Digital Spaces
A tool for creating intuitive connections between the digital and the physical (while at the Royal College of Art, 2014).
‘The button’ is an experimental product that allows the user to intuitively create connections between digital content and physical objects/spaces, be it by linking an online article to a book page, or hiding a password in the base of a table-lamp. It poses the question: could the physical spaces and objects that surround us become the means by which we engage with the digital world and could this facilitate an inherently "calmer" relationship with technology?
[1] Side-panel app coded in Processing + AppleScript, showing the digital contents of a physical notebook; [2] sketches exploring the form of the button; [3-7] placing the Button onto an object allows the user to link any kind of digital content to it, or vice versa to access already existing links. It works using a simple colour sensor, RF module and teensy micro-controller - allowing the colour texture of an object to become its unique identifier.
Digital Spaces proposes a new kind of engagement with digital information; where our physical work- and living-spaces double as intricate, yet unobtrusive maps for the digital things we interact with; like an intuitive, accessible 'memory-palace' that is always there, in the background of where we live and work. Ultimately, can breaking free from the digital Desktop allow us to regain a calmer and more fulfilling relationship with technology?
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Solo Project, Royal College of Art, 2014.
Exhibited at Show RCA 2014 and Imperial Show 2014, Imperial College London;