA I hope to create objects, devices and experiences that provide relevant informative in an accessible form, focusing on ways in which technology can be used to uncover, empower and enrich.

Recent project - Power Point
Power Point is designed to make visible the amount of power being consumed by each mains socket in a direct and immediate way. Furthermore, by utilising a technology called X10 to send information through existing power cables, Power Point can turn off sockets pre-selected as non-essential in the event of a power failure. This process allows the center to continue to function from its own renewable power sources until mains power returns. Over time, the product is intended to change patterns of power use by creating an awareness of the different necessity and consumption of individual appliances.
For more details see:
http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/alumni/04-06/Jon/

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Matthew Falla. Before coming to the RCA, I studied graphic design at Central St Martins in London. There the majority of my work was film / video / motion graphics. I have worked freelance for a number of production companies and recently completed an internship at the BBC's Creative Research and Development department. My work looks at the issues around value and digital media. If something is digital, virtual, intangible, if it is there one moment and gone the next, how can we invest any value in it? We have always placed much significance in objects. But now we produce more things that ?don?t exist? than those that do. Of course the content of these things is still key. Music can have the same effect on us whether we listen to it online or on vinyl, but our experience is reduced. I seek new experiences around the digital. Using a combination of re-contextualisation and the attachment of physicality, I look to create systems, objects and content that are desirable, things of value.

Recent Project - Broadcasting House 2005
Grizedale Arts is an arts centre in the Lake District. It sits uneasily in its setting and visitors to the area tend to ignore it. Broadcasting House hijacks the world of cute houses and plaster sheepdogs, transmitting pirate TV content to people's televisions, allowing Grizedale to reach a new and unsuspecting audience.
For more details see:
http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/alumni/03-05/matthew/

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Tamsin Fulton is a communications graduate with a broad knowledge of strategic marketing and communications. My early career focused on online marketing and community building and this influenced my more recent work in e-government, where I devised strategies for community engagement, (e-democracy) and urban regeneration through ICT. My approach to interaction design relies heavily on the social make-up of our surroundings. I attempt to engage with and draw attention to the social capital within communities, designing interactions that will strengthen, empower and excite, whether based around a "user-group", "scenario" or "context".

Recent project: Busker Ringtones
For people who want to support live and spontaneous music on a city street or in rural location. Busker Ringtones is one element of a wider project being developed to support and encourage live music. Busker Ringtones offers buskers a new revenue stream and at the same time gives the public unique ringtones for their mobile phones. Ringtones could be requested at the RCA Interim show but would normally cost £1.50. Of the £1.50 charged, 75p would go to the busker with the rest going to the requester's mobile phone network.
For more details see:
http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/alumni/04-06/tasmin

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Joseph Malia. The focus of my work this tem has been constantly shifting but specific interests are developing in several fields. On the subject of mobility in technology I have worked on programming mobile phones to create programs designed as responses to specific social situations. Recent projects have touched upon the development unique systems to assist public navigation through a predefined, specific, physical space, and finally interactive video, something I would like to develop in further project work.

Recent project - Interactive Window
Due to concerns over light pollution, the local council has denied Grizedale Arts permition to install a west-facing window in their new building, Lawson Park. This project offers an alternative approach the installation of a window and features a series of characteristics not readily associated with traditional windows. A camera positioned on the outside of the building captures the picturesque views and displays them inside on a wall sized screen. The system also allows users to record and play on loop, 'nice days' and moments seen from the window. However, when an individual stands directly in front of the window to observe the view, a camera captures their movements and projects their body shape into the scene. It is into this shape that a live feed captured from the outside is projected, showing the reality of the environment over recorded idealistic 'postcard' portraits.
For more details see:
http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/alumni/04-06/Joseph/

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Bas Raijmakers is currently a PhD candidate at the Interaction Design department of the Royal College of Art in London, next to running his own consultancy STBY with Geke van Dijk. During his training in cultural studies at the University of Amsterdam, he focussed on how people use media, from magazines to tv. Early 1990s he co-founded internet company ACS-i that was later acquired by Lost Boys/IconMedialab. With his company he developed methods to research how people use new media. He published about these methods in e.g. M. Beier and V. von Gizicki (eds.), Usability - Nutzerfreundliches Webdesign, Springer Verlag Berlin Heidelberg (2002). His current PhD research focuses on how documentary film can be used in design research, especially when people's everyday life experiences need to inform and inspire design processes. For his research he co-operates with industry and academia, e.g. HP labs, Philips Medical Systems and the Equator network (UK).

