The roots are the foundation of the installation. The book-lending is visualized by a coded light within the root that migrates to the tree like a nutrient. The borrowed book will then be printed with help of an integrated 3D printing head. A new data ring in the tree trunk is the result of this printing process. In a period of one semester a pie chart will be created for each day, which visualizes the amount of borrowed books from the different locations of the University of Applied Science Osnabrück.
The crown is the final element of the installation. The whole knowledge of the semester comes together in this section. If somebody submits his bachelor or master thesis, the crown will shine in coded colored lights.
The user interface extends the resulting analog artifact by an digital component. In interaction with the touch table the user gets the possibility to receive more detailed information about the data visualization.
A huge amount of effort and passion was put into prototyping the finalized idea. Although the resources – both time and materials – were to limited to build Annuli in its entirety, parts of it were realized in a smaller scale.
The prototype consists of a 1:1 model of the root, a 1:25 miniature model of the whole installation and a website to control it. Visitors of an exhibition could use the website to simulate the lending of a book and watch the model react to their inputs. The big root could be connected via USB to the small model and shed a warm, diffused light every time a virtual book got lent.