How do traces of action look like in our everyday physical environment, if we think them as becoming digital hybrids? In the digital world, we leave traces, write, re-write, delete them more nonlinear, where cause and effect might not fit together. Traces are often unwanted side-effects of action. But what if creating traces, as a mishap, let us experience new entries?

Interactive Tablecloth:

The "Interactive Tablecloth" captures traces of objects, like cups or hands on its surface through thermal reactive pigments screen printed on top. The surface reacts on 35°C with a color change, also triggered by heated resistant yarns and pressure sensors on the bottom layers of the tablecloth. A microcontroller can track the sensed inputs to play it back either linear or nonlinear over time.

These physical reactions result in a more visible interaction between man and material, revealing the intensity of human action and social interaction. The tablecloth becomes a materialized communication path - a mediator.

Waterradio:

The Waterradio is a wooden board reacting to water by running different radio stations to listen to. The wood is extended through thin electrical wires in its annual rings, so that different spilled traces of liquids close different circuits to run a certain radio station. Further wiping connects other connecting points. Each composition of water droplets here represents a particular radio frequency until the water vanishes.

Hearing the Grass Growing:

(in collaboration with Martin Kim Luge)

Roots, as sensitive carrier of electro-chemical signals, can give us feedback about the growth of the plant through its electrical conductivity. What if we could hear the grass growing? In a prototype, a microcontroller reads the signals running through different wires, waiting until strands of roots interconnect by growing to play back hear beat like sounds as signals of being alive.
Imagninable is a whole floor for an installation. The listener of this surface pays attention to things, which seem not important to her or him in everyday life.

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related literature:

Waterradio and Interactive Tablecloth in T. Klooster (2009), Smart Surfaces
Interactive Tablecloth and Hearing the Grass Growing in Schwartzmann, M. (2011) Sense Yourself Sensing
Waterradio in Peters, S. (2014) Material Revolution 2