Premises

When the computational elements are integrated with everyday objects and spaces, the architectural spaces we inhabit could become an interface between humans and online digital information.

Our life is surrounded by an increasing number of technological devices, all of them able to gather and/or deliver some type of data from and into the networks.

Connected communities have the potential to support a wide variety of activities related to information seeking, information provision, and information sharing, humans learn better by actively participating in the construction of collective.

Motivation

The box system proposes an open platform and a connected community to create immersive information experiences. This system will transform the passive consumers into active interpreters of information. This program hopes to lead to the development of new tools and methods for the embedding of computation in everyday objects, to create information containing objects, researching on how new functionality and new use can emerge from collections of interacting artefacts.

The Project

Box

The box system attempts to abstract information structures from specific contexts, in order to analyse the dynamics of information flows. Box is a modular system, allowing users to create their own platforms to, let's say, debate, play, ask for help, or simply to stay in touch.

Visual Language

A visual language is created for this project and it helps to better understand the intrinsic characteristics of information flows. It allows the visualization, analysis, and creation of platforms for communication and information exchange. The visual language presents analogies, and builds up on existing diagrammatic languages used to describe flows. (Unfortunately the meaning of each character is unclear in this Thesis.)

Operation

Boxes can be distributed around a building or public space, and share a connection with the internet communicating with a PC through radio frequency technology. Every PC acts as a network node that can control up to 255 boxes. Each box presents only one simple function, emitting or receiving data. Boxes are implemented combining a micro-controller, a radio frequency (RF) communication module and the specific interface of each object. The box system allows configuration of networks between information containing objects on remote locations through its online visual language. It provides a construction kit, a participatory platform to encourage discovery and exploration inside a community.

Example Implementations

Awareness

Presence boxes that detect movement are placed around the building. Their activity levels are collected, and their average value is mapped to the height of antenna boxes: The higher the antenna, the more activity is in the building.

Announcement

Subject lines of messages sent to the email group of the community are printed on a small ticker-tape printer. As time goes by, this piece of paper becomes an archive of the community's activities, conforming a meaningful diary for its members.

Archive

A recording box registers sound and stores it on an online buffer. The sound is played back exactly one year later through a speaker box.

Debate

Members of the community can post a message on a screen box by sending an email message or typing directly into it on the online environment. Other participants can vote whether they agree or not by moving the slider on another box.

Privacy

A void box connected to the keyboard registers and sends everything typed into the computer to a server. Other participants can scan the archived texts turning the knob of a security box.