Tag: derrida

The Internet Revealed: Invisible Wi-Fi with Light Graffiti

digital_etherealThe world today is permeated by invisible waves that confer the ability to communicate, share, download, upload, invade, spy and monitor. In other words, so much depends upon it and so much happens within it. As a result, it would be nice if people could see it for once. That’s the idea behind “Digital Ethereal”, a project being led by artist and researcher Luis Hernan of the University of Newcastle in the UK, that seeks to give visual representation to this invisible world.

By using different colors of light – red, yellow, green and blue – he was able to reveal the different strength of Wi-Fi signals in the world around us, showing the “ghost in the machine” as it were. He has called his device the Kirlian Device – named for Russian inventor Semyon Davidovich Kirlian, who discovered Kirlian photography, a technique for photographing electrical discharges, usually invisible to the naked eye.

digital_ethereal1As Hernan explained on his website:

This project came about as a design discourse on digital technologies, and the invisible infrastructure underpinning it. I believe our interaction with this landscape of electromagnetic signals, described by Antony Dunne as Hertzian Space, can be characterized in the same terms as that with ghosts and spectra. They both are paradoxical entities, whose untypical substance allows them to be an invisible presence…

Quite simply, the Kirlian Device measures the properties of Wi-Fi signals in its immediate vicinity, and shows a corresponding color. Much like the color spectrum, red is at one end, indicating a strong signal, while blue is at the opposite end indicating a weak one. As Hernan moves around, he uses long exposure photography to reveal Wi-Fi “ghosts” – what he dubs “wireless spectres”. In this way, his project has a certain spiritual quality.

In the same way, they undergo a process of gradual substantiation to become temporarily available to perception. Finally, they both haunt us. Ghosts, as Derrida would have it, with the secrets of past generations. Hertzian space, with the frustration of interference and slowness.

digital_ethereal2As he explained during an interview with Discovery:

The device is moved through the space, which is then registered in a long-exposure photograph. This process lasts for several minutes, and due to the brightness of the device, my figure is ghosted away in the process. In some pictures you can see my feet or even my blurred head underneath the light strikes… 

For the purpose of his project, Hernan built his Kirlian Device out of an Arduino UNO board and Wi-Fi Shield which were connected to a strip of LED lights. But he’s also released a free Android app so that users can try it for themselves, and invited potential collaborators to drop him a line via his website. In the meantime, Hernan is currently pursuing his PhD with the Architecture and Interaction Design group at Newcastle University in the U.K.

And be sure to check out the video of the recent exhibition of Digital Ethereal:


Source: cnet.com, news.discovery.com

The Future Of Education

Hi all, and welcome to the third and final installment in the “Envisioning Technology” series. Today, it’s the “Future of Education Technology” that’s up for all to see. Much like their speculative work on Future Tech and the Future of Medicine, they present us here with an infographic that shows the interrelated fields of educational technology and how growth in one will inevitable lead to change in others.

On the one hand, we see a gradual transition from the Classroom (i.e. traditional educational environment) to the Studio environment, where a peer and group dynamic becomes the focus, rather than classic teacher-student transmission. In the final environment, learning becomes Virtual, divorced from any specific geographical context – i.e. it happens wherever you are, not just in a classroom or academic institution.

Also, through an incorporation of various education and education-related technologies, six steps are discerned within this process. As usual the entire process is traced from the present day to 2040, with many of the necessary technologies already in existence or in the process of development.

As a teacher, I was rather fascinated to see this, as it illustrates much of what was being espoused when I was still in teacher’s college. Back then, the concept of the post-modernist classroom was all the rage, even though there were many who insisted that this movement had passed.

Intrinsic to the concept was the deconstructing the traditional learning paradigm and even the classroom environment. Openness was the new rule, individuation the new philosophy and building on a student’s existing knowledge and experience, rather than simply handing them the curriculum and evaluated their assimilation thereof.

Naturally, many of us felt the same about all the concepts and ideas that were being thrown at us, in that they seemed highly idiosyncratic and theoretical. Missing from just about all the articles, studies and lectures we heard on the subject was mention of how this was to be done. Lectures on applied technology and new methods, on the other hand, seemed much more effective. Whereas the theory seemed to be commenting on trends that were happening, or still needed to happen, these lectures seemed to be showing us how.

Kind of makes you think… and in a way, I’m reminded of what men like George Orwell said. In 1984 (Goldstein’s Manifesto, to be specific), he claimed that the advent of modern industry and education had removed the basis of class distinction and elitism. By the 20th century, when totalitarian philosophies emerged, humanity was closer to the state of true equality that Marx predicted than ever before. Granted, that road has been fraught with bumps and attempts at subversion, but the general trend seems pretty clear.

Perhaps we’re seeing something of the same thing here with the emergence of IT and what people like Foucault, Derrida and Habermas predicted. The breakdown of singular standards, the opening of discourse, the plurality of perspective and opinions. Perhaps they weren’t just speaking off the cuff or stuck in an esoteric bubble. Maybe they were just picking up on trends which were yet to come to true fruition.

Makes me think, at any rate. But then again, that’s the point isn’t it?