Elements of Consumption (EoC)

Why look as boring engineering-type graphs when you could look at nice abstract ever-changing art?

Elements of Consumption (EoC) demonstrates this by visualizing electricity, water, and natural gas consumption. EoC is an ambient display and eco-feedback device that can be hung on the wall like an art piece. The idea is to indirectly tell homeowners how must resources they have consumed. For more information please read my paper.

The Normal Canvas

The Normal Canvas compares the historical daily average versus the last 24 hours of consumption. The stimulus level will increase as the rate of consumption increases (creating new a-life); and vice versa (causing a-life to die). Artificial life (a-life) organisms are distinguished in two ways on the Normal Canvas canvas: colour, and movement.

The Inverse Canvas

The Inverse Canvas uses the current instantaneous consumption rate as it relates to the historical maximum demand. More consumption means less stimulus (or food) for a-life to live on and less consumption means more stimulus (i.e. the more a household consumes the less artificial life (a-life) lives and is rendered to the ambient display). A-life organisms on the Inverse Canvas canvas are only distinguished by colour due to a considerable more amount of a-life used to emphasis the linkage with consumption behaviour.

More to come…

Check back in October/2011 when I will be posting more info on this project here…