Looking Outwards 03

Mike Kneupfel, Keyboard Frequency Sculpture https://www.businessinsider.com/mike-knuepfel-keyboard-frequency-2011-6 

I find Mike Kneupfel’s Keyboard Frequency Sculpture (as discussed in Prof. Levin’s lecture) to be very interesting. As a whole, I typically find myself drawn to works that are funny in some sort, and I think the visualization of data in this way, almost like a bar graph (but not really), to be pretty funny. Imagining the use of this object in real life is also pretty amusing. On one hand, it would be very easy to find the keys most frequently used, but ergonomically, the piece is a nightmare. The way that an intention of practicality manifests in complete usability is a humorous paradox. In terms of the actual construction, I’d assume that to create this piece, whatever percentage of the time a key is used would correspond to a certain height. For example, maybe 1% use = 1 cm, so keys used 3% of the time would be 3 cm tall. 

Photograph of Kneupfel’s Keyboard Frequency Sculpture.

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