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Architecture of density, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

(Give a look)

Graphic language for touch, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

This work explores the visual link between information and physical things, specifically around the emerging use of the mobile phone to interact with RFID or NFC.
As mobile phones are increasingly able to read and write to RFID tags embedded in the physical world, I am wondering how we will appropriate this for personal and social uses.
I’m interested in the visual link between information and physical things. How do we represent an object that has digital function, information or history beyond it’s physical form? What are the visual clues for this interaction? We shouldn’t rely on a kind of mystery meat navigation (the scourge of the web-design world) where we have to touch everything to find out it’s meaning.

This work doesn’t attempt to be a definitive system for marking physical things, it is an exploratory process to find out how digital/physical interactions might work. It uncovers interesting directions while the technology is still largely out of the hands of everyday users.

by Timo Aranaal

Searchscapes, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

Each person constructs his/her image of the city. This image is made out of facts, memories, experiences, stories, news – mostly invisible data, and not only of architecture, buildings and streets.
“SEARCHSCAPES: MANHATTAN” is an attempt to create a tridimensional map of Manhattan, using existing data from the web.
The objective is to compare the city’s “physical spaces” and “information spaces” (search results). This is an attempt to materialize information: to give it dimension and physicality.

“SEARCHSCAPES: MANHATTAN” was developed as a thesis project at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University.

Fig 5, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed – alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure. Studying these changes from a critical point of view and anticipating them is the goal of the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative between the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the MIT Media Lab.

The real-time city is now real! The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed – alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure. Studying these changes from a critical point of view and anticipating them is the goal of the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

one of the most interesting project is mobile landscape | graz in real time

Territori in tempo reale by Carlo Ratti

Durex, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

Charles Booth’s 1889 Descriptive Map of London Poverty, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

“[…] once ordered a copy of Charles Booth’s 1889 Descriptive Map of London Poverty from the London Topographical Society. Weeks, then months, passed, and I heard nothing. I may even have forgotten that I had ordered it. Then, early one Sunday morning, I was woken up by the sound of the doorbell. An elderly gentleman in a deerstalker hat with a tube under his arm asked my name, confirmed that I was the intended recipient of Booth’s map, handed it to me, and was off. If only all purchases were made like that.[…]”
(via Guardian Unlimited)