Touch on display at MoMA

The exhibition Talk to Me at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York focuses on objects that create a direct involvement with the user. The research project Touch at Institute for Design at AHO is represented with two sub-projects that explore the RFID technology, a method for identifying unique items using radio waves. The RFID technology is already extensively used tin everyday electronics like key cards and Transport of London’s Oyster Card.

The RFID technology is invisible for the user, something that may create both problems and opportunities. The sub-project ‘Immaterials: Goast in The Field’ explores the spatial qualities of RFID by using a RFID probe and long exposure photography. The result is amongst other things an film that exposes the field of radio waves around the RFID transmitter. Immaterials features Timo Arnall and Einar Sneve Martinussen of the Touch project and Jack Schulze of BERG, a London-based design consultancy.

In the short film Nearness Arnall and Schultze have fun with this technology. They have created a technological domino effect that is driven by nearness, not physical contact.