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The following is a transcript of talk given by Ben Hooker and Shona Kitchen on 15 Nov 2002 at Doors Of Perception conference. Click on the images to jump from one slide to the next. A fuller, more multi-media explanation of this project can be found at www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/research/projects/altavistas.

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This drawing shows a proposal for a house built across a motorway located at the edge of the city. The house is constructed of concrete, steel mesh and soundproofing materials. What possible advantages are there to building something like this in an environment so noisy and hostile?

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We have become obsessed by the city limits. Specifically the extreme environments created where the open countryside rubs clumsily up against suburbia and the city’s transit systems. In terms of scale, texture and motion, these places are like nowhere else. They contain unregulated ranges of land for eclectic use – an exciting landscape of brutal thresholds. They are the perfect location for experiencing the ever-changing city – directly through your body or indirectly through electronic sensing machines.

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The proposed house has four main parts to it, each offering different qualities of interface with the outside environment.

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"A" is the main living space, the bunker-core of the house, completely soundproofed and isolated from the harsh roadside location. Air conditioned, temperature controlled, radio shielded.

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In contrast, "D" is a steel mesh cage built over the main carriageway of the road, totally exposed to the weather and high-speed traffic. It is a good place to watch the streaming lights of cars at night or perhaps the burning wreckage of a crash.

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"B" is a backyard space open to the sky. It offers fantastic views of the city’s aeroplane flight path holding loops.

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"C" is a partially noise-shield space but has a mesh floor with a view down to the edge of the roadway. A sort of verge garden.

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A closer inspection of this roadside reveals a dirt valley between the tarmac and the embankment. A turbulent landscape of dust and dirt, pieces of litter, burnt-out-tires, air vortices created by traffic, animals and plant life adapted to the heady, nitrogen-rich air. Like tending a garden, the occupier of the road-house can strategically position noise farming machines to sample flows of roadside materials and pollutants.

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Machines like this. This is a graphic representation of an Exhaust Inhaler machine. It looks like a kerbstone but measures particle toxins and transmits a constantly changing data-stream.

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These are Particle-catchers. Heavy-duty polycarbonate panels embedded with conductive gold strips. They are designed to get progressively clogged-up as roadside detritus accumulates. Every so often an auto-triggered wiper mechanism activates and a data-pulse is emitted.

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High up above the carriageway, dust builds up on the charged surface of a Dust Vectorizer. An aluminium sensor-mesh array takes size and shape measurements before it short-circuits and burns away the physical matter. The dust shapes are held in its memory for later use. Charred remnants of the material build up underneath the machine. So, in a way, it is a display as well as a sensor.

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This is a noise broadcasting device. Linked to other roadside machines, it turns their data emissions into a complicated sound burst. It does this by flipping the aluminium panels on its surface after its memory reservoir is full.

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Another electromagnetic display mechanism is a Solenoid Hedge. Solenoid foliage elements attached to a steel framework turn electronic signals into movement and sound.

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Clustering together sensing and broadcasting machines creates an electronic ecosystem. Tuned and tended like allotments, different ecosystems have different behaviours which reflect how they are maintained.

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Road-spanning houses are not necessarily built in isolation. This plan shows the interchange between a main commuter road and an orbital motorway. Many structures have been positioned over and around the places with the best sensor vantage points. A new borough of the city – An Edge Town – has been established.

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Signage shows the limits and activity of Edge Town’s data space ... the characteristics of its Data Climates.

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So, the city has been sampled – its flickering computer screens, merging traffic, cell-phone conversations, circling aircraft – and this torrent of data is channelled through Edge Town and its buildings, intermingling and becoming ever more abstract. The result is neither a nightmare of information overload not a nightmare of sensory deprivation. Edge Town is a place of stimulating vistas and cosy domestic shelters. A vantage point to experience the energy of the city. -- A fuller, more multi-media explanation of this project can be found at www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/research/projects/altavistas.