jhw

Future Shocks - Discourse for Tech and Society in a Narrative Arena

2019 - game design - exhibitions

The narrations surrounding a technology are as essential for its success as the hard- and software. Get a grip on these socio-technical mechanics in this narrative duelling game. FUTURE SHOCKS is a game about inventing and narrating future scenarios: Based on current events, players create associative stories and challenge each other, to get an understanding for the playful and combinatory nature of technologies. Who can think in alternatives wins - and that Elon Musk wins is not determined!

Longitudinal associations of Epigenetic-g with cognitive development in children

2023 - bioinformatics - cognition - SES - multilevel latent growth curve models - R

My research project at the Max-Planck-Institute of Human Development in Laurel Raffington's group Biosocial:

Epigenetic-g, a DNA methylation biomarker, predicts general cognition in adults. We show a correlation with the cognitive development and academic achievement in children and adolescents in a study of 2016 participants in the Texas Twin Project. Epigenetic-g is linked to higher performance in math and reading from grades 3 to 11 and attendance of advancecd math classes. While a general association is supported, short-term validity is limited due to variability in Epigenetic-g stability during youth. This biomarker holds potential for enhancing developmental research and tracking academic progress across varied school settings, though care must be taken to emphasize environmental interventions and to avoid creating risk identities in children.

Idea generation and scientific communication with playful interventions

2019 - game design - teaching - workshop

Doctoral students of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, a biological farm in Tornow and two students of the UdK Berlin create game prototypes and talk about emergence.

Kein Bett im Kornfeld simulates a heated environment for discourse

2019 - game design - teaching - (science) communication in social and economic contexts

In the midst of a (not so) fictional environmental crisis, big corporate players, innovative technologists, sustainable start-ups and local farmers argue with politicians, activists and stakeholders over the distribution of EU agricultural subsidies and an up-coming election.

meta.dating - The Chatbotification of Brands and the Love between them

2020 - tutoring - programming - IBM watson

Chatbots were designed and trained to emobdy (anthropomorphise) your favourite brands, which then made discourse and love to each other in a digital arena - anticipating LLM's current agent-to-agent interactions.

Disconcerting - as we showed with the Bystanding installation

2016 - interactive installation - ML facial recognition - hardware - C++

Eight plastic heads on pedestals turn away as soon as the visitor tries to make eye contact. When the visitor turns away, the heads turn back and pierce the stranger in their midst with their gazes. Bystanding: No one intervenes or offers help, but everyone closely observes what is happening. This creates a feeling of irritation and helplessness. It is a call for each individual to examine their role as a bystander in personal situations as well as in events happening around the world.

Ancient Bots for Social Media - Using the 36 stratagems to influence Twitter discussions

2018 - python - twitter API - orchestrated bots with personality

The spiral of silence is a theory of Noelle-Neumann stating that the formulated opinion of others heavily influences our own contributions to discourse. We tested this with twitter-bots, which were based on the famous 36 stratagems of asian descent. The bots inpersonated real users, reacted to each others answers in selected political threads and steered online discussions, by either confusing, deflecting or answering to real and fake users.

spintactics is the reboot of your favourite spinning toys

2016 - C++ - visual tracking - procedural generation - openFrameworks

Your spintop will paint its way through the battlefield. Try to bring the most colour into the arena and overpaint your opponents. A custom controller and special attacks ensure color-splashing action. Play with up to four friends, free-for-all or as a team. Featured at Platine-Festival at Cologne 2016 and mba21 Dresden.

Serious Games for Hard and Asynchronous Environments

2020 - master thesis from University of the Arts Berlin

If we want to conquer distant planets like Mars, astronauts and their families will be the first people whose bonds are tested over interplanetary distances. A communication loop between Earth and Mars takes between 8 and 48 minutes. Because live communication is fundamentally excluded and we cannot increase the speed of light, new ways must be found to work on our interactions: mechanisms of uncertainty found in games are suitable for fundamentally shaping this new interplanetary communication landscape. At the same time, (serious) games provide appropriate mechanisms to initially address the more imminent cognitive, physical, and social challenges of space travel.

To discuss the psychosocial problems as complex units, cognitive and game-philosophical resources are employed, specific elements of gaming are compared with the problems of space travel, game mechanics are aligned with the temporal conditions of interplanetary communication, and historical case studies on the use of games under extreme conditions are examined. The insights gained can expand and answer current questions of space organizations regarding upcoming long-distance missions towards Mars in 2035.

Beyond the realization that there is potential for space agencies to learn from the discipline of game design, the discussion of interplanetary ludic communication is also a suitable occasion to explore the social, cognitive, and instrumental aspects of gaming on our home planet.

Purpose Prototyping is a gamified workshop to ask the biggest questions

2022 - game design - people development - re:publica - LudiX

In the LudiX research project at HWR and HTW Berlin, we explored games in working environments. Our focus was on people transformation through daring tasks and playful elements.

Together with our Berlin partner companies (Soundcloud, Siemens, Cornelsen, Junge Tüftler, HABA, Enactus, u-Institut, STATE), we developed interventions for people development, so that they may act as catalyst for more engaging and playful corporate cultures.

A leading hypothesis: Changes in organizations are accompanied by the personal changes of the involved individuals. The ludic circle provides the safety and joy of experimentation that can enable these developments and thus trigger collective growth processes.

Hightech-Intimidation in the F-35 Lightning II

2021 - design analysis - aesthetics and reception - warmachine

If the development of military fighter planes were only to follow the objective of creating the fastest and most efficient machines of their kind, while under the pressure of cost-benefit calculations, one must subsequently wonder about any aesthetic power inherent to the finished product. One can speculate about whether a visual impact is deliberately induced or merely a spandrel, the result of military and engineering necessities. In both cases, the visual design of modern warplanes emphasizes the fascination, that many people feel for them - and what does it do with us, that the guns, bombs and rockets are hidden away beneath hightech surfaces?

Review your Menschenbild with this set of cards

2019 - card design - writing

Often we find, that behind our differing arguments lie conceptual variations in how we perceive us, the humans. 18 playing cards (there are that many and more concepts of man, each with a latin suffix) can be used to facilitate discussions about your values and morals. For sure you know about homo sapiens and homo socio-oeconomicus, but what about the herusticus or homo ludens*?

Understanding strategy with a syntax for procedural generation

2018 - generative design - C++ - openFrameworks

How can strategy be expressed beyond language? An algorithm combines strategic associations into a collage for intuitive understanding. The software provides cultural portraits of specific strategies from management literature or even custom ones, expressed a syntax of strategy which we developed:

approach ( act ( circumstances ( action:reaction ))) = result