iTea

A teacup on a table that reads your RFID badge and ripples out what the festival knows about you, mixed with made-up rumors. Built in five days at the Mediamatic hackers camp for PICNIC 2007.

Concepted, designed, built and deployed in just five days, the iTea installation made its debut at the PICNIC festival of 2007. Six cross-disciplinary designers and makers turned it into an oracling conversation piece: drop your RFID tag in the teacup and it tells facts and “rumors” about you.

The weekend running up to PICNIC 2007, Mediamatic invited an international group of hackers, developers, designers and makers to collaborate on social interactive works at the RFID and Physical Computing HackersCamp @ PICNIC 2007. Mediamatic organized the venue, tools and supporting staff, and arranged with the festival to have the resulting installations displayed on show.

Our six-star multi-disciplinary talent team, completed by Erik Borra, Vlad Trifa, David Kousemaker, Don Blaauw and Esther Weltevrede, were strong concepters, designers, developers (frontend and backend) and practical makers. Special about the team was that we shared multiple talents, so that each could play their part in multiple specialized sub-teams: design, construction and development. This let us work in parallel and reach all our goals in the tight timeframe.

iTea started as an awareness-raising installation that would show the public footprint you leave behind on the internet. It went through several iterations, from computer vision tracking people’s movements to having multiple users play at once. We ended up with a simple idea: a small, high standing table with a teacup in the middle. When you drop your RFID tag in the cup, a ripple animation spreads out from underneath it and spells out your online presence. (All festival and conference attendees had a personal RFID tag on their badge.)

From the RFID chip (the same kind of contactless chip which is used in the public transport OV-card or a library card) we read the profile number in the festival database, looked up the name and profile, and ran a Google query for sentences containing that name. These facts were mixed with results of queries on just the first name, afterwards completed with the last name, creating false statements (digitally artefacted rumors) about this person.

After a few bugs fixed while already on show, the piece turned out popular. A table with an eye-catching animation, where several people could gather, hang out and talk, attracted many visitors. Seeing your name and online facts stream by, mixed with obviously false ones, was social, funny and awkward at the same time, creating enthusiastic crowds and sparked lively conversations. Our goal, raising awareness about how personal information spreads online and starting a discussion on digital privacy, was reached.

Mediamatic liked the piece so much that they later commissioned two more iTea installations, improved for portability so they could be transported and set up at other festivals and venues.