For some time our lab has been concerned primarily with the display of data in absurd forms. Starting with the doodlesnake project, which visualized lines via a writhing 4 foot serpentine sculpture, these displays began to take on qualities which were visceral and absurd visualizing data in unconventional and often satirical ways.
The introduction of embedded internet devices into these displays in 2005 opened new avenues for accessing data sets to be displayed. The Chertoff project, though very simple served as a proof that internet data could be easily accessed with minimal circuitry and displayed in a meaningful manner. Intended to address the meaninglessness of the Terror Alert Level system which had been introduced by the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, Chertoff consisted of a cutout of the head of Michael Chertoff(the chairman of the DHS) whose eyes were continuously updated to glow the color of the current terror alert level. This concept in live news display was further incorporated and refined in the Media Dialectics Titlefight project, which consisted of a pair of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots which staged a fight in response to the frequency of keywords parsed from the New York Times website. Both of these projects represented the display of realtime data gathered from the outside world in novel and humorous ways. They also represented a first attempt at the incorporation of recognized icons(Michael Chertoff was on his way to becoming an iconic figure representing America's new police state and Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots are familiar pieces of the childhood of many Americans who grew up in the sixties seventies or eighties) into these data displays.
An attempt to make the display devices effective on a more visceral level led to the Interactive Thermal Proboscis- a giant wall-mounted copper nose with a surface temperature regulated to be the same as the outside temperature. The concept behind this object was the basic premise that since we sense heat and cold via touch, the representation of temperature in visual form(standard thermometer) is inefficient. The replacement, which gives users a sense of the temperature outside when they rub their noses against it is practical in the sense that it represents the temperature in a more concrete and relevant way than the thermometer while being presented in a playful and preposterous manner. Through this combination of utility and absurdity, a new joy is added to the attainment of the data. This act of adding magic to the mundane through careful deployment of what can be considered, for lack of a better term, silliness is a primary concern of this laboratory.
Yet our endeavors stretch beyond absurdity. For absurdity is merely an aesthetic choice. The main function of these devices is to endow the data which they present with personality and context. Data can be sterile and faceless. A great understanding of the source of the data is what engenders meaning within it. To someone who does not invest, the stock pages look like nothing but a semi-random collection of meaningless letters and numbers, yet these numbers represent a massive enterprise which can cause great men to cry or dance with glee. So, in proceeding forward, we must ask, "how can one distill data into a new format which provides context and power while showing it in a novel way which provokes a sense of mirth in the user.
Continuing with plans to create more visceral responses to data in our users, we are currently exploring the possibility of working with non-traditional data-transfer senses- i.e. taste and smell. Though data has historically been transferred nearly exclusively via sound- through speech and sonification, and vision - via written language and symbolic structures, there is evidence that taste and smell could also serve as routes for this transfer. These are senses which affect us on a more emotional, animalistic level and thus are open to the transmission of data intended to have a visceral impact. This paper shall deal in general with the possibility of using taste and smell as media for data transmission and the aesthetic implications of creating such a device while dealing specifically with the use of coffee and tea to transmit news data.
There is a great deal of evidence to support the hypothesis that human beings may be capable of receiving messages encoded into the gustatory and olfactory senses. In terms of their evolution, they are direct derivatives of the first chemoreceptors to appear on the membranes of single-celled organisms(simon and Roper) and they are highly specialized to the point of differentiating between thousands of tastes and smells. Through detection of combinations of 2000 separate odors which human beings express receptors for, humans are able to distinguish millions of complex smells(Firestein). Likewise with taste, though there are only five basic tastes (bitter, salty, sour, sweet and umami), human beings are able to recognize millions of specific flavors. Complex interactions of specific chemical receptor agonists and antagonists create the resultant tastes which we experience these . The resultant experience of flavor is dependent upon the kinetics of the substance being tasted(Spielman). It is estimated that without context or standardizing tastes for calibration of the senses, human beings are capable of distinguishing concentrations of salt and sugar in solution to a value of 1.7 bits of information(Rogers and O'Connell). This suggests that chemical stimuli representing all five of the basic flavors could in theory express a great deal of data given a sufficient number of repeated applications in a short period of time. The kinetics of the chemical binding patterns to taste bud receptors suggest a flavor half-life of less than 200ms(Spielman) which is sufficient to suggest the serial transmission of at least 8bits/second of information via taste mechanisms even when dealing with only two of the basic tastes and excluding additional information available through aroma. By mathematical analysis of this data, we hypothesize that the extension to all tastes would make data transmission rates of nearly 1kB/min physiologically possible.
The concept of delivering information in this manner is likely to seem ridiculous, or even pointless, to some individuals for a number of reasons. It would be very easy, some would reason, for such an endeavor to have emetic results. Associated with the sensation of taste is a feeling of security- taste, after all, protects us from ingesting toxins. Mammalian taste buds are related to the behaviors of salivating, swallowing, epiglottal closing, vomiting, face washing and head shaking among others (Simon and Roper). The concern that a device which produces flavors for the purpose of data transmission rather than for the purpose of enjoyable taste could produce unwanted side effects is an important factor to consider but not a wholly valid argument. Perception of taste is largely a cultural phenomenon- the taste and smell of fermented mare's milk, such as is consumed in parts of central asia, is entirely repellent to most Europeans, as is the flavor of natto, the fermented soy beans commonly consumed in Japan. The boundaries of acceptable taste are largely acquired, as is the ability to detect subtle nuance in tastes. Therefore, the prospect of conditioning individuals to be accepting of any taste which such a device would create is promising. However, considerations of appropriate taste are important to the aesthetics of the proposed device as it will be transmitting data only to unconditioned taste buds. In order to not offend the taste of the user as it exists currently, a permanent and appropriate symbology of information would need to be formulated with discreteness of signal and overall palatability being of primary importance in its structure. Without this key piece of structure, vast amounts of data would be unable to be transmitted via taste with any regularity or reproducability. However, the creation of such a system is beyond the exploratory bounds of this paper and as such, so we must rely upon pre-existing taste symbology for the moment.
The need for an immediately palatable transmission medium capable of carrying a fairly complex message has led us to coffee. Coffee is a robust beverage whose aroma contains over 650 chemical compounds(Gelperin, 2002). The flavor of coffee contains sour, bitter, umami, and even recognizable sweet and salty components. Coffee is enjoyed around the world and is farmed in over 40 countries. It has a powerful flavor with nuances that vary greatly depending upon growing region, growing elevation, weather, roasting and shade. Although the ability to distinguish country of origin from the taste of coffee is not a widely held skill at the current point in time, it is a common ability among coffee connoisseurs. At a cupping, or coffee tasting session, it is often expected that the cuppers will be able, or at least attempt to, distinguish the origin of the beans from which the coffee was brewed. Some even boast the ability to recognize the exact elevations at which the beans were grown. It seems likely, therefore, that an average lay person, given proper conditioning, could easily distinguish between several coffees of different origins.
