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	This project explores the use of physical fixtures and objects to display temporal information within an architectural space in a subtle and aesthetically pleasing way. Ambient fixtures present and communicate information through their changes in form, movement, sound, color, and light. Ambient fixtures are persistently connected to digital information sources, continually displaying changing bits within the physical environment. Ambient fixtures are standalone ambient media displays. I have taken concepts developed within the ambientROOM, and have moved them out of a small room into an open space. In the ambientROOM, the user is "inside the computer," while ambient fixtures allow us to externalize the displays and distribute them throughout an open architectural space. Ambient fixtures thus allow ambient displays to be used by several people at once. The design studies include the water lamp, pinwheels, and spline. The Water Lamp is a free standing lamp that I built to display information through water ripples. Small solenoids tapping on a small basin of water cause ripples in the surface of the water based upon signals from information source. The light projected these ripples onto the ceiling creating a very subtle and elegant display. I imagine the water ripples of the Water Lamp displaying the heartbeat of a loved one. This Water Lamp evolved from the water reflection display we created in the ambientROOM, yet the water lamp did not attempt to hide the mechanism or water but expose them to further express the functionality of the lamp. As well as exposing its functional elements, because the lamp is a standalone object, it is not tied to a single physical location, unlike the water display we implemented in the ambientROOM. This gives flexibility to experiment with different architectural contexts for the Water Lamp like the home, hallways, and public spaces, rather than limiting experimentation to the context of the personal work space of the ambientROOM.
	The airflow created by the spinning pinwheels as a subtle information que. The Pinwheels To further push the use of physicality as an interface, I was interested in using airflow to display information. On the suggestion of Professor Ishii, I used pinwheels as the device to display through the use of airflow. I built pinwheels on motors and mounted them within collaboration space of the Tangible Media Group. The speed of each of the pinwheels was controlled by a computer through serial communication. These pinwheels could be connected to the audio levels the lecture hall or classrooms to allow someone to be aware of a meeting starting, through the subtle increasing speed of the pinwheels. This awareness could come from either feeling the airflow created by the pinwheels or viewing their increase in speed.
	The Spline is constructed from a piece of flexible springsteel mounted to five stepper motors in a row. Rotating the motors causes the springsteel to flex into various expressive curves. The design of the Spline afforded a much more abstract representation of the information source and pointed suggested an interesting notions a device that reacts to information rather than displaying it. home || bio || portfolio || publications || resume Copyright © Andrew M. Dahley. andyd[AT]media.mit.edu