Projects
Over the last year Bas Raijmakers made several films, to try out what approaches from documentary film can offer design research, and to apply particular ideas and techniques from documentary practice. Most films are connected to existing projects, like the Fred-, Debra- and Kent-films (three portraits of heart patients) which were made for Philips Medical Systems North America, and the films about storage and clutter in the home which were made to inform and inspire the Curious Home theme of the Equator project . These early experiments have confirmed my ideas about the possible contributions of documentary film to design research, and the need to appropriate some of the approaches, ideas and techniques of documentary film. Especially the balance between the (subjective) perspective of the film-maker/designer and an accurate (objective) portrayal on film of the people and situations one is designing for seems a very rich area to investigate further. These first films suggest it is feasible to develop a new design research method, inspired by documentary film: Design Documentaries.
For more details see:
http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/equator/~bas_raijmakers

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Tom Jenkins has a background in Product Design, studying BA(Hons) Design at the Glasgow School of Art, where the seeds of his current interests were sewn: the influence of public artefacts and shared environments on social relationships, and the significant role of digital mediation in these physical spaces.  After graduating he travelled extensively, picking up an eclectic body of work within design consultancies in Sydney, Australia and Leiden in The Netherlands, getting the chance to extend his understanding of another key area interest, design for children.  On the Interaction Design MA course at the RCA his recent work has focused on designs for specific public sites and participants, drawing upon the rich narratives and values of these contexts to explore the thresholds between public and private, virtual and real, hidden and visible, mundane and extraordinary.  His projects aim to create alternative, often unexpected experiences of a place, reframing the physical environment to reflect upon or distort social practice. Although the rapid developments of information and communication technologies are often implicit in his work, sometimes they take a back seat, being adopted as simple devices to animate, sometimes fleeting engagement interactively, quickly bringing ideas to life.  Such as ?Jetsam? a digital trashcan developed with Eric Paulos at Intel Research Berkeley in 2004 and presented as a full paper ?Urban Probes : Encountering Our Emerging Urban Atmospheres? in ACM SIGCHI 2005.

Recent Project ? Invisible Decorations
A large-scale Christmas light extravaganza adorns Lawson Park and the surrounding forest trees throughout the festive season. The lights, broadcast their image into the valley invisibly, only encountered by the visitors and residents of Coniston village at a single point across the Lake. A small hide, similar to those used for watching wildlife, houses a night-vision telescope through which the infrared lights are visible. Focusing local attention on the presence of Grizedale Arts in their new home, high up on the opposing hill. The project may well be dismissed by the village as a vulgarity, or perhaps enjoyed as an intriguing novelty. I hope it will contribute to a wider discussion of the many contradictions that form the relationship between these 2 places, contradictions shared by much of the Lake District: connectivity and isolation, distance and proximity, nature and technology. What is the social and aesthetic visibility of the centre to villagers below? How much does the private ownership of property extend into public ownership of the Lakeland vistas?
For more details see:
http://www.jenkinsandson.co.uk

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Nina Wakeford is Director of INCITE in the Department of Sociology, University of Surrey. Her previous research projects include studies of internet cafes, women's discussions lists and the use of ethnography by new technology designers. Amongst her publications are papers on virtual methodologies, queer identities, digital communities and public internet access provision. Along with colleagues at INCITE she is interested in the ways in which collaborations can be forged between ethnographers and those from other disciplines, such as engineering and computer science. She is particularly concerned with the ways in which critical social and cultural theory can play a part in the design process, including the challenges which feminist and queer theories pose to collaborative projects between designers and sociologists, as well as technology studies.

