This is the research diary of researcher Lisbeth
Klastrup, since february 2001 sharing her thoughts on life, universe, persistent online
worlds, games, interactive stories and internet oddities with you on the www.
I am currently on leave from the IT University
of Copenhagen, and from aug. 2006 - aug. 2007 working as Associate Research Professor at the Center for Design Research Copenhagen, an independant center situated at the School of Architecture. During this year, I will be working on a book about the development of aesthetics, design and interaction on the WWW, together with colleague Ida Engholm.
My blog often reflects how busy I am in general, so posting may be pretty irregular, as well as my potential response to comments. But I read them!
My list of publications.
My official homepage at ITU.
Contact:
lisbethATklastrupDOTdk
February 2001 March 2001 April 2001 May 2001 June 2001 July 2001 August 2001 September 2001 October 2001 November 2001 December 2001 January 2002 February 2002 March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007
Fellow research bloggers
-Denmark
Jesper Juul
Gonzalo Frasca
Martin Sønderlev Christensen
Jonas Heide Smith
Miguel Sicart
Mads Bødker
ITU blogs
-Norway
Jill Walker
Torill Mortensen
Hilde Corneliussen
Anders Fagerjord
-The World
Terra Nova (misc, joint)
GrandTextAuto (US, joint)
Mirjam Paalosari-Eladhari (SE)
Jane McGonigal (US)
Patrik Svensson (SE)
Elin Sjursen (NO)
Adrian Miles' Vog blog (AUSTR.)
Other Related Blogs
Mediehack
Hovedet på Bloggen
Bookish
Tempus Tommy
Flickwerk
Jacob Bøtter
Corporate Blogging
Fellow Researchers, non-blog
-Denmark
Susana Tosca
T.L. Taylor
Espen Aarseth
Soeren Pold
Ida Engholm
Troels Degn Johansson
-Norway
Ragnhild Tronstad
-Sweden
Anna Gunder
Jenny Sunden
Mikael Jacobsson
-Finland
Aki Jarvinen
Markku Eskelinen
Raine Koskimaa
©Lisbeth Klastrup 2001-2007
Via Tommy, an interesting article on an alternate reality game I wasnt aware of, a game involving a boyband star called Jamie Kane. Games people play.
Possible futures
Via Netsummary, this story of the crazy cat women has left me thinking that there are identities that I could take upon myself, which I have not been able to envision at all (until now, that is). It's also left me wondering if the woman living across the corridor who owns a very loud dachshound called "Gucci" (according to a sign on her door), in a seemingly rather small apartment really only has one dog in there? You never know.
Of course major news coverage in these areas focus on the advent of the hurricane Katrina.
It's interesting to see how CNN who is reporting non-stop on tv with old-fashioned newsreporters broadcasting live on site, online has embraced the concept of "citizen journalist" (new to me) and ask people to send in emails, photos, videos etc to describe Katrina's path.
Even Politiken is asking for stories from down south. Hmmh.
The question is what news do you really want? A panting newsreporter telling you that "ghee, it rains a lot right here", while he is almost swept away by the storm, or amateur photos of wreckage taken at places you dont know? Or intimate but not necessarily very informative stories about the "citizen journalists'" own experiences. Do you want it all? And do you have the time to read it?
What I really want to know, is if and when Katrina is going to hit Atlanta, but that, my friend, is information that CNN seem to keep mostly to themselves. Apart from this not very revealing photo (at least if you are a non-US native).
It's interesting to see how CNN who is reporting non-stop on tv with old-fashioned newsreporters broadcasting live on site, online has embraced the concept of "citizen journalist" (new to me) and ask people to send in emails, photos, videos etc to describe Katrina's path.
Even Politiken is asking for stories from down south. Hmmh.
