Im Netz der Dinge | On the Internet of Things

Connectivity seems to be the non-plus-ultra these days. After connecting people allowing them to communicate everywhere, a new wave of networks is forming. Our smart phones turn into a universal remote control for our surroundings, helping to perceive and control the physical world through touchscreens. IoT or the internet of things means that objects themselves become part of this network now as well. This sounds exciting and frightening at the same time: on the one hand it might be attractive to speculate that the rich repertoire of physical interactions regains importance – after being reduced to a tapping a swiping finger tip for so long – on the other hand, invisible nets around us trigger a notion of entanglement. IoT is a fact and is happening already, so we should engage in this development to consciously influence the design of it.

This project is about exploring the qualities of networking objects or as John Maeda puts it: „when atoms start to act like bits“. Can we enrich the „here“ with qualities of the internet? Do things around us start to „see“ and „feel“? Can we overcome constraints of the physical space through the virtual space and vice versa? How to deal with the invisible? How to set up networks, how to detect them and how to terminate them? Is interacting with physical objects really more intuitive? Do we need to come up with new rituals to cope with these hybrid objects?

The goal of this project is to develop innovative product and interaction concepts, that utilize these new possibilities in a sensitive, meaningful and smart way by creating functional prototypes that allow to experience this new networked world.
The project is conducted and coached by the eLAB Weißensee Felix Groll in collaboration with the computer science department of the FU Berlin Prof. Claudia Müller-Birn.