PrntScreen
Selected works: student and freelance work
Babel Tree
ITP Projects – Creative Networking. Fall 2008
A network of physical objects that promote interaction between humans, spaces and nature. A network that require the collective participation/action of people to become alive, encouraging social interaction and a sense of community in urban spaces.
Concept:
Why trees ? Trees provide us air, food and energy – in the city they provides us also with calm and sheerness against the city’s grey environment. The tree’s roots expand the tree throughout space and connect them with other trees creating networks and paths of communication. To communicate is to share, impart, to make common: trees share a common ground/soil through their roots; this project intent is to take advantage of these invisible channels and use them as a way to connect humans that are spatially apart. In the beginnings of human history, trees offered us their fruits becoming our primordial food. Now they offer us new fruits capable of receiving and emitting our thoughts – interfaces for communication.
Nevertheless due to the amount of trees, their roots create mazes where messages can get lost or follow unintended or unexpected directions. The trees roots route the communication flows at their will, at nature’s will. Thus the only available choice for the user is to listen or to speak. The user will be able to share/speak at anytime being his/her choice to interrupt the received message or wait. That’s how far his choice can go, when transmitting his message he will no longer have control on the direction it will follow – no chance to choose the destination. He will also not have a choice on the provenience of the messages he can receive.
How it works?
Using a series of small radio transmitters and receivers, the device is enable to send and receive sound (voice). Each device has a microphone that is connected to a radio transmitter that sends data into a specific frequency and a set of headphones that is connected to other radio that receives data from a specific frequency. There are several devices spread in the park but each device is not directly connected to another device.There is no direct communication between them (bidirectional), since the device that is sending data to other device doesn't not receive data from that same device but from another one.
Is by developing a sense of community that the message can be transmitted, since participants have to develop/build a protocol themselves to let the meaning emerge. This projects works as an experiment in communication, exploring the concept of networks and protocols.
To talk you need to continually press a switch in order to start sending messages. While talking and transmitting the object lights up to give visual feedback that the node is transmitting. Once a message is received, the node starts blinking. The user ear the message using headphones.
Using a series of small radio transmitters and receivers, the device is enable to send and receive sound (voice). Each device has a microphone that is connected to a radio transmitter that sends data into a specific frequency and a set of headphones that is connected to other radio that receives data from a specific frequency. There are several devices spread in the park but each device is not directly connected to another device.There is no direct communication between them (bidirectional), since the device that is sending data to other device doesn't not receive data from that same device but from another one.
Is by developing a sense of community that the message can be transmitted, since participants have to develop/build a protocol themselves to let the meaning emerge. This projects works as an experiment in communication, exploring the concept of networks and protocols.
Interaction
To talk you need to continually press a switch in order to start sending messages. While talking and transmitting the object lights up to give visual feedback that the node is transmitting. Once a message is received, the node starts blinking. The user ear the message using headphones.
Software Prototype
At the same time that the physical prototype was build, a software simulation was created in order to study the network and show how the communication between these devices could work, a possible scenario. Made in Processing, using the Network library, the software consist in a server program and a client. The server software allows to visualize the processes and communication that exist in the network. The client software simulates the functionality of the physical objects. A circle divided in two represents the input (left side) and output (right side) of each node/object. There are 4 nodes in the network and each one can send a message (a color). The only rule that exists in this study is the fact that once a node receive a specific message (a color), it has to reply to the next node the same message (the same color). But nothing stops each node to start sending a message. Several messages ( that represents more the same context of conversation- here it works more a metaphor) can circulate at the same time in the network ( when you see several colors in the video example) and it is up to the participants to try to make sense of the system and learn to stop and think about it and wait till they get a message to send to the other node and stop sending and creating more noise. ( when all nodes have the same color). Even if this is the desire outcome of the experiment, the result is open to the interpretation and experimentation of the participants.
At the same time that the physical prototype was build, a software simulation was created in order to study the network and show how the communication between these devices could work, a possible scenario. Made in Processing, using the Network library, the software consist in a server program and a client. The server software allows to visualize the processes and communication that exist in the network. The client software simulates the functionality of the physical objects. A circle divided in two represents the input (left side) and output (right side) of each node/object. There are 4 nodes in the network and each one can send a message (a color). The only rule that exists in this study is the fact that once a node receive a specific message (a color), it has to reply to the next node the same message (the same color). But nothing stops each node to start sending a message. Several messages ( that represents more the same context of conversation- here it works more a metaphor) can circulate at the same time in the network ( when you see several colors in the video example) and it is up to the participants to try to make sense of the system and learn to stop and think about it and wait till they get a message to send to the other node and stop sending and creating more noise. ( when all nodes have the same color). Even if this is the desire outcome of the experiment, the result is open to the interpretation and experimentation of the participants.