Presented by Tobie Kerridge at the Energise Hastings meeting at the White Rock Hotel 25 October 2012

1. Energy Babble - design
interventions for energy
reduction communities
Tobie Kerridge & Liliana Ovalle
with Matthew Plumber-Fernandez,
Jennifer Gabrys, Bill Gaver,
Mike Michael & Alex Wilkie, Goldsmiths,
University of London
t.kerridge@gold.ac.uk
www.ecdc.ac.uk
Energise Hastings, White Rock Hotel, 26/10/12

2. Research Context

3. • DECC Low Carbon Community challenge,
£10m for 20 ‘test beds’
• RCUK identifies Energy Communities
research call, 7 awards
• ECDC - 3 years mixed methods, practice
based, 5 energy communities
• Deploy platform relating to energy demand
reduction practices, fieldwork

4. Energy Communities

5. Energy demand reduction discourse, shifts in government policy, wide
range of practitioner commitments

6. Bristol Energy Network, Energise Hastings, Transition New Cross, Low Carbon Living
Ladock, Meadows Partnership Trust, Reepham Green Team, Energise Hastings

7. PV display at Hastings Trust, inappropriate technology at Claremont

8. Workshop with 30 attendees, includes LCCC participants, academics,
local government

9. Collaborative mapping of issues and notions of community

10. Future front pages and comfort diagrams to get at energy commitments
and mundane practices

11. Probes and Workbooks

12. Probes given to participants, they are drawn on and written into, capture
material that is used for making design proposals

13. A letter of confession regarding an “energy usage secret”

14. An obituary for an appliance from EcoFabulous 2011

15. Workbooks are sets of design proposals arranged by theme

16. A workbook page mixes up an informant’s comment, found images
and a title to suggest a theme or direction for design

17. Trying to read the meter,
with preparedness advice
for the end of oil blaring out.
A diagram of a design proposal where a gas meter box conceals a
radio with a transition activist broadcast

18. 3580 kW
From East To West, from North to South. One morning, a group of birds arrived at the Meadows.
Energy meters are remained as birds which speak about energy
usage in distant communities

19. web scraping
public babble display
multiple domestic inputs multiple domestic outputs
home PCs
low-range TV/radio transmitters
database
various media
multiple selection/
presentation routines
A diagram of a system that aggregates a range of energy
information sources to be parsed by an appliance

20. Design Proposal

21. Energy-Babble
Design an Energy-Babble system that displays material,
collected from some combination of individual,
community and public sources, to open and promote
constructive affect and involvement in energy reduction
issues and orientations. More specifically, the system
should support understandings of, and practices related
to, energy demand reduction.
A design brief provided the basis for focused activity

22. INPUTS
LOCAL CONTRIBUTIONS WEB SCRAPING
Hardware and software allows text and audio data to be gathered
from an open and extensible network

23. OUTPUTS
A server process aggregates and transforms input sources into
audio files that are broadcast by each device

24. Experience prototypes are used to test the system, comprise of computer, speaker
and microphone and rely on network

25. Embodying the system

26. Reconfiguring textures

27. research features

28. •ECDC mixes methods, is practice
based, engages energy communities
•Probes, workbooks, proposals
alongside fieldwork and workshops
•Designs emerge through and are
entanglements of these materials
•Anticipate and will support
modifications during deployment

29. Energy Babble - design
interventions for energy
reduction communities
Tobie Kerridge & Liliana Ovalle
with Matthew Plumber-Fernandez,
Jennifer Gabrys, Bill Gaver,
Mike Michael & Alex Wilkie, Goldsmiths,
University of London
t.kerridge@gold.ac.uk
www.ecdc.ac.uk
Energise Hastings, White Rock Hotel, 26/10/12