"Being shortlisted" means that the movie may be selected as part of the exhibition "Talk to me", on dispay at MoMA 24.7-7.11.2011.
The exhibition will focus on the communication between people and objects, and will feature a wide range of objects from all over the world, from interfaces and products to diagrams, visualizations, perhaps even vehicles and furniture, by bona-fide designers, students, scientists, all designed in the past few years or currently under development. Alongside Immaterials, products such as Mac OS 7, Tenori-On, Pac Man, Photosynth and the WWW are currently on the "checked" list.
The 4 minutes long video explores the spatial qualities of RFID, visualised through an RFID probe, long exposure photography and animation.
The problem that the video explores is the invisibility of RFID interaction, almost seen upon a kind of "magic" (how does it really work?). This invisibility is also key to the controversial aspects of RFID technology; once RFID antennas are hidden inside products or in environments, they can be invoked or initiated without explicit knowledge or permission.
Designers Timo Arnall of the Touch project and Jack Schulze of BERG took this invisibility as a challenge. By knowing more about the way RFID technology inhabits space, they could better understand the kinds of interactions that can be built with it and the ways it can be used effectively and playfully inside physical products.
See video:
The video has, since its publication on Vimeo and www.nearfield.org in October last year, been played almost 130.000 times. It has also been widely discussed and commented on various websites, blogs and Twitter.
The research project Touch (2006-2009) has produced new and innovative knowledge on the use of RFID technology. The project is now completed, but has initiated several new projects, master courses and PhD-projects, such as Timo Arnall's project Visual design approaches to emerging technology.