Thomas Langerak

04 Mar 2015

Sorry, the video is in Dutch. It was an installation at the 2013 Dutch Design Week exhibition. It “scanned” you when you stood inside of it and printed out all the information found about you on the internet. I think this is a really smart design to let people think about privacy. There can be made one major improvement is both the beauty and the ugly of the design.

What to improve is automation. Currently nothing in the complete sequence is automated. They let people “sign” something with their full name. This is scanned and sent to a group of people filling in a document and googleing as hell, which is sent back to the onsite location. This is a really smart solution if you do not have the technical knowhow but completely redundant if you know.

I think this concept is quite brilliant. It is a camera that searches pictures taken from the position you want to take that photograph. It is a “Hey, look do not take the photo of the Eiffeltower 100.000 other people have taken already” device.

What is less good is the execution and to some extent also the concept. I have the feeling they could have taken in far further. Offer alternatives, take the angle into account, be more rude. Next to this it is an enormous device that sits in a far too huge plastic box hold together with elastic bands. Holding the exact same electronics as in a smartphone. In short: they could have just created an app…