KEYBOARD EVENTS

Architecture and Information: An Introduction to Physical Computing

Δρώμενα Πληκτρολογίου: Αρχιτεκτονική και Πληροφορία

Editors: Angelos Floros, Aaron Cohen

Contributions by Spyros Papadopoulos, Nikolas Laskaris, Dimitris Papalexopoulos, Giorgos Papakonstantinou, Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos, Aaron Cohen and Angelos Floros

Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly & Futura Publications, Athens, 2012

295 pages, ISBN 978-960-9489-19-5

The purpose of this book was to bring the framework of physical computing into the Greek language. Physical computing describes systems that offer alternative interfaces between people and computers — microcontrollers, sensors and cameras, programmed to work together. What interests this book is what happens to the objects themselves: they begin to operate in an intermediate space, where the architectural field merges with information systems. The vocabulary for that already existed in English. It did not exist in Greek, and building it is what the volume set out to do.

The book comes from two places at once. The first is the editors' own route into the subject, through architecture and then through the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. The second is a course: Keyboard Events, taught at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, in 2009-10.

It took a year and a half to prepare, most of it spent waiting — the students' projects had to be built before there was anything to publish. A few months after they were finished, the works were shown at Dynamo Project Space in Thessaloniki, and the book followed.

Its position is architectural throughout: what is at stake is the meeting of architectural thinking and space with new technologies.

The method, in three phases

Rule. Reading, evaluation, selective choice and the categorisation of data into information — worked through in Processing.

System. Arduino, an open programmable microcontroller. Sensors extend the computer's input; actuators let it answer back.

Object and Space. The two are brought together to design constructions, and the student becomes aware of the new qualities that a two-way mechanism can give to architectural space.