Unit 3
Socially attuned networks: Agent x Attractor
Main Lecturer: Woojae Sung
Unit Instructors: Hanjun Kim + Jooeun Sung
1. Unit Brief
The workshop will focus on ‘Agent System’ in order to understand how social figures connect to people in the city. In the computational way, we can refer to social figures as ‘attractors’ and people as ‘agents’, since the behaviour of agents are mainly affected by attractors.
In South Korea, there is a unique job, “Mrs. Yakult”. They have their own personal territory for marketing, which are strictly distributed by the company. Not only selling yogurts, also they become the lodgement of neighbours’ socialising. 24h convenience stores in Korea are also common places for socialising in approximate territories since they are located on every single block, and interestingly each program of the store is different. However, Mrs.Yakult is relocating at certain times during the day, while the store is in the same position with different workers.
During the workshop, students will look into data of these social figures, which can be made reference to mobile attractors and static attractors, and will investigate how the pandemic situation affected the flow path of people as agents in their territory.
2. Tools
Rhino Grasshopper - setting up basic data sheet
C# - scripting behaviours and relationships of data
Adobe package (InDesign, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effect) - documentation and presentation
3. Aim and Scope
Collect and compare information of agents and attractors
Generate computational visualisation of figures
Find out what the problems are, then expand ideas to suggest better options
It doesn’t need to be design focused, students can develop their own way to tackle the issues
4. Expected Workshop Outcome
A daily basis project portfolio
A composite visualised proposal of social research