Immaterials – the form of meta data
Cover and article for Weave Magazine 05.11

2011

Client:
Weave Magazine / Page publisher

Collaboration with:
Christopher Warnow

Immaterials – Data between visibility and invisibility

Designers are increasingly faced with the problem of understanding and visualizing data-filled space and making it inhabitable. In their book Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, who conduct research in the field at the Royal College of Arts, speak of the electro-climate and the electro-geography – which can effect architecture just as the real climate can – and refer to it as »hertzian space.« The two designers think of electromagnetic fields full of data. But in times of geospatial data and location-based services data also assumes this wave field-like materiality. Are screens an appropriate medium for this? What is the form of these metadata?

Now that location-based metadata waft through the space, thereby redefining contexts and places, a new field opens up to designers: How will information be usefully integrated into the physical space? Inspired by the fictional illustrations by Ingeborg Marie Dehs Thomas, who interprets the spatial expansion of radio waves, we attempted to lend metadata a form. Using the light painting technique, we placed our idea of these data in a room, making it haptic. The resulting forms depict possible data sets and examine the design possibilities between technoid holograms and personal notes.

Immateriality as material is currently being discovered, opening up a new poetic field in which to narrate with space and information. Location-based metadata waft through the space, and are thereby redefining contexts and places. A new field opens up to designers.

weave cover and article

For the issue 05.11 of Weave Magazine we wrote a seven page article about the form of meta data: »Immaterials – Data between visibility and invisibility«, as well as designed the issue’s cover image in collaboration with Christopher Warnow who has already explored the subject in the past.

link list of the article

images

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