The question is what news do you really want? A panting newsreporter telling you that "ghee, it rains a lot right here", while he is almost swept away by the storm, or amateur photos of wreckage taken at places you dont know? Or intimate but not necessarily very informative stories about the "citizen journalists'" own experiences. Do you want it all? And do you have the time to read it?
What I really want to know, is if and when Katrina is going to hit Atlanta, but that, my friend, is information that CNN seem to keep mostly to themselves. Apart from this not very revealing photo (at least if you are a non-US native).
Via Kim Elmose's blog (Danish journalist blogger):an article which promises that all of Copenhagen will be covered by a WiMAX network from the end of the year. The price to access will approx be that of a regular broadband subscription. And as of next year (summer) we will have wireless networks in Danish trains as well. Yeah!
(now I have this beautiful lightweight Vaio, I cant wait to be one of those hip people blogging at cafe's and park, pretending to have an interesting life which require me to be online all the time ;))
(now I have this beautiful lightweight Vaio, I cant wait to be one of those hip people blogging at cafe's and park, pretending to have an interesting life which require me to be online all the time ;))
I finally have time to work on my death-stories project. I've been looking forward to that for a long time. This includes trying to die in different MMOGs in order to find out how they have designed the death experience and implemented the death penalty. The ultimate goal of the project is to discover what makes player tell stories about their online gameworld experiences. My previous studies have indicated that stories about death often figure in the tales, players tell.
I've revisited EverQuest and have been playing World of Warcraft for about 3+ weeks now.Ian Bogost, who now works in the same office corridor at me at GTech (nice :)), happened to have both City of Heroes and Lineage II lying around, so I have borrowed them from him, and tested them the last two days. Just installing the games is a pain, it took 4+ hours to download all the patches of Lineage II.
Anyway, just wanted to share with you a picture of my female character in Lineage II. I was kind of amused when my female EverQuest character was running around in the world with her butt covered by a small leather lap. Readers familiar with my academic work, will have read about my quest for trousers for her. However, in portrayal of female characters, so far Lineage II by far top it. My female Dark Elf clearly displays only "g-strings" when she runs. And for some reasons they have animated characters so they run bowing forward so you get the butt right in your face. This is what it looks like:
However, if you should be interested, she dies just like a man ;).
- Coming up is hopefully Eve Online and Star Wars Galaxies...
I've revisited EverQuest and have been playing World of Warcraft for about 3+ weeks now.Ian Bogost, who now works in the same office corridor at me at GTech (nice :)), happened to have both City of Heroes and Lineage II lying around, so I have borrowed them from him, and tested them the last two days. Just installing the games is a pain, it took 4+ hours to download all the patches of Lineage II.
Anyway, just wanted to share with you a picture of my female character in Lineage II. I was kind of amused when my female EverQuest character was running around in the world with her butt covered by a small leather lap. Readers familiar with my academic work, will have read about my quest for trousers for her. However, in portrayal of female characters, so far Lineage II by far top it. My female Dark Elf clearly displays only "g-strings" when she runs. And for some reasons they have animated characters so they run bowing forward so you get the butt right in your face. This is what it looks like:
However, if you should be interested, she dies just like a man ;).
- Coming up is hopefully Eve Online and Star Wars Galaxies...
I've now been attempting to moblog for 14 days and Im getting better at it. However, I have discovered one, no actually three major differences between moblogging and regular blogging, which have a tendency to make me NOT want to moblog :(.
The first difference is simple: it's free for me to blog (at least when Im on a university network, at places with free wifi etc) or it feels as if it's free (because I pay a monthly flatrate subscription for my internet connection). But it costs me money to moblog, and every post counts. Especially when Im sending pictures home to Denmark from the US. I can access two US networks with my current mobile network provider, one of them is pretty expensive and the other is affordable. Problem is that my mobile phone (as if strangely programmed!) keeps switching to the expensive network. This means that my phone bill has more than doubled since I got over here and started sending MMS's. Knowing that Im paying to publish makes a difference, it makes me think more carefully about what I want to spend money on publishing or not. I.e. my posting becomes less casual and more deliberate than my blogging.
