Personal Positioning System (PPS) explores the tension between physical and virtual motion.
In contrast to the GPS, which combines many data points to provide a specific representation of a position, PPS offers alternative ways of experiencing virtual location and presence. Overlaying intimate words and actions over the corporate outlines of the internet, it invites us to reflect on the physicality and intimacy of our digital lives.
The user goes on a digital walk of New York City, where each screen represents a block. The businesses of each block are used as inputs for a poetry-generating model, so a sonnet is created for every "block" that the user enters. When the user is done walking, they can download a PDF with all the sonnets as a memory of their walk. The background gradient moves with the sun in NYC.
This variable typeface, like the plant, blooms when the cursor touches it, exploring ways of communicating affection online.
HighRise is an online publication about housing that operates like a building, dealing with the relationship of structure to content on the web. The user scrolls each article horizontally, and scrolls between articles vertically, getting the impression of touring a floor and going up the stairs into the next.
Here my inspirations and organized into "rooms" of a house. Instead of links to move between the rooms, there is a black square or "doorway" to go into the next room. A bizarre mental map of this digital space starts to emerge.
Polluted Wishes is a website based on Pollution, a variable typeface with three axes: air quality, air pressure, and wind. Each axis is connected to live environmental data, so when the user enters a city, the typeface shifts to represent that city's air. The typeface is made out of particles, and when the user is asked to submit a wish, they see the particles slowly disperse and shift away, momentarily imbuing the air they breathe with their own meaning.
Since the thesis broaches the symbolic representation of space, the book uses directional symbols as a key.
Each of the book's chapters is assigned a different direction (unit of motion is left, as in going forward; unit of space is down, as in looking down from above; unit of time is right, as in looking back into the past). Each content type is assigned an arrow symbol, and within each chapter the sections' arrows point in that chapter's direction.
Within the chapters, each section is represented by a different kind of arrow pointing in the direction, encompassing a key through which to read the book. The key also includes other symbols that represent instructions and show up between sections, like "rotate the book," "reread the section" or "stop to rest." Overall, the book features 5 essays, 2 interviews, and 19 projects.
