Pinwheels

2001

Hiroshi Ishii (US) (JP)
Angela Chang
Rujira Hongladaromp
Andrew Dahley (US)
Craig Wisneski
James Patten (US)
Gian Pangaro
Sandia Ren
Tangible Media Group
Phil Frei

"Pinwheels" is an ambient display that spins in a wind of digital information (bits). The spinning Pinwheels allow people to feel the flow of bits representing human activities or happenings in the natural world in their peripheral vision while they concentrate on other activities (such as conversation) in the foreground.

An astronomer following the activities of a solar corona could install these Pinwheels in his or her home in order to monitor solar winds in the background. Being peripherally aware of subtle changes in solar activity leading up to significant events could help the astronomer time periods of intensive observation.

The basic concept is to make solar winds of ionized particles and all kinds of other information flows perceptible in architectural space as a "wind" driving old-fashioned Pinwheels.

Current graphical user interfaces display most of the information as pixels on a screen, requiring the user's conscious attention. As such they are foreground media. But our capacity to recognize and process information is exhausted when we are faced with too much data in the foreground, leading to information overload.

Ambient displays, such as spinning Pinwheels, help to solve this problem by representing continuous information flows as continuous physical phenomena in the background so the user can be aware of them peripherally.