Malcolm McCullough is the author of Abstracting Craft (1996), Digital Ground (2004), and Ambient Commons (someday...). He has lectured widely on urban computing and place-based interaction design. He teaches architecture and information design at the University of Michigan.
Abstract
Rapid cultural shifts made necessary by planetary change generally place more value on surroundings. Ubiquitous information, once thought placeless, increasingly influences this transformation. Yet at this writing, “environmental history of information” yielded a null search on Google. Many people, particularly architects, believe that cultural outlook somehow lives in the way people dwell, and in what public places they choose to build and embellish. Fewer people see information enhancing the physical world, however. The effect more often seems like white noise, dematerialization, or escape. Where notions of a commons have applied to information, those have instead addressed intellectual property, especially where intellectual capital has been socially produced over networks. Now the move beyond the desktop into many more formats and physical contexts demand new approaches to shared resources. The genre of “urban computing” has arisen to explore this. How do the architectures of ambient information enrich urban experience, operate architectures, cultivate environmental sensibilities, or renew responsibility to some idea of a commons?
Lectures
It has been a privilege and a pleasure to have given many lectures in many countries. Now less flying is clearly my best way to cut back on carbon.
Blog
Notes, anyway, at ambientinterface.org
Networked Cities
A multidisciplinary creative seminar with a
focus on urban computing
Responsive Surfaces
Physical computing for architects
Representation
Information, instrumentality, visuality
"Perimeter Projects" graduate architecture studio...
(2007) DEWPOINT: atmosphere becomes figurative
(2008) INTERMODE: on the history of technology
(Architecture Thesis Program)
(advice from outside: 20 questions...)
Digital
Ground (2004): preface |
table of contents | reviews
Abstracting
Craft (1996): preface |
table of contents | reviews
Digital
Design Media (1991, 94, with
William Mitchell)
The Electronic Design
Studio (1990, edited with
W. Mitchell and P. Purcell)
Malcolm
McCullough
Associate Professor
Taubman College of Architecture and Planning
University of Michigan
2000 Bonisteel Blvd.
Ann Arbor MI 48109
USA
734-417-5707 (mobile)
www.umich.edu/~mmmc/ (this very page)