Analog In, Digital Out: Brendan Dawes on Interaction Design

20. Walk On By

I’ve always been keen on transforming a seemingly mundane action or event into something else—be it an image, animation, sound, or a combination of all three. I can add on another layer by making random people or objects actually influence the output—and all the better if those people or objects are thousands of miles away.

Let’s take the action of walking, for instance. We don’t usually think of walking as a creative endeavor, of course. But as we walk, our speed and pace send out numbers that are invisible to the eye but very usable to a piece of software that can contort them into something else. So one day I thought, Let’s take ...