Christiane Robbins is a cross-disciplinary artist, director and scholar working at the intersection of the studio practice, digital media and critical theory components of Media and Visual Arts production. Robbins' studio practice focuses primarily on digital media and database aesthetics, video, installation, digital imaging. It also embraces site-specific, and public art projects as well as work in architectural, object-oriented, and publication projects. Thematically, much of her studio practice, research and scholarly interests revolve around issues of media analysis, identity and displacement through an examination of the way in which concepts and perceptions of reception, inscription, spectacle, memory, space/place, and time shape the articulation of subjectivities. Her work has been widely exhibited including one-person shows in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. She has also participated in numerous international film and video festivals in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, and in Europe. Her video work has won several awards, including the Best of Category Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and has been broadcast on PBS ( KQED, KCET, WGBH, WNET ) American Public Television, Channel 4, UK, and cablecast throughout the world.

Robbins' projects more over extend beyond the purely aesthetic, the Visual Arts and Media systems or the entertainment - industry realms. Rather, they have served as catalysts of community, social movement and transcultural understanding throughout their creation, production and reception. With this priority in mind, Robbins has worked on a number of collaborative projects. She has worked with Marlon Riggs on " Color Adjustment " - the recipient of the 1992 Peabody Award for International Documentary of the Year. In 1990/1 she was a co-director of one of the first international cultural projects to appear on the Internet. This internationally acclaimed project was an all encompassing ( visual art, installation, performance, and media/technology ) site-specific project which offered alternative cultural and health perspectives to the Sixth International Conference on AIDS. Not only was this project located on the Net - Robbins also directed, curated and collaborated on a number of exhibitions, public installations, broadcasts and performances throughout the Bay Area.
Fore more details see:
http://www.annenberg.edu/race
http://cms.mit.edu/race/
http://www.usc.edu/dept/matrix/aim/

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Beckie Coleman is a PhD student in the Sociology department, Goldsmiths College.  Her research examines the relations between the bodies of thirteen 13 and 14 year old white girls and images.  It explores how these relations have generally been restricted to studies of media images and girls bodies and conceived through a model of cause-and-effect.  Instead, the research suggests that bodies and images cannot be understood as separate/separable entities but are processes of becoming known, understood and experienced through each other. As such, it opens up what a body and an image might be and asks what might a body become through images?
Here is an abstract of her research project: Girls, Bodies, Images

Monica Moreno is a PhD research student in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, she did her BA in Communications and an MA in Sociology in the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City whilst working for the Mexican Institute of Youth in charge of implementing gender youth policies. She then came to London in 1999 to continue a further MA in Gender, Culture and Modernity at Goldsmiths where then she stayed to do her PhD. Currently, she is in the writing-up period of her PhD thesis entitled: "The Complexities of the Visible: Mexican women's experience on Racism, Mestizaje and National Identity".
Here is an abstract of her research project: The complexities of the visible: Mexican women's experience on Racism, Mestizaje and National Identity

Vicky Skiftou is a PhD student in the Sociology Department atGoldsmiths College. She did her BA in Art History in the American College of Greece in Athens- Greece, where she was born in 1970. She worked afterwards in an art gallery (international centre of fine art) in Athens and she continued to work and to organize exhibitions in galleries in London. In 1999 she started her MA in Contemporary Art History based on psychoanalysis, cultural theories and art in the Historical and Cultural studies department in Goldsmiths College. She stayed in Goldsmiths College to continue a PhD research project about Greek identity, sense of Greekness, social memory and domestic photography in Greece. Her main interest is based on the complex subject of the Greek national identity, a historical conflict between issue of continuity and discontinuity related to legitimacy and Greekness.
Here is an abstract of her research project: Social memory, oral history & visual culture: The contemporary construction of Greekness.

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