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Design Research onResponsive DisplayPrototypes: IntegratingSensing, Information andComputation TechnologiesSmall Design Firm, working with Ben Rubin of EAR Studio and artist Ann Hamilton,augments physical architectures with responsive and intelligent electronic interfaces.Recounting their recent collaborations on a series of projects, Small Design Firm’s David Small and John Rothenberg discuss how such collaboration builds on generationalcontinuities of technological innovation, and the ways in which their work has developed byrecombining their individual interests and areas of expertise into a shared knowledge basethrough the process of developing specific designs. Physical space and projects thusbecome a site for the production of collective intelligence both as a design process and inthe use of the end product.

Ann Hamilton with Small Design Firm and EAR Studio, Facade Ecology, 2003–06Animation stills from the schematic proposal for a building membrane installation at the University of Minnesota’s Molecularand Cellular Biology Building. Ben Rubin and Ann Hamilton generated this concept animation, which articulates theprogression of light as it circulates through the building skin of the research facility. Small Design Firm investigated theinformational potential of this lighting system by developing a biological simulation for the generation of graphic material.

Small Design Firm and Ben Rubin’s EAR Studio, both of whichspecialise in computation as well as information andinteraction design, have recently been working collaborativelyon several installation projects, each of which integrateslighting, sensing and programming technologies in the designof responsive and increasingly intelligent architectural displayand information infrastructures.

Any form of lighting, when considered to be a material inand of itself, and inherently malleable and reconfigurable, canbe subject to complex but effective control protocols and thusaltered accordingly. Using custom software integrated withvarious sensing technologies (for example, motion orproximity sensing), the projects illustrated here explore thepotential of LED lighting strips by treating the qualities andintensities of colour and brightness of such lighting asvariables for potential alteration. What distinguishes the LEDstrips from conventional lighting is the ability to control theentire display with the same accuracy as a computer screen orprojection. To this extent, the display system can be seen asthe visual output of an informational, or computational,control system. Software, in combination with various sensinginfrastructures, absorbs, processes and distributesinformation into the lighting infrastructure, altering its

colour and intensity and transforming it into a dynamic andreflexive membrane of visual and graphic activity.

The first of the collaborative projects, Facade Ecology,involved the development of a responsive buildingmembrane for the University of Minnesota’s Molecular andCellular Biology Building. Artist Ann Hamilton wascommissioned by the university to create an installation thatwould work with and comment on the building. Theproposed design integrates a number of technologicalsystems, including an array of motion sensors distributedthroughout the interior of the building. This sensingnetwork collects and processes data related to the variousactivities taking place within the laboratories, such aspatterns of use and occupancy based on movement. Themotion-based information is then sent as raw data to acustom software interface which then interpolates that data,translating it into a set of instructions for the generation oflight and colour. The new information, materialised in theform of colour and lighting patterns, is then distributed to aLED infrastructure embedded in the building’s exterior skin,allowing the overall design proposal to translate motionpatterns into lighting patterns. By extension, the building’sskin is transformed into an active and responsive

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Early concept diagram for the building membrane installation at the University of Minnesota. The diagram maps thevarious informational organisms that inhabit the membrane, and the organisational logics by which they distribute anddeposit bits and particles of visual data. The result is an artificial ecology of information that activates the buildingskin, transforming it into a dynamic and responsive index of internal and external activity.

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Ben Rubin (EAR STUDIO) with Small Design Firm, Four Stories, 2004–06Interior informational display infrastructure for the Minneapolis Public Library. Incoming data from the library checkoutsystem is integrated with information regarding elevator cab positions. This newly integrated information is then usedto determine the distribution of graphic material through the display screens, each of which are situated in an elevatorcab. The graphic material itself is rendered at high resolution and then transformed into quantised data before beingdistributed to the LED tubes.

Photos of an informational display prototype in which LED tubes are arranged to form a large low-resolution displaysystem. The technological research particular to this prototype served as a foundation for the development andapplication of the display infrastructure commissioned by the Minneapolis Public Library.

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membrane, using light and colour to index the variouspatterns of use taking place within, exposing the hidden lifeof the building, including its internal research activities.

In terms of the computational process by which thesemotion patterns are converted into colour and lightingpatterns, Small Design Firm explored the potential ofsimulating biological phenomena, in particular forms ofcollective intelligence as demonstrated in the logics of flockingbehaviour. Flocks are in a constant state of flux. Each memberof the flock continually changes its relative position to othermembers, but not so dramatically that the flock itself becomesunstable and dissolves. Using these logics of simple rules forgoverning relational fluctuation between individual members,the practice’s software interface interpolates degrees offlocking behaviour particular to the users of the building as aprinciple for organising colour and lighting patterns on theexterior membrane. To this extent, the colour and lightingpatterns that inhabit the LED infrastructure assume basicprinciples of intelligence in response to the users of thebuilding, organising and reorganising themselves throughproperties of flocking – a general fluctuation of individual andcollective behaviour at the scale of light and colour.

While Ann Hamilton’s Facade Ecology project was indevelopment, Ben Rubin was working on another LEDprototype exploring related information, computation anddisplay technologies. This research led to a proposal for theMinneapolis Public Library’s new central branch whichinstalls an array of LED tube patches on exposed elevator cabswithin the building’s main four-storey atrium. Appropriately,this artwork was eventually titled Four Stories. Not unlike theFacade Ecology project, this design system works as aninformational index of various activities taking place within

the building. As the elevator cabs circulate from floor to floor,distributing occupants throughout the various levels of thebuilding, the LED display patches visualise informationparticular to another form and scale of circulation within thebuilding, namely the distribution of books as titles areprocessed at the library’s main circulation desk. To thisextent, the design infrastructure, again integrating motionsensing, lighting and information technologies, generates aresponsive and dynamic display that participates in thebuilding’s own logics of distribution and circulation.

For this proposal, Small Design Firm collaborated on thedevelopment of new software that served to allow for thecommunication of information between the motion sensorinfrastructure and the LED display system. The software iswritten in C++, building on a number of existingprogramming libraries including OpenGL, Freetype and IntelPerformance Primitives.

Over the course of two years, the multiple perspectivesinvolved in these projects allowed all involved to rethinkdynamic illumination as an artistic medium. As a designpractice, Small Design Firm is compelled to contribute bothinnovative designs and the tools to allow artists to producework in new technological mediums. Its collaborativeefforts have thus produced both unanticipated designsolutions and software that it is hoped will be incorporatedin future collaborations. Above all, the practice has begun totease out some of the poetic qualities of this newarchitectural material. 4

Text © 2006 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 46 & 48(b) Image courtesy ofBen Rubin/EAR Studio Inc, concept renderings by Adam Marcus and PeterZuspan; pp 47, 48(t) & 49 © Small Design Firm

Software screenshots of a flocking simulationdeveloped by Small Design Firm. The softwareapplication mimics natural flocking patterns,establishing a basic programming system throughwhich control variables can be adjusted andmanipulated to influence the organisational behaviour ofinformational and graphic elements. This application, asoftware prototype programmed in C++/OpenGL, allowsthe designer to explore the graphic and informationalpotential of flocking logics as a means of distributingand organising content.