Drift Table

Look at this:

It’s the Drift Table, a prod­uct of the Inter­ac­tion Design Research Studio at the RCA, and no ordi­nary coffee table:

The Drift Table is a coffee table with a small view­port show­ing a slowly chang­ing aerial view of the British land­scape. Shift­ing items on the table changes its appar­ent height, direc­tion and speed. The cur­rent ‘location’ of the table is shown on a small screen on the table’s side, and an elec­tronic com­pass aligns the pho­tog­ra­phy with its actual sur­round­ings. Almost a ter­abyte of aerial pho­tog­ra­phy of Eng­land and Wales, donated by GetMap​ping.com, is avail­able for viewing.

Cool. And in the best news I’ve had for ages, I’m get­ting to borrow the thing for a month. My friend Barry Brown is organ­is­ing a project cen­tred around track­ing people’s responses to living with the table. I’m not sure of the exact details yet, but the plan involves lend­ing the table to people drawn from dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines - visual art, music, tech­nol­ogy, etc. - and having them submit a response making use of their par­tic­u­lar skills.

Should be fun.

Posted at 12pm on 10/12/03 by Jack Mottram to the technology category.
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