Helping products tell their stories is a growing field we are working on at Stereoscape. The increasing volume of IoT data generated by the things around us needs to be communicated to drive better understanding, learning and decision-making. To broaden our thinking on how to translate and present IoT data for explanatory, analytical and inspirational purposes, we also look for new insights at the intersection of art and technology.

Our project with artist Josefina Nelimarkka on her latest exhibition, Kairos καιρός at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, is an exciting collaboration on communicating atmospheric phenomena. A graduate from the Royal College of Art in London and the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Nelimarkka works in both cities. She merges arts and sciences in her multidisciplinary works that often focus on rendering visible the inaccessible and invisible worlds that are impossible to grasp directly.

Kairos (‘time’ and ‘a supreme moment’ in Ancient Greek and ‘weather’ in Modern Greek) is inspired by the research on atmospheric aerosol particles and climate change at INAR Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research at the University of Helsinki. Stereoscape had the pleasure of working with the artist on screen-based installations, including augmented reality that overlays digital content on top of the real world. Air quality data from a real-time emission monitoring system installed on the roof of the museum in downtown Helsinki is translated into interactive visual experiences. These ‘airscapes’ are constantly changing in form, colour and sound with the actual air quality.

Enabling products, objects or spaces to communicate with people through interactive visualisation of real-time sensor data is an integral part of smart product communication. This inspiring art project has provided us with fresh impulses on how to render the invisible visible through creative visualisation and how to help users interact with IoT data to explore and make sense of it.