The second difference is that of not being able to compose your messages in advance. I don't know how other bloggers do it, but longer posts are usually posts I have been thinking about for a little while, and posts I have written "inside my head" before I access the blog software. You could say that I blog "in advance" of the actual act of blogging. Then, when I have written a post, unless it is a quick note-like post, I immediately check on it after posting, just to make sure there arent too many spelling mistakes. So quite often my regular posts are also edited immediately after the first publication of them.
- Now with the moblog, you are supposed to take a picture, add max a few senteces to it and send if off immediately. This is really difficult for me to get used to. I tend to take a picture on the streets thinking that I will compose the text later, when I get to sit down in peace and quiet, get on the metro, reach the office etc. Then I forgot about doing it, or I experience that the moment has already faded and I cant really remember what to say. Or I end up writing posts that are too long, and more suited for a regular blog entry, rather than the moblog.
- Also, I feel intimidated by the fact that I cant edit my post once I have sent it. I have to get to a computer, log on to albino gorilla and enter my post before I can do that, and _if_ Im moblogging on the fly, a long time might pass between sending the post and editing it, and I know that people might have read it in between.
- Im trying to change my habits now, so I really moblog on site with both images and text, but only short text. Then if I want to add more I can go into Albino Gorilla and add more text (rather than edit) at a later point in time.
The final difference is that of when and what I blog. Just like I imagined, I tend to moblog when Im bored, waiting for something, in between places with nothing else to do.
- Or I moblog when Im in social situations, where I'd like it to look like Im texting someone, because noone can see that Im just texting a webpage, not a friend (I dont sms friends a lot here, because of time difference).
- I moblog, when I see something that is visually interesting or catchy, but need not necessary hold any deeper meaning, or give way to a lot of content, such as a beautiful view, a funny poster osv. Framing it more academically, I think you could say, that I've gone from a linear to iconic thinking, or at least Im starting to think more in snapshots rather than in stories. I moblog the unusual (currently that which is significantly different from Danish culture) rather than the mundane and usual (though this it really what I set out to blog, everyday life here). I wonder if this focus on the extraordinary, the different also naturally comes with being in a new place and in a new culture. I'll have to moblog when I go back to Copenhagen, just to see which kind of events or images I'll blog when in a familiar place, visually as well as culturally.
More to follow...
The first difference is simple: it's free for me to blog (at least when Im on a university network, at places with free wifi etc) or it feels as if it's free (because I pay a monthly flatrate subscription for my internet connection). But it costs me money to moblog, and every post counts. Especially when Im sending pictures home to Denmark from the US. I can access two US networks with my current mobile network provider, one of them is pretty expensive and the other is affordable. Problem is that my mobile phone (as if strangely programmed!) keeps switching to the expensive network. This means that my phone bill has more than doubled since I got over here and started sending MMS's. Knowing that Im paying to publish makes a difference, it makes me think more carefully about what I want to spend money on publishing or not. I.e. my posting becomes less casual and more deliberate than my blogging.
The second difference is that of not being able to compose your messages in advance. I don't know how other bloggers do it, but longer posts are usually posts I have been thinking about for a little while, and posts I have written "inside my head" before I access the blog software. You could say that I blog "in advance" of the actual act of blogging. Then, when I have written a post, unless it is a quick note-like post, I immediately check on it after posting, just to make sure there arent too many spelling mistakes. So quite often my regular posts are also edited immediately after the first publication of them.
- Now with the moblog, you are supposed to take a picture, add max a few senteces to it and send if off immediately. This is really difficult for me to get used to. I tend to take a picture on the streets thinking that I will compose the text later, when I get to sit down in peace and quiet, get on the metro, reach the office etc. Then I forgot about doing it, or I experience that the moment has already faded and I cant really remember what to say. Or I end up writing posts that are too long, and more suited for a regular blog entry, rather than the moblog.
