The OpenPositioningSystem project by Philipp Ronnenberg (Design Interaction, RCA):

“This navigation system is open. Which means it is not run by companies nor control. The goal is to gather interested people on the web platform openps.org to develop the necessary software, hardware and testing processes. Anybody who is interested, from beginner to professionals can participate and contribute their knowledge to the community and this system. To use given things in cities and reuse them for the projects needs is one aim of this project. The idea is to use seismic frequencies, produced by generators in power plants, turbines in pumping stations or other large machines running in factories. These generators, machines etc. are producing seismic activity, distributed over the ground. The sensor prototype can detect seismic waves on the ground, walls or anything with enough contact to the ground. At the current stage of this project the sensor can detect and collect different frequencies.”

Why do I blog this? One of the most interesting locative media project I’ve seen in weeks! The usage of seismic activity detection has a way to collect information about location is fascinating and curious.