London Development Datasniffer

An illustration of the London Development Datasniffer

The London Development Datasniffer takes the columns of the London Development Database and manifests them in space, alerting bat walks to its planning records through mechanical sounds that resonate on the bat walker’s detectors.

As much as it is built out of plastic, wood, silicon and code, the Datasniffer is crafted from Nightsniffing’s earliest inquiries, a series of decisions and compromises between the situation of the bat walk and the structures of planning databases.

Part of a diagram showing how the datasniffer's noisemakers function

Explanatory diagrams

A pair of datasniffers, side by side

The finished datasniffers

A very early version of the datasniffer

Concocting the datasniffers

A wooden frame for mounting solenoids on the datasniffer

Technical docs for the datasniffer