 |
|
 |
|
|
||||
RESEARCH 2005 - PRESENT The large overarching point to my research concerns ideas about how communication interfaces mediate our relationship to the world and to society. Within this context, I study how information is represented through diverse communication technologies. My current and future specific research interests include the study of mobile communication technologies, such as cell phones, focusing on how these devices change social practices and the experience of urban spaces by means of location-based mobile games. I look forward to studying games that blur the borders between reality and imagination. I am also interested in the ways that the study of the relationship between mobile games and mobile communities offers clues about how the mobile interface can be used to create new types of games that include mobility, location-awareness and ubiquity, bringing social interaction formerly developed in “cyberspace” to physical environments. These types of games can also be sucessfuly used to create new educational and technologically-mediated learning environments. Adriana de Souza e Silva, 2005 Ph.D 2000-2004 Degree on Communication and Culture. School of Communications, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [Dissertation PDF 3.6 MB] This dissertation addresses how mobile communication technologies, such as cell phones, have an active role in creating new types of communication and social networks in a hybrid space formed by the blurring of borders between physical and digital spaces. It analyzes the transference of social places from cyberspace to hybrid spaces. Nomadic technology devices are responsible for producing new social networks in a space that interconnects the physical and the virtual due to their users’ perpetual mobility. During the last decade, multiuser environments in cyberspace have frequently been regarded as utopian spaces in which users could project their imagination. Moreover, digital spaces have been considered as essentially disconnected from physical spaces. Nowadays, the constant connection to virtual spaces, allowed by new mobile communication technologies, transforms our social spaces, as well as the projection of our imaginary places in urban spaces. This research is based on theoretical and practical studies. First, I analyze the existing literature on cyberspace and mobile technology devices, emphasizing concepts such as virtual, cyberspace, immersion, and hybrid. Practical aspects include analysis of current practices, via interviews with artists and scholars and an Internet survey applied in the United States and in Brazil. MASTERS 1998-1999 Design: Interface da Contemporaneidade. (Design, interface of contemporary times) [Thesis PDF 3.6 MB] Degree on Communication and Image Technology. School of Communications, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This thesis analyzes graphic design as an interface of contemporary times, that is, as a (printed / on screen) representation of today's society. The shift from functional to contemporary (deconstructed) design is a consequence of a technological change in the process of information transmission and reception. I define 'interface' in from two distinct approaches. First, the material information supports on which people design are defined as interfaces. This idea is clarified through a historical analysis of graphic design, including the history of typograpy, which is the basis of the visual communication process. Second, I tell the story about the computational development of the concept of interface. This story focuses on the perception that the shift of interfaces (information supports) has always been related to the way people deal with information. Finally, the last part of this thesis focuses on the deconstruction as a characteristic of the contemporary graphic interface. The presence of deconstruction is analyzed both in graphic design and on the world wide web. B.A.
1993-1996 [Monograph PDF 1.1 Mb] Degree on Journalism. School of Communications, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This Monograph has the objective to analyze the development of the constructivist design in Brazil. Since its European origins, with the functionalist movements (De Stijl, Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus and Suprematism), it is interesting to notice how and why the Brazilian design has always been constructivist. The Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (Esdi) synthetizes, within its own story, the history of the Brazilian design and that is why it is important as a case study. The definition of what can be called national design is another important point. The Domingo's magazine is the example of a, at the same time, national and functionalist project. This vision of the past will also give us help to question both the national design and the future of the constructivist design as a Brazilian way (or European) to understand the organization of space.
|
