Matt Richardson / NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program
Fade Away
NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program
Fade Away
Fade Away
Fade Away is an interactive installation that performs a twitter search for the term “fade away” and uses an ultra violet laser diode to write these tweets on a phosphorescent surface.
2. The Brief: Summarize the problem you set out to solve. What was the context for the project, and what was the challenge posed to you?Some people say that what you put on the internet never goes away. Perhaps it’s just a cautious way of thinking about what you upload, but in reality, things really do fade away. And if a particular datum isn’t ever completely eradicated in your lifetime, it gets diluted among the huge amount of data that get uploaded everyday. Fade away was created to explore this theme.
3. The Intent: What point of view did you bring to the project, and were there additional criteria that you added to the brief?Viewers see internet data fading away in front of their eyes, prompting the discussion of the persistence of data online.
4. The Process: Describe the rigor that informed your project. (Research, ethnography, subject matter experts, materials exploration, technology, iteration, testing, etc., as applicable.) What stakeholder interests did you consider? (Audience, business, organization, labor, manufacturing, distribution, etc., as applicable)Most research went into mechanical look and feel of the project to get the desired results
5. The Value: How does your project earn its keep in the world? What is its value? What is its impact? (Social, educational, economic, paradigm-shifting, sustainable, environmental, cultural, gladdening, etc.)Fade Away makes a novel statement in a novel way.
This work was very strong. It refers to early work with responsive inks by Random International in 2005. It’s technically ambitious but the description identifies that the purpose was solely novelty. I don’t feel that this work culturally ambitious enough, tweets against a hash tag demonstrated potential but went no further. In that this was the only way it appeared one could affect it’s behaviour it represented no leaps of thinking in interaction, only display. – Jack Schulze