CEmCom: Culturally Embedded Computing
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Phoebe Sengers

Personal Website: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/sengers

I am an assistant professor in Information Science and Science & Technology Studies, and I lead this group. My background is in computer science and cultural studies; my goal is to unite technology design with the kinds of rich, critical reflection engaged in in the humanities. I graduated from CMU with a self-defined PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Theory in 1998, and then spent a year at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany, and two years as a research scientist at the German National Computer Science Research Center (GMD) before making my home here.

involved in:

Affector
Fear Reflector
Home Health
Influencing Machine
Traces
Industrial Graveyard
Alt.GPS
Spirit and Sound

publications:

  •   Sengers, Phoebe and Bill Gaver. Designing for Interpretation. Proceedings of Human-Computer Interaction International, 2005.
  •   Phoebe Sengers, Kirsten Boehner, Michael Mateas, and Geri Gay. The Disenchantment of Affect. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Special Issue on Enchantment. To appear.
  •   Kirsten Boehner, Phoebe Sengers, and Geri Gay. Affective Presence in Museums: Ambient Systems for Creative Expression. Digital Creativity, Volume 16, Number 2, 2005, pp 79-89.
  •    Phoebe Sengers, Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye, Kirsten Boehner, Jeremiah Fairbank, Geri Gay, Yevgeniy Medynskiy, and Susan Wyche. Culturally Embedded Computing. Pervasive Computing, Vol 3, No 1, 2004.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. Leonardo, Vol 35, No 2, August 2002. Narrative and Schizophrenia in Artificial Agents. Alternative versions appeared in Michael Mateas and Phoebe Sengers, eds., Narrative Intelligence, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003, in the SigGraph 2001 Electronic Arts & Animation Catalog; and in Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, eds., First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
  •   Simon Penny, Jeffrey Smith, Phoebe Sengers, Andre Bernhardt, and Jamieson Schulte. Traces: Embodied Immersive Interaction with Semi-Autonomous Avatars. Convergence. Vol. 7, No. 2, 2001.
  •   Phoebe Sengers. Practices for Machine Culture: A Case Study of Integrating Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Theory. Surfaces. Volume VIII, 1999.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. Madness and Automation: On Institutionalization. Postmodern Culture. May, 1995.
  •    William Gaver, Phoebe Sengers, Tobie Kerridge, Joseph Jofish Kaye, and John Bowers. Enhancing Ubiquitous Computing with User Interpretation: Field Testing the Home Health Horoscope. In Proc. CHI 2007.
  •   Susan Wyche, Phoebe Sengers, and Rebecca E. Grinter. Historical Analysis: Using the Past to Design the Future. In Proc. Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp) 2006, pp 35-51.
  •    Phoebe Sengers and Bill Gaver. Staying Open to Interpretation: Engaging Multiple Meanings in Design and Evaluation. In Proc. Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2006, pp. 99-108.
  • Kirsten Boehner, Phoebe Sengers, Yevgeniy Eugene Medynskiy, and Geri Gay. Opening the Frame of the Art Museum: Technology Between Art and Tool. In Proc. of Digital Arts and Culture 2005, pp. 123-132.
  •    Kirsten Boehner, Rogerio DePaula, Paul Dourish, and Phoebe Sengers. Affect: From Information to Interaction. In Proc. 4th Decennial Conference on Critical Computing, 2005, pp. 59-68.
  •    Phoebe Sengers, Kirsten Boehner, Shay David, and Joseph Jofish Kaye. Reflective Design. In Proc. 4th Decennial Conference on Critical Computing, 2005, pp 49-58.
  •   Kristina Höök, Phoebe Sengers, and Gerd Andersson. Sense and Sensibility: Evaluation and Interactive Art. In Proc. Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), 2003.
