Bitquid by Jeroen Holthuis

Graduated CMD (communication & Multimedia Design) student Jeroen Holthuis made this with Processing and Wiring.

The project:

Bitquid explores the imaginary dividing line where the digital world ends and the analogue world begins. The past 30 years we started to live in a digital world that in reality is really abstract and exact. Jeroen Holthuis investigates with Bitquid a way to make digital information and our lives tangible again. In our analogue environment, the transfer of information is never as exact as the transfer of information in the digital world, the protocols are very different.

Bitquid consists out of a system of hoses with a total length of about 800 metres. The system can communicate 32 bits at a time. There are two screens, the first screen shows an image before it is sent through the system, the second screen displays the re-digitized image.

From bits to atoms, the binary information leaks in our tangible world. These atoms are a fluorescent liquid that is pumped through the hoses. On there way through our analogue environment, these bits will get altered, because this world leaves a stain, a mark on the information. At the end of the system the binary information gets analysed again, revealing an image build of non-electronic transported data.