Deakin Breathes Data

Deakin Breathes Data (DBD) rethought and rethreaded radio surveillance on a university campus into a material, fibrous aesthetic. We used university-captured Wi-Fi data to present how shared knowledge threads the modern university experience. Laser cut silk mirrored how Wi-Fi's photonic wave-particles slice through spaces, mapping knowledge channels in and between buildings as they vary with student presence. Its contribution considers physical and metaphorical fibers, showing how a campus-as-organism breathes data, through student knowledge sharing-both consensual and surveilled. We hook the material fibers together in a knit of organizational surveillance, knowledge creation, and campus life, reimagined through tactility, fabric, and laser, while aesthetically referencing the invention of frequency hopping itself, which Wi-Fi depends on.