Nearness is a Rube Goldberg machine like you probably have never seen one before. It works with with RFID, so it means that the elements of the machine interact without touching. Nearness is the first exploration into designerly applications for RFID by BERG. BERG was inspired by “The Way Things Go” by Peter Fischli & David Weiss and the Honda Cog commercial.

Sniff by Sara Johansson, Timo Arnall & Einar Sneve Martinussen, Nearfield, is another RFID application. Sniff is an interactive dog that “sniffs” objects that come close to his nose. It reacts through sound and vibration while creating games through behaviors, melodies and emotional responses.