Cool Stuff for a Cool Planet: The Digital Ethereal Sci-Fi Art Project Shows Us Our Hidden Wi-Fi Worl
When I saw the images from the Digital Ethereal series by Luis Hernan of Newcastle University I could not help think of the scene in the trippy 2001 film Donnie Darko when Donnie, played by a young Jake Gyllenhaal, had a kind of swirling, colored light energy spiraling out of his body. The light swirl was like a surreal slinky pulling Donnie forward into a future that was still hidden from Donnie, but there, beneath the surface of what he could not see.
Digital Ethereal takes what we can not see, all the Wireless exchange protocols—Wi-Fi networks, mobile, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS, infrared signals, and through a combination of art and science, makes this hidden world which we rely on and connects us, visible in all it's wonder.
Web Urbanist reported: "Hernan developed a homemade gadget called a Kirlian Device that, appropriately enough, looks like a piece of ghost hunting equipment. The instrument “scans continuously for wireless networks, and transforms the signal strength to colour LEDs. The effect is captured in a series of long-exposure photographs akin to light painting, the results a mass of swirling colored light showing the movement of the signals across a space"
Perhaps, one day in the future, an artist-scientist will discover a way to capture the unperceivable but real forces of energy which humans transmit and show us what our emotions and souls and brain waves look and feel like.
With the way things are moving forward so fast, I have no doubt we will be able to have colored auras of ourselves hovering around and over us as we move through the wonderful wi-fi sci-fi world of the coming Singularity.
