from lowtech.propositions.org.uk

LINK TO PDF of PROJECTS

This report describes the results of a collaborative research project to develop a suite of low-tech sensors and actuators that might be useful for artists and architects working with interactive environments. With this project we hoped to consolidate a number of different approaches we had found ourselves taking in our own work and develop both a “kit-of-parts” and a more conceptual framework for producing such works.
We had often found during design development in the past that ideas had to be prototyped both
quickly and cheaply; it was more important that such prototypes were functionally efficient rather than aesthetically perfect. Like many other artists and architects working in the field of interactive environments, in cutting costs and development time we often had to resort to a “low-tech” approach, rewiring keyboards to get pressure-pad input into computers, or using the monitor with light sensors and relays to get physical output from computers. We also found ourselves taking apart and reassembling (i.e. “hacking”) bits of technology that were not connected to computers (for example the flashing stickers attached to mobile phones could be used to trigger light sensors
when a phone call arrived).
We were certainly not alone in hacking technology to suit our purposes and we realised that it would be very useful for others in our fields to have a good outline of this approach and indication of the types of devices they might use. It also seemed important to describe ways that such things might be reassembled in a coherent interactive system. At the same time we wanted to align our approach with a general interest in “open source” design in art and architecture and to draw particularly on the application of “low-tech” hacking strategies to high-tech, but inexpensive,
objects, toys and devices.
The original intention with the research project was to develop four prototypes. Although we
weren’t sure at the time precisely what we meant by these four categories, for the purposes of having a starting point we were hoping to develop a “sensor”, an “actuator”, a “power source” and a “wireless communicator”. As we proceeded with the design development, however, it soon became clear that, depending on circumstance, “sensors” might also be considered “actuators”;
“actuators” could in some cases be considered “power sources”; a “power source” with a switch was actually a type of “sensor”; and that many devices are considered “wireless” even though
their wireless aspect might be the least interesting.
We had to develop, for ourselves as well as for the project, a conceptual framework within which we could define “inputs” and “outputs” to a system as well as the “comparator” that sits between them (drawing heavily on second-order cybernetic principles). Using such an approach, we were no longer limited to defining things solely in terms of single use (as the sensor/actuator approach tended to force us to do) but were able instead to define things based on whether we were looking at what was going in, or what was coming out of any particular device. Our aim in each case was to develop a precise set of instructions so that lay people could replicate the experiments with
devices easily available at low cost.
By the end of the research we discovered that we had developed not four, but perhaps closer to forty different devices or arrangements (what we came to call “compound systems”) and had a
difficult time finally selecting which were the most important for the purposes of noting in detail in this report. In the process we had also clarified for ourselves the “types” of interaction and system that we tended to prefer which gave us good indication of ways to assemble and choreograph our subsystems as a whole system.
We hope now to release the contents of this report to a wider audience so that the ideas can be used, amended and redistributed.