today and tomorrow

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.

Timo Arnall modified his desk … just a little.

Underneath the desk I have stuck a grid of RFID tags, and on the top surface, the same grid of post-it notes. With the standard Nokia Service Discovery application it is possible to call people, send pre-defined SMSes or load URLs by touching the phone to each post-it on the desk. On the post-its themselves I have hand-written the function, message and the recipient. This is somewhat like a cross between a phone-book, to-do list and temporary diary, with notes, scribbles and tea stains alongside names.