The digital bit is everywhere, pixels can be found by the billion. However, as an isolated signal, it is worthless. Only in unison do digital signals have the potential to create meaning and beauty. For this reason, as part of my diploma studies I have attempted to find a “pixel” that, while being capable of producing a picture as a result of coalescing with other pixels, is also discernible as a single entity and elicits a certain aesthetic fascination.
Our sensory experience depends on electromagnetic waves. Although four of the human senses are not affected by light, the perception of light is in fact considered the most important of the senses in healthy people. What is interesting is that the same physical waves that allow us to see can be used in another frequency for the invisible transfer of digital data. Data and vision, perception and invisibility, together they form an interesting coexistence. The installation “for those who see” demonstrates this interplay by showing how a phenomenon which is actually invisible becomes a visibly perceptible “pixel”.
Sound pressure, created by means of a loud speaker located in a rectangular box, churns the air around a circular opening so that a vortex ring is created. The energy produced by the sound provides the vortex ring with momentum—invisible, just like the sound itself. This aesthetic phenomenon is only made visible by means of mist. If knocked, the vortex ring moves linearly in the air for a moment before it gradually loses mist and vorticity and disperses.
The basic structure of the installation is made out of a matrix of 7 by 7 boxes. Released singly into the air, the individual rings are perceived during their brief trajectory as forming patterns, surfaces, symbols and entities.
Although our visual perception is highly attuned to recognizing concrete information, this installation offers the opportunity to experience a moment of visual freedom: depending on his focus, the viewer is invited to contemplate at times the overall picture, at other times a small part of it, and to witness aesthetically how fascinating it can be to see something previously invisible to the naked eye.

Links: www.bitsbeauty.de/for-those-who-see/

Mentoring: Jana Patz, Burkhard Schmitz, Walter Scheiffele. Thanks to: Benjamin Frenzel, my bitsbeauty team.

Daniel Schulze (DE), his work encompasses the fields of interaction design and physical computing and has been shown at Ars Electronica, Linz, the Jewish Museum, Berlin, and the Museum for Communication, Berlin. In 2009 Daniel Schulze founded his own company, bitsbeauty, and since then has described his work as digital design—a hybrid of art, design and technology. His work has included a piece for the touring exhibition “Die Sprache des Geldes” at the Museum for Communication, Berlin.