- Also, I feel intimidated by the fact that I cant edit my post once I have sent it. I have to get to a computer, log on to albino gorilla and enter my post before I can do that, and _if_ Im moblogging on the fly, a long time might pass between sending the post and editing it, and I know that people might have read it in between.
- Im trying to change my habits now, so I really moblog on site with both images and text, but only short text. Then if I want to add more I can go into Albino Gorilla and add more text (rather than edit) at a later point in time.
The final difference is that of when and what I blog. Just like I imagined, I tend to moblog when Im bored, waiting for something, in between places with nothing else to do.
- Or I moblog when Im in social situations, where I'd like it to look like Im texting someone, because noone can see that Im just texting a webpage, not a friend (I dont sms friends a lot here, because of time difference).
- I moblog, when I see something that is visually interesting or catchy, but need not necessary hold any deeper meaning, or give way to a lot of content, such as a beautiful view, a funny poster osv. Framing it more academically, I think you could say, that I've gone from a linear to iconic thinking, or at least Im starting to think more in snapshots rather than in stories. I moblog the unusual (currently that which is significantly different from Danish culture) rather than the mundane and usual (though this it really what I set out to blog, everyday life here). I wonder if this focus on the extraordinary, the different also naturally comes with being in a new place and in a new culture. I'll have to moblog when I go back to Copenhagen, just to see which kind of events or images I'll blog when in a familiar place, visually as well as culturally.
More to follow...
I was just looking for a list of grocery stores in my neighbourhood, but ended up here:
There is a group of Atlanta Bloggers who meet up to drink beer. They even have their own website as of last month.
Why does it remind me of the Copenhagen bloggers ;)?
And there is also the Atlanta Metrobloggers (missed that one, I just discovered the jetrosexuals, and thought I was up to date on the urban lingo, but no. Metrobloggers. Obvious.)
Oh, and while we on the subject of fellow bloggers, I discovered that Rasmus of Acutecut and Kammeret (DK) is blogging from Seattle, I should have remembered because he has been writing in his blog about going there. Rasmus is also an upcoming photographer so his photos are way cooler than mine. In the four something months he's been over there (as it reads) he's managed to meet the love of his life and get married. See there's real life romance for you, blog style. Congratulations to Rasmus :).
There is a group of Atlanta Bloggers who meet up to drink beer. They even have their own website as of last month.
Why does it remind me of the Copenhagen bloggers ;)?
And there is also the Atlanta Metrobloggers (missed that one, I just discovered the jetrosexuals, and thought I was up to date on the urban lingo, but no. Metrobloggers. Obvious.)
Oh, and while we on the subject of fellow bloggers, I discovered that Rasmus of Acutecut and Kammeret (DK) is blogging from Seattle, I should have remembered because he has been writing in his blog about going there. Rasmus is also an upcoming photographer so his photos are way cooler than mine. In the four something months he's been over there (as it reads) he's managed to meet the love of his life and get married. See there's real life romance for you, blog style. Congratulations to Rasmus :).
OK, I admit. I had forgotten (read: repressed) how much time conference admin takes out of your schedule, as is. Add to this a faulty submission system and an academic officer who's gone on holiday and the need to coordinate communication across three time zones. Note to self: only one conference organised per decade.
It's been quiet on the blog for a while - the reason why is that I have been busy preparing my travel to the US. The US embassy, as it turned out, gave me a visa with no problems, and even sent it to me the day after my visit to the embassy. So I was able to leave on August 8th as planned. Level 1 of my research leave game completed.
