Invisible Boxes is an exploration of the unexamined devices that can be found everywhere in the city: sensors, networking units, and other technological additions to the streetscape and urban fabric that are generally ignored and invisible to the public despite being in plain view, and when noticed, are almost entirely opaque and illegible. What are they? Who put them there, and who owns them? What are they sensing, computing, or transmitting? What’s done with their data? What effects do they have on people’s everyday lives?

It is a project by Mayo Nissen, a designer based in New York, who is interested in interrogating these physical instantiations of a digital, networked layer that increasingly blankets the cities we live in. He has previously written about the topic in an article on frog’s designmind (more), which formed the basis of the research expanded on on this site.

All information on this site is from publicly accessible sources. Although all efforts have been made to publish facts, no warranty is made for the accuracy of the information presented on this site, and corrections for any mistakes, inaccuracies, or errors are welcomed.

---

Questions, comments, corrections, or contributions can be sent to contact@invisibleboxes.info.

Except where noted, all photos are by Mayo Nissen, and are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.