infobreath

Christopher Robbins used Carnivore for his project titled infobreath. The idea is that we live in a world where the air around us is abound with bits of information floating around through the wireless networks computers have created. These pieces of information are likened to carbon dioxide and oxygen, elements vital to the lives of plants and humans. When the cyber flower is breathed on, it picks up wireless signals that are in the area nearby it. A microcontroller that links the flower to a computer formats the signals and sends them to the computer, which projects them into the air where the observer is breathing on the flower. The signals are turned into letters and numbers that the observer can recognize. The plant searches specifically for information that one person is sending to another, making it look like there is communication between the plant and the observer.

To me, this project exemplifies another definition of art. It is taking something we can not see and turning it into something that we can visualize. We can also visualize the bits of information, the different symbols, as the elements that make up the air we breathe. Natural air contains a mixture of gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, and carbon dioxide. Today, we could think of our air as also containing data provided by wireless networks.