Internet of Things as art: How sensors can transform public spaces

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Peter Prato

Future Cities Lab developed this art piece using sensors that immediately pick up ambient movement, giving the viewer the appearance of control.

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You never thought the Internet of Things would look like this.

Spider-like vibration sensors adorn glass panels at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), gathering information on their movements and reflecting back undulating light patterns.

The interactive art installation, Lightswarm, allows the viewer's movements to change the light patterns, while masking the technology with dazzling design. That's the whole idea, says Jason Kelly Johnson, design principal and founder of Future Cities Lab, an experimental design studio using Internet of Things devices in interactive projects to enhance public spaces. The studio wanted to make the technology behind the sensors more approachable by installing them as a natural and beautiful extension of the environment, Johnson told me at the recent RE.WORK Internet of Things summit in San Francisco.

This idea is similar to the product vision of Apple lead designer Jonathan Ive, who once said there is beauty in something that "works intuitively."

Architects and designers like Johnson are increasingly edging their way into the Internet of Things conversation. Groups like the Internet of Things Council, for example, advocate for the extensive use of social design in public spaces: examining how and why people interact with things.

Johnson also told me about another project proposed by his Future Cities Lab for a train underpass in Washington, D.C. Located behind the city's Union Station, the underpass is known as a dark and foreboding place for pedestrians to pass through. FCL proposed a suspended installation that uses sensors and LED lights to create an interactive experience that would be safe, fun and approachable.