Sensity
From www.stanza.co.uk:
I have two wireless sensor networks, one using motes Mica 2 and MTS 310 and the other using motes Iris with 420cc boards, both are fifteen motes in size. I am using these to take the data and make experimental but real time data visualisations that I call art but have cross over potential into other college departments ie urban design, computing and architecture. I am the AHRC research fellow and my studio is in Goldsmiths College, London. From here I can switch my networks on. In both set ups, I take the data and present it online in real time feeds iusing php and xml for input into flash and java based interfaces. There are several projects on my website that use motes that you might find of interest including “sensity” , “house”, “gallery”, see www.stanza.co.uk. Indeed these outputs are live data visualisations of various environments.
Sensity involves collecting data across the city of London which visualized to make art. The whole world is a dynamic real time artwork. The city data space becomes mirrored online and the environment becomes an emergent series generative artworks. In version one, I visualized the dynamic data around my district as an audio visual artwork. I have set up a wireless sensor network around my house in London. I live nearby a railway line, a factory, some trees and a mobile phone mast. (This is using real data). This is version three of this project. The city is made up of bits of data that change. This artwork captures this change to try to understand the underlying fabric of city space. The artwork monitors the environment for change and relays these changes via the sensors. In another version Sensity Sao Paulo I went to Brazil. Two versions where made, an online local version ( ie using recorded XML stream) and a real time version using java proxy and custom flash function for the XMLRPC. If you are interested in exhibiting this artwork at it develops please get in touch. I am available to visit your city to take data readings and make a piece of artwork.
The gallery interior has been made virtual and placed online. Gallery, is part of a series of process led experiments in data visualization within the context on an art gallery. This is an experimental engagement with data in the art gallery using sensors and CCTV. Stanza asks, “what happens during the process of visiting the gallery as a dataspace”; ie what happens to the gallery and what do the visitor do? The sensors are used as real time recording devices to gather information about the sensory behaviour of the real space. The gallery becomes the artwork formed by the emergent real time data in the space. The gallery laid bare as a work of art. Gallery proposes that the data is art. The art is a real time flow of the things around us that allow our senses to invoke understanding. The gallery space becomes the art described by the shifts in light, temperature and noises in the space over time. Or written another way ,this is a live visualisation of a building and its architecture.
House involves gathering the material, ie, real time pure data from sensors and using the data as assets, to make an audio visualization of the real house. House is monitored as an environment and made real by the changing data over time. A unique system for live XML broadcast has to be developed which archives and relays the data to the online systems and interface. A java and PHP system relays the live data ie a mote reader. The motereader software developed allows the real time reading of sensors across networks . Two version of this projects that look the same. One is uses recorded data from the sensors at specific times. The other version uses real time data over the networks and is online when the sensors are connected.
