Wednesday 8 August 2012

Interactive Moving Signpost can Revolutionise Art and Technology


Interactive Signpost can Move to Follow Significant Locations


I have always loved it when someone takes two huge aspects from totally different worlds of thinking, out of their comfort zones and then brings them together in a fusion of something quite beautiful. Andrew Shoben, a London born artist, is in the process of constructing a fabulous interactive signpost that brings the worlds of technology and art together in one amazing innovative artistic styled sculpture. This isn’t just any ordinary signpost Andrew is creating; it is an interactive aesthetic piece of innovation. The way it works is each sign on the post can point to different relevant locations, and follow the location of those destinations using a GPS generated feed.  For example one sign could point to the destination of a celebrity’s house whilst the other sign could point to the current location of the North Star.

This fantastic immensely beautiful piece of design will be called “Signs” and will be constructed in the lobby of Corelli College, the first London co-operative academy that is located in Blackheath. The beauty that I see is much further than the simple aesthetics of the piece; I can almost see the thought process behind the design, this 15 metre signpost illustrating a modern hub for information, almost a soothsayer for the modern era.

Each of the signs features a LED display showing scrolling text containing information of where the sign is currently pointing too, for example it would say Mars, as well as the distance from earth in miles which can fluctuate from 34 million miles away to 250,000,000, and not only will the sign post point in the right direct, it will tell you the current distance also which looks a lot better when the destination chosen is a flight, which also it can do. The signs can track a specific flight, displaying flight details, a dynamic distance and tracks the flight path across the sky by pointing in the direction of its moving geographical location.

Initially the locations will be programmed into the signpost, just to get the project rolling; most significant locations will be considered as well as some abstract ones at the same time.  Eventually the signpost will be connected to the World Wide Web which will allow for the sculpture to not only pull all different types of geographical information off of the internet, such as landmarks etc. but it will pull current affairs stories also giving information on things that are happening in real time.  Additionally the sculpture will also be connected to social media channels where different people can input their own significant locations.

What I love about this project is not the initial shock factor that it has standing at 15 metres tall, nor is it the fact that the signs move according to geographical positioning, it is the potential this signpost represents. From Greek times the world has believed in Oracles, a source of wide information, something with a mystical factor that can be seen as all knowing, and this is exactly what this signpost brings to the table. This piece of art could revolutionise the way we interact with data, making interactions between real world social channels to current informative knowledge, showing relationships between things that we wouldn’t have even thought of in our wildest dreams.
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Christopher Smith Digital Marketing Exectuive at BTC Group, Promotional Merchandise Specialists since 1977, Thoroughly enjoys all aspects of blogging, will blog anything from Marketing and Technology to Corporate Clothing and T-Shirt Printing

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