Visualising Electromagnetic Fields
'Light paintings' that reveal the invisible electromagnetic fields emanating from our household gadgets.
To most of us, what goes on inside our favourite gadgets is nothing short of a mystery. But what about the things that take place externally, the things we can't see? As part of a Copenhagen Institute Of Interaction Design workshop that called on students to make visible invisible everyday phenomena, Luke Sturgeon and Shamik Ray created a series of 'light paintings' that make electromagnetic fields of everyday devices observable by the naked eye. Through a series of experiments employing stop-frame animation and long-exposure photography techniques, the interaction designers customised an Android phone and coded an app in Processing to visually represent the EMFs radiating from laptops, cassette players and such. The images are eerie and ethereal, and demonstrate a wonderful symbiosis between science and art. But what makes this project so excting is its foregrounding of a new way to start seeing, and understanding, objects we take for granted.
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