  •    Phoebe Sengers, Rainer Liesendahl, Werner Magar, Christoph Seibert, Boris Müller, Thorsten Joachims, Weidong Geng, Pia Mårtensson, and Kristina Höök. The Enigmatics of Affect. Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS). London, England, June 2002.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. Designing Comprehensible Agents. 1999 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-99). Stockholm, Sweden, August 1999.
  •   Phoebe Sengers. Do the Thing Right: An Architecture for Action-Expression. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents. May, 1998. pp. 24-31.
  •   Helena Mentis, Brooke Foucault, Phoebe Sengers, and Devon Welles. Provoking Sociability. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2007, to appear.
  •   Ame Elliott, Scott Mainwaring, Phoebe Sengers, and Allison Woodruff. Nurturing Technologies in the Home. Workshop abstract. Ubicomp 2006.
  •    Phoebe Sengers, John McCarthy, and Paul Dourish. Reflective HCI: Articulating a Research Agenda for Critical Practice. Workshop abstract. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2006, 2006.
  •    Paul Dourish, Janet Finlay, Phoebe Sengers, and Peter Wright. Reflective HCI: Towards a Critical Technical Practice. Workshop abstract. Extended Abstracts of CHI-2004, April 2004.
  •    Genevieve Bell, Mark Blythe, Bill Gaver, Phoebe Sengers, and Peter Wright. Designing Culturally Situated Technologies for the Home. Workshop abstract. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2003, April 2003.
  •   Phoebe Sengers and Chris Csikszentmihalyi. HCI and the Arts: A Conflicted Convergence? Bird-of-a-feather Abstract. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2003, April 2003.
  •   Phoebe Sengers, Simon Penny, and Jeffrey Smith. Semi-Autonomous Avatars. Poster presentation. 2000 International Conference on Autonomous Agents. Barcelona, Spain. June 2000.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. Must Design Become Scientific? DIS 2006 Workshop on Exploring Design as a Research Activity, June 2006.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. Autobiographical Design. CHI 2006 Workshop on Theory and Method for Experience-Centred Design, April 2006.
  •   Kirsten Boehner and Phoebe Sengers. Closing the Affective Gap & Opening Up Evaluation. HUMAINE Workshop on Innovative Approaches for Evaluating Affective Systems, January 2006.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. Autobiographical Design. CHI 2006 Workshop on Theory and Method for Experience-Centred Design, April 2006.
  •    Kirsten Boehner, Shay David, Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye, and Phoebe Sengers. Critical Technical Practices as a Methodology for Values in Design. CHI 2005 Workshop on Quality, Values, and Choices. March 2005.
  •   Kirsten Boehner, Jenn Thom-Santelli, Geri Gay, Phoebe Sengers, Jeffrey T. Hancock. Treading Uncommon Ground: Designing for New Shared Experiences through Appropriation. CHI 2005 Workshop on Designing Technology for Community Appropriation, March 2005.
  •    Lori Lorigo, Claire Cardie, Geri Gay, and Phoebe Sengers. Graduate Study in Information Science at Cornell University. CHI 2005 Workshop on Graduate Education, March 2005.
  •   Phoebe Sengers, Kirsten Boehner, Geri Gay, Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye, Michael Mateas, Bill Gaver, and Kristina Höök. Experience as Interpretation. CHI 2004 Workshop on Cross-Dressing and Boundary Crossing: Exploring Experience Methods Across the Disciplines. Vienna, Austria, April 2004.
  •   Kirsten Boehner, Geri Gay, Phoebe Sengers, Timothy Brooke, and Xiaowen Chen. Technologies for Reflection. CHI 2005 Workshop on Reflective HCI. Vienna, Austria, April 2004.
  •   Doomed to Repeat?: How History Can (and Should!) Inform Home Technology. CHI 2003 Workshop on Designing Culturally Situated Technologies for the Home. Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. April 2003.
  •   Phoebe Sengers. Experiences in Designing Experiences. CHI 2002 Workshop on Funology. Minneapolis, MN. April 2002.
  • Phoebe Sengers. Socially Intelligent Agent-Building. Proceedings of AAAI-97 Workshop on Socially Intelligent Agents. Ed. Kerstin Dautenhahn. November 1997.
