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Your MacBook as you’ve never seen it before … with visible EMF field

Hack an Android phone to act as an electro-magnetic field detector and write an app to overlay the data on video of the device you’re scanning, and this oddly fascinating video is what you get.

It was created by Luke Sturgeon and Shamik Ray from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

We chose to make Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) that surround us visible. EMFs are particularly strong around devices with electrical and magnetic parts. Using long exposure photography and stop-frame animation we tried to ‘light-paint’ the EMF around objects like our laptops and an old tape-deck.

Through a series of experiments in photographic and lighting techniques followed by hacking up an Android phone to act as an EMF indicator and then coding our own app in Processing we were able to visualize how these fields change over objects.

Via Gizmodo

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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