Sensing the immaterial-material city

Drawing RFID, wifi, street markings, and painting the network

Timo Arnall and Jack Schulze’s research piece Immaterials is quite lovely, exploring the otherwise invisible multi-sensory and spatial qualities of RFID in terms of its readable volume, captured with a simple LED/sensor and camera. (This piece posted on 12th October 2009.)

Here’s their film, in which they explain more:

As well as the conceptual backdrop, outlined in more detail by both Timo and Jack, I particularly like the care and attention they’ve given to the visualisation, and the presentation of the research. This is quality design, involving physical and film-based prototyping.

Timo’s image of a physical RFID probe

It’s perhaps drawing a long bow, but in their emerging work I even see something of the early experiments of, say, Benjamin Franklin and Nikola Tesla in terms of understanding the behaviour of…