“The complex technologies the networked city relies upon to produce its effects remain distressingly opaque, even to those exposed to them on a daily basis.” – Adam Greenfield (2009)
Immaterials: light painting WiFi film by Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen.
This project explores the invisible terrain of WiFi networks in urban spaces by light painting signal strength in long-exposure photographs. A four-metre tall measuring rod with 80 points of light reveals cross-sections through WiFi networks using a photographic technique called light-painting.
This builds on a technique that was invented for the 2009 film ‘Immaterials: the Ghost in the Field’ which probed the edges of the invisible fields that surround RFID readers and tags in the world. It also began a series of investigations into what Matt Jones richly summarised as ‘Immaterials’.
While we were mapping out tiny RFID fields, we wondered what it would be like to apply the light painting process to larger-scale fields of Bluetooth, WiFi, GSM and 3G. What if we built huge light painting apparatus that could map out architectural and city-scale networks in the places and spaces they inhabited? We’re still very interested in understanding radio and wireless networks as one of the substrates essential to contemporary design practice.
We built the WiFi measuring rod, a 4-metre tall probe containing 80 lights that respond to the Received Signal Strength (RSSI) of a particular WiFi network. When we walk through architectural, urban spaces with this probe, while taking long-exposure photographs, we visualise the cross-sections, or strata, of WiFi signal strength, situated within photographic urban scenes. The cross-sections are an abstraction of WiFi signal strength, a line graph of RSSI across physical space. Although it can be used to determine actual signal strength at a given point, it is much more interesting as a way of seeing the overall pattern, the relative peaks and the troughs situated in the surrounding physical space.
After a week of walking through urban spaces holding and photographing this instrument, we have a much better sense of the qualities of WiFi in urban spaces, its random crackles, bright and dim spots, its reaction to the massing of buildings, and its broad reach through open areas. The resulting images show some of these qualities, and light painting is a brilliant medium for situating visualisations and data into physical world locations and situations.
Lots more visualisations and ‘making of’ pictures.
Einar writes more about this in an upcoming article called ‘Making material of the Networked City’ in Design Innovation for the Built Environment – Research by Design and the Renovation of Practice. There is also more detail on the project at the YOUrban weblog.
Related things:
- Immaterials: the ghost in the field This video is about exploring the spatial qualities of RFID, visualised through an RFID probe, long exposure photography and animation. It features Timo Arnall of the Touch project and Jack Schulze of BERG. The......
- New film: Wireless in the World 2 In this film, Wireless in the world 2, simple visualisations of radio ‘spaces’ are overlaid into urban spaces. The film has been made as a follow up to this video experiment and has been......
- Making radio tangible Next week we’re launching some new work that explores the spatial aspects of RFID. So before we publish that, here is a quick summary of existing work on radio, sensors and space that I’ve......
- Fictional radio-spaces In spring 2007 interaction design students at AHO participated in a research-driven course called Tangible interactions that investigated themes around RFID, NFC and the Touch project. This is one of the projects that emerged......
- Depth of field: Film in design research We’ve just had a new article (pdf) published as part of a Research by design issue at Form Akademisk. What follows is a summary of some of the key points, alongside the embedded videos......
Very nice ;)
Awesome concept, I still didnt get, how you did this
Do you hold the light instrument, that your created, at the path of WiFi signals to transmit LED light from them?
If we do it around the world, the streets, road, home and the whole world will become a painting :D
Thank you very much for opening my eyes to the unseen. Many realities happening at the same time. Beautiful project.
Bravo. A great visualization. As humans we take so much for granted, both seen and unseen. But perhaps moreso the unseen. Though it needn’t be visible to be a useful medium, it is useful to see this expression of wi-fi signals… as well as beautiful. Good design is often invisible, though good designers are always looking for unseen details and ways to further understand and improve a construct. The art of what you created stands on its own. The utility of the expression might have further application. I’ve often noticed poor wi-fi installations that had ridiculous voids and gaps, within areas meant to be served. (an example is the beautiful tented Denver Airport in North America.) I suspect that handheld and laptop based test equipment is sometimes inadequate. A better understanding, even a library of various router’s typical patterns, with and without a variety of environmental objects, would be a great thing to have. If not a cadre of war-drivers toting your unique testing device….
Stunning work folks. I’ve been playing around with the penki app from Berg. What camera settings did you use to achieve this?
Seriously this is sort of brilliant… I wish I could actually understand how you guys did this, but anyways, just watching it was something amazing. Good good job.
Brilliant ! You might try to use the same process and combine multiple shots of the same place in order build a 3D matrix ?
Interesting read, indeed.
It really is awesome, and the technique is pretty simple and logical as described by the author himself (for folks who don’t understand how it works let me explain in simple lingo) he took a simple probe which is equipped with about 80 LED’s and used it to access a specific (say his own) wifi network, the rod actually responds to the received signal strength, means as the signal gets stronger more LED’s will lit (for example: it blinks 80 LED’s when the signal is full and 40 LED’s when the signal is half the strength of full) and then used the camera technique known as light painting which actually utilizes long exposure time in order to create light patterns. I hope you understand now :o)
When I saw the video on YouTube, it immediately made me think of Edward Tufte, and his methods of meaningfully, clearly and visually quantifying data and explaining the effects of an event.
From that thought, I have a proposal that could be interesting (and challenging) for this project. Due to the overwhelming crisis in Japan, and the lingering, unseen and potentially deadly threat of radiation, could this concept be used to visually express differing levels of radioactive waves? The idea is: any group of people would be rightfully concerned (understatement) regarding radiation, but how can you express the nature of this problem as rationally as possible in a way that the majority can understand?
Clearly there are hazards involved, and a light source bearing vehicle with a video-equipped tracking vehicle would be wise considering the circumstances. This type of attempt could create a powerful visual quantification of something that is as abstract as the air we breathe, but the effects of which are rightfully feared. Can this project replace fear with understanding, and then rational problem solving based on the visual interpretation?
No matter what, the light painting project as-is is a very thought provoking project about our not so tangible environment!
Have you considered using a GPS data logger to record the WIFI strength at each spot, and then overlay that data over Google Map satellite images, or 3D maps ? You can build a 3D model of that if you don’t just collect data linearly. I wonder what it will look like if color is used to indicate signal strength instead of column height. May be some one has some data collected in their war drives.
This is so awesome, I wish I had thought of something like this. Light painting is so cool, you guys just took it to a whole new level – light painting a digital terrain! Sweet!
wow so amazing how the future science holds so many forms of unbelievable art
Very beautiful, but I think your conclusion—that you “have a much better sense of the qualities of WiFi in urban spaces…” is a huge stretch. This a fun, cool project, and it is a beautiful medium, but you’re taking yourself too seriously. It’s only art.
Have you seen the British Telecom (BT) Home Hub adverts?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=ntKy2Fu9RaU
I think they are paying a homage to this project.
Hello! This is a very beautiful project :) I am a hobbyist I hope to re-create and walk around the neighborhood to visualize wifi.
Is the schematics and program available for free?
Thanks so much and more insights for your team.
This is awesome!!!
http://www.nearfield.org/2011/02/wifi-light-painting
Cool – would like to get a copy of the schematics and build one !
It would be awesome if we could see wifi waves! Now you’ve got me hooked on it.
‘Illuminating’ – In every sense of the word.