Immaterials Uses a Wand of Lights to Reveal Hidden Wi-Fi Networks
Using a four-meter-tall lightbulb-studded stick and long-exposure photography, the designers “paint” a picture of network signal strength onto cityscapes.
What does wi-fi look like? It may seem like a silly question, but not to Timo Arnall and his collaborators on the “Immaterials” project, which combines clever design and technology hacks to visualize the electronic networks humming and buzzing all around us. Their latest iteration “explores the invisible terrain of WiFi networks in urban spaces by light painting signal strength in long-exposure photographs”:
Arnall and his team are familiar to readers of Co.Design: Previously, they’ve used the iPad as a light brush and visualized RFID networks. The wi-fi project mashes up all those previous techniques, which are a delightful fusion of low and high-tech. They built a four-meter-tall rod studded with 80 small lightbulbs and hooked it up to a network-strength sensor, creating a probe that would light up to a certain height depending on the strength of the wi-fi radio signal. Then they walked it through the deserted nighttime streets of Oslo, Norway, revealing a cross-section-in-light of the wi-fi radio networks that blanket the city.
all images © Timo Arnall
The designers’ wi-fi signal probe.
Arnall, Jørn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen got the idea for the project after visualizing much smaller RFID fields in a previous “Immaterials” film. “What if we built a huge light painting apparatus that could map out architectural and city-scale networks in the places and spaces they inhabited?” Arnall writes. “After a week of walking through urban spaces holding and photographing this instrument, we have a much better sense of the qualities of WiFi in urban spaces, its random crackles, bright and dim spots, its reaction to the massing of buildings, and its broad reach through open areas.”
The ghostly cross-sections are as beautiful as their device is ingenious. I wonder if Timo and his team could paint these networks in 3D as well?
See more: http://vimeo.com/20412632
Flow | Public Lighting
Designer / Manufacturerigendesign Lamp Info ‘Flow’ is a bamboo-made, self maintaining public lighting which operates on the principle of vertical wind turbine. The whole lamp disintegrates in nature excpet for the electronics” LEDs, wires and dynamo” which after time can be recycled without downcycling.The light sources situated at the ends of the windblades can form continous lighting surface or slow, waving movements and play of light, depending on the speed of the rotation. Due to its spiral form, the lamp can hold the wind from every direction.
Picasso Drawing With Light | 1949
english/ In 1949, LIFE photographer Gjon Mili visited Picasso in Vallauris, France. He showed Pablo some photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates jumping in the dark. Picasso was immediately inspired, these photos were the result.
español/ En 1949, el fotógrafo de LIFE Gjon Mili visitó a Picasso en Vallauris, Francia. Le mostró a Pablo algunas fotografías de patinadores sobre hielo con luces diminutas fijadas a sus patines saltando en la oscuridad. Picasso fue inspirado inmediatamente, estas fotos fueron el resultado.