  • Phoebe Sengers. Socially Situated AI: What It Is and Why It Matters. AAAI-96 AI and Entertainment Workshop. Portland, OR, August 1996.
  •   Rethinking AI for Art and Entertainment.” IJCAI-95 AI, Art, and Entertainment Workshop. Montreal, Canada, August 1995.
  • Phoebe Sengers. So Much to Do, So Little Time: Reactive Agents Managing Multiple Simultaneous Behaviors in an Unpredictable Environment. 14th Soar Workshop. Ann Arbor, Michigan, December, 1994.
  • Phoebe Sengers. Using Culture to Understand Agents.” AAAI Believable Agents Workshop. Palo Alto, CA, March 1994.
  • Phoebe Sengers. Soar in Oz: Building Knowledge-Lean, Reactive Agents. 12th Soar Workshop. Los Angeles, CA, June, 1993.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. In G. Peter Lepage, Carolyn (Biddy) Martin, and Mohsen Mostafavi, eds., Talking Back to my Laptop: Technology design, usefulness, and the humanities. Do the Humanities Have to Be Useful?. Cornell University, 2006.
  •   Phoebe Sengers. The Agents of McDonaldization. In Sabine Payr, ed., Agent Culture. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004.
  •   Phoebe Sengers. In Mark A. Blythe, Andrew F. Monk, Kees Overbeeke, and Peter C. Wright, ed., The Engineering of Experience. Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment. Kluwer: 2003.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. Narrative Intelligence. In Human Cognition and Social Agent Technology. Ed. Kerstin Dautenhahn. Advances in Consciousness Series. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000.
  •    Michael Mateas and Phoebe Sengers. Introduction to the Narrative Intelligence Symposium. AAAI 1999 Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence. Cape Cod, MA, November 1999.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. Fabrikation der Subjekte: Verdinglichung, Schizophrenie, und Kuenstliche Intelligenz. In Netzkritik: Materialien zur Internet-Debatte. Ed. Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz. Berlin: Edition ID-Archiv, 1997. Previously appeared in English as “Fabricated Subjects: Reification, Schizophrenia, Artificial Intelligence.” ZKP-2 Net Criticism Reader. Ed. Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz. 1996.
  •   Phoebe Sengers. Technological Prostheses: An Anecdote. ZKP-4 Net Criticism Reader. Ed. Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz. 1997.
  •   Phoebe Sengers. The Embedded World of Artificial Intelligence. Dichtung Digital, nm. 3, 2003.
  •    Phoebe Sengers. Wallowing in the Quagmire of Language: Artificial Intelligence, Psychiatry, and the Search for the Subject. Cultronix. Summer, 1994.
  • Phoebe Sengers. Anti-Boxology: Agent Design in Cultural Context. PhD Thesis, Carnegie Mellon University Department of Computer Science and Program in Literary and Cultural Theory. Technical report CMU-CS-98-151. Pittsburgh, PA. August, 1998.
  •   K. Boehner, J. Vertesi, P. Sengers, and P. Dourish. 2007. How HCI Interprets the Probes. To appear in Proceedings of CHI 2007, San Jose, CA.
  • Michael Mateas and Phoebe Sengers, ed. Narrative Intelligence. Advances in Consciousness Series. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003.
  •   Kirsten Boehner, Phoebe Sengers, and Geri Gay. Affective Presence in Museums: Ambient Systems for Creative Expression. Digital Creativity, Volume 16, Number 2, 2005, pp 79-89.
  •   Kirsten Boehner, Rogerio DePaula, Paul Dourish, and Phoebe Sengers. How Emotion Is Made and Measured. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Special Issue on Evaluating Affective Interactions. To appear.
  •   Genevieve Bell, Mark Blythe, and Phoebe Sengers. Making by Making Strange: Defamiliarization and the design of domestic technology. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Special issue on Social Issues and HCI, Vol. 12, No. 2, June 2005, Pages 149-173.
  •    William J. Mitchell, Alan S. Inouye, and Marjory S. Blumenthal, eds. Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003. (Contributing author; co-wrote Chapter 4: The Influence of Art and Design on Computer Science Research and Development)