Experimental Imaging With Smartphones & Sensors

By: | December 13th, 2014

Experimental Imaging Light Painting

Experimental Imaging Light Painting (Image Courtesy www.ciid.dk)

Much of the natural phenomena we know to exist is beyond our senses. We must use modern technology to detect and display what our eyes can’t see. Now, artists are using experimental imaging with smartphones and sensors to create modern art.

Smartphones And Sensors: Another Cool Application

Nearly everyone has once held a compass in hand and seen the needle spin as it lines up with the Earth’s magnetic fields. Today, smart phones are built to include internal magnetic sensors that detect North and identify the direction Earth’s magnetic field. When smart phones give owners directions they use GPS data to pinpoint location and accelerometers and magnetometers to sense which direction a user is headed in.

Light Painting

Light Painting (Image Courtesy www.ciid.dk)

At the Copenhagen Institute Of Interaction Design (CIID) researchers Luke Sturgeon and Shamik Ray are doing research in experimental imaging, combining these sensors with long exposure photography and stop frame animation to capture or “light-paint” electromagnetic fields (EMF) around modern day electronics.

Light painting let’s us see electromagnetic fields. Sensors attached to a smart phone measure magnetic fields and a camera uses a single exposure to capture light readings. As the sensors are dragged across the surface of an electronic device such as a laptop the magnetic fields that are captured as images.

Light Painting

Light Painting (Image Courtesy www.ciid.dk)

For more images from the project, visit “Experimental Imaging” on flickr.

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David Russell Schilling

David enjoys writing about high technology and its potential to make life better for all who inhabit planet earth.

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