Touch is a weblog documenting a research project based at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway and funded by the Norwegian Research Council which will run until 2009. It’s aims are to investigate and explore:

Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that enables connections between mobile phones and physical things. We are developing applications and services that enable people to interact with everyday objects and situations through their mobile devices. Touch consists of an inter-disciplinary team involved in social and cultural enquiry, interaction/industrial design, rapid prototyping, software, testing and exhibitions.

The research will particularily focus on RFID and new technologies and standards that are emerging from the result of RFID’s successes. Touch believe that these “‘contactless’ systems” empower users, it moves them away from existing screen-based computing models, desktop, mouse and keyboard. Interaction with these new technologies:

is carried out with a simple ‘touch’, ‘swipe’ or ‘tap’. By using these simple actions, NFC puts a sense of human control back into otherwise complex and unwieldy ubiquitous systems. Touch is a natural, expressive gesture and can be used to create satisfying interactions…Touch-interactions are significant culturally and socially; our sense of touch is a large part of the way we understand and affect the world. Touch carries meaning and this changes according to context, situation and culture. The project explores these contexts through social, cultural and ethnographic research. This cross-disciplinary research will be used as a resource for further design and prototyping.

The Art Server is one of two Touch Service student projects run in March 2006 for the fourth year interaction design students at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. The week long intensive investigation looked at:

new commercial models for artists and galleries, and the social sharing or artwork…students placed RFIDs alongside artefacts at a gallery. When touched with an NFC phone, an image of the artwork was sent to a digital picture frame in another place…The prototype was very simple and loaded URLs from the phone that prompted changes on a standard web-page. This was just enough to test out the interactions between users at the gallery and in the home context, which proved to be interesting and engaging. The system reinforced a strong connection between the two users, and the appearance of new images created the sense of a ‘gift’.

Instructions on how to see a demo of this are available at _solder and bytes_:

A simple php server was put up with the help of my server provider.

The receivers “frame” was logged into this url:
http://skjelvik.com/a/v.php?i=1
using Opera Softwares Browser due to its full screen capabilities.

The RIFID tags that was placed on the physical work of art in the gallery contained the following urls:
http://skjelvik.com/a/s.php?i=1&b=1
http://skjelvik.com/a/s.php?i=1&b=2
http://skjelvik.com/a/s.php?i=1&b=3
http://skjelvik.com/a/s.php?i=1&b=4
http://skjelvik.com/a/s.php?i=1&b=5
http://skjelvik.com/a/s.php?i=1&b=6
http://skjelvik.com/a/s.php?i=1&b=7 (Default screen, blank)

When the RIFID phone was held near the tag, a url loaded on confirm, and the “transaction” was done.

To test the demo open two browser windows. One to represent the “frame” the other to represent the RIFID phone and the tag. When the tags url are loaded in browser window 2, the browser window 1 will update the art file. Note that to do this simple test we had to make frame 1 update every 20 second.

All research originally seen at _solder and bytes_.