Arriving at the USA (after 100 mins of various security checks in Atlanta airport), I immediately started the key quest which is an very important part of the initial level 2 quests ("settling down"). I got through (with some difficulty) to my new "landlord" who met me at the lobby of my new home, and gave me the keys to where I'm now living, a unit on the 14th floor of high-rise apartment building (20 floors!) romantically named "The Windsor over Peachtree" right in the middle of town. Getting the keys to my office the next day turned out to be somewhat more difficult as all the keys had already "dropped" (using game lingo here), so had to come back the day after for a new one, and luckily the academic officer had been replenished and could give me one. It's fun how such small objects can mean so much to you, isn't it? Two keys and I almost feel like a complete 100% native resident of Atlanta.
So here I am writing this in my new temporary office at the School of Literature, Communication and Culture (lcc.gatech.edu) at Georgia Institute of Technology. My internet connection has now been fixed, so Im ready to go ahead and work. Wonderful.
Oh by the way, I've also been busy managing the DAC conference, stupid me had booked my ticket for the same day as the deadline of submissions. Effectively, this means that right up to I left and from the moment I set foot in my US apartment (which luckily had a high-speed internet connection which worked right away..) I have been busy granting extensions, mailing with the academic officer, frantically trying to cover up for the not-so-well functioning paper database etc. Bad timing.
Hence, it was only yesterday that I got started on my "etnographic" self-study project for the fall: the project of moblogging my stay in order to see what moblogging "feels like" and how turning from a more "textual" way of thinking (wording experience, as I do when I think of blog posts to my "old" blogs) to a more visual way of thinking (finding images which can express an experience, an emotion, or a point) will affect my patterns of communication. So here goes, my first moblog:
BlogAtlanta(this is actually just a showcase of the last posts, the real moblog is at albino gorilla).
- I expect most of the action will be going on there in the weeks to come.
Arriving at the USA (after 100 mins of various security checks in Atlanta airport), I immediately started the key quest which is an very important part of the initial level 2 quests ("settling down"). I got through (with some difficulty) to my new "landlord" who met me at the lobby of my new home, and gave me the keys to where I'm now living, a unit on the 14th floor of high-rise apartment building (20 floors!) romantically named "The Windsor over Peachtree" right in the middle of town. Getting the keys to my office the next day turned out to be somewhat more difficult as all the keys had already "dropped" (using game lingo here), so had to come back the day after for a new one, and luckily the academic officer had been replenished and could give me one. It's fun how such small objects can mean so much to you, isn't it? Two keys and I almost feel like a complete 100% native resident of Atlanta.
So here I am writing this in my new temporary office at the School of Literature, Communication and Culture (lcc.gatech.edu) at Georgia Institute of Technology. My internet connection has now been fixed, so Im ready to go ahead and work. Wonderful.
Oh by the way, I've also been busy managing the DAC conference, stupid me had booked my ticket for the same day as the deadline of submissions. Effectively, this means that right up to I left and from the moment I set foot in my US apartment (which luckily had a high-speed internet connection which worked right away..) I have been busy granting extensions, mailing with the academic officer, frantically trying to cover up for the not-so-well functioning paper database etc. Bad timing.
Hence, it was only yesterday that I got started on my "etnographic" self-study project for the fall: the project of moblogging my stay in order to see what moblogging "feels like" and how turning from a more "textual" way of thinking (wording experience, as I do when I think of blog posts to my "old" blogs) to a more visual way of thinking (finding images which can express an experience, an emotion, or a point) will affect my patterns of communication. So here goes, my first moblog:
BlogAtlanta(this is actually just a showcase of the last posts, the real moblog is at albino gorilla).
- I expect most of the action will be going on there in the weeks to come.
Death Stories project
Walgblog (DK)
DK forskerblogs (DK)
klast at del.icio.us
Site feed Link (Atom)
Klastrup family?
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Buy our book
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Conferences
ACE 2007
Mobile Media 2007
MobileCHI 07
Perth DAC 2007
DIGRA 2007
AOIR 8.0/2007
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My Ph.D. thesis website:
Towards a Poetics of Virtual Worlds
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Misc
I also used to host & work in a world called StoryMOO.