PATINA Summary
We conceive of research spaces as holistic 'architectonic systems' rather than distinct physical, virtual or mental worlds. Building from McLuhan's conception that "we become what we behold" we propose that future research spaces will enrich the experiences of individual researchers and create new opportunities for sharing research and building communities. These research spaces will be graduated and granular; more or less material, abstract, private or public and transferable; and adaptable and responsive to the researcher and their context.
Drawing on recent work exploring seams between physical and digital interaction, Patina will design interfaces and infrastructures that invest personal control over physical, virtual and imagined research spaces and means of transition between them. We will explore alternatives to the existing isolation of the researcher characteristic of Augmented Reality, and the displacement of the research artefact typical of the Internet of Things, instead providing opportunities to create and share spaces that emphasise the primacy of research material. We will achieve this aim by giving individual researchers the opportunity to design their private, institutional and public research spaces; determine the spatial characteristics of the thresholds between their physical, digital and imagined environments; and provide the means to capture, record, replay and share their research in intuitive ways.
Patina will develop theory, techniques, prototypes and deployments that re-conceive research spaces as synthesised patterns defined by subtle interfaces that are enacted by our interactions. We will deliver: a) a theoretical and conceptual architectonic framework for research environments; b) a provenance-rich personalised research 'repository' of linked data sources; and c) prototype designs and deployments for personal devices that act as keys to unlock individual and shared research material. Our collective challenge will be to design, test and evaluate a framework and the technologies that will serve and support the transitions between different modalities of research space. These transitions will be evaluated through a series of iterative designs and deployments 'in the wild' that include the research 'home', learned institutions and fieldwork.
