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I’m in the middle of transitioning to the post-school, post-thesis, workaday world, so I don’t have much to talk about in terms of my own work. I saw Sarah Illenberger’s work this morning and thought I would mention it– she makes incredibly beautiful and delicate knit organs.

This is great. Artist and photographer Nina Katchadourian patches spiderwebs.

“uninvited collaborations”

At the Royal College of Art, Susanna Hertrich is currently working on a project as a part her thesis called the alertness enhancement device. It’s really nice to see other people that are thinking of stuff in this space in similar ways that I am.

Here‘s the link (via we make money, not art)

The risks we fear the most are often the ones most unlikely to be encountered. The human animal has lost its natural instinct for the real dangers. When worn directly on your skin, the Alertness Enhancing Device will act as a physical prosthesis for a lost natural instinct of the real fears and dangers that threaten us – as opposed to perceived risks that often cause a public outrage.

The idea is it stimulates goosebumps and shivers that go down your spine and make your neck hair stand up, waking up the alert animal inside. You become more alert and ready for the real dangers in life.

   

this is nice–it’s essentially a prosthetic for play, in the way I’m thinking.

“Experiential Modifiers is a performative installation where participants can check out and use a wide variety of common objects. The objects have all been colored a bright, garish uniform pink, and the installation is staffed by a crew of uniformed workers. In essence, the project functions as a lending library of experiences.”

I’ve been thinking a bit about what it is that I’m trying to talk about with the sketches and outlines I have for this thing I’m making. It’s about social anxiety, and the usage scenario is that when this mythical user feels threatened, they wrap a silicone shawl around themselves and built in spines protrude from the back.
(more…)

anxiety is a trap, shell, spiky

alienation is walls, removal, being removed

insecurity is immobilizing, heavy, shifting earths

I just got linked to this implementation of some of the ideas I’ve been kicking around. It’s nice to see other people thinking about this kind of personal emotional device, and the idea of a PWMing a LED is a nice way to represent diffused worry.

link: kombolói

“This is a quick, quick sketch for an idea I had for a intimate personable device that is best described as a digital worry bead or Kombolói — not so much a worry bead as something to capture and diffuse your anxiety. It works by capacitively linking your tension through a unique capacitive touch sensor and then harnessing that energy, turning it into light and then diffusing it into more soothing energy.”

 

DEAD WRINGER

I’ve been working on projects that explore physical spaces for technological interaction within emotional spaces. This was conceived of as a device to mediate negative emotions technologically. There exist many technologies for recreational, ludic or generally positive emotions, but few properly interactive objects for the overwhelmingly negative. The Dead Wringer is a stuffed animal that a user symbolically murders to deal with rage, anger, or severe frustration. The device tries to walk the line between creepy and cathartic, to provoke the user into reflecting into the nature of their rage and their emotion. Ideally, the user should find that the interaction is fun and rewarding, as well as deeply disturbing that they think so.

By building something that is intentionally ambiguous morally, it opens up a space for interpretation on the part of the user. They are able to build their own experience into the device, as well as reflect on the nature of the experience. Hopefully, Dead Wringer allows a relatively healthy outlet for rage and anger as well as offering a space to reflect on the nature of the emotion.

  

TONY DUNNE AND FIONA RABY–The Placebo Project

“The Placebo project is an experiment in taking conceptual design beyond the gallery into everyday life. We devised and made eight prototype objects to investigate peoples’ attitudes to and experiences of electromagnetic fields in the home, and placed them with volunteers. Made from MDF and usually one other specialist material, the objects are purposely diagrammatic and vaguely familiar. They are open-ended enough to prompt stories but not so open as to bewilder.”

   

KELLY DOBSON–ScreamBody(Wearable Body Organs)

“The wearable apparatuses function as transitional objects – they allow bridges between the person’s internal experience and the outside world insituations in which the person would otherwise not be able to make that possible. Each apparatus simultaneously acts to call attention to the social repression addressed by the very need for the existence of the device. Participants access sensorial energy that has been implicitly or explicitly put to sleep by enculturation.”

ANDREW SCHNEIDER–Experimental Devices for Performance”

“My multidisciplinary work attempts to critically investigate human and technological interdependence. I see this interdependence as both emotional and physical. We are all infinitely removed from everything, everyone, and more so, from ourselves. Our inners do not connect to our outers with any sort of transparency. Language separates us from the experience of the real. All of us is filtered. We are performing rather than living our lives everyday. We as humans seem to have countered this predicament with technology. I am interested in highlighting this concept through the magnification and extension of the themes of inability and dependence.

EXPERIMENTAL DEVICES for PERFORMANCE reifies this notion by placing technological media over the body, masking the layer that masks the layer that interprets our corporeal devices of communication (our senses). EDP is a suite of five wearable devices examining our state of communication. Small screens cover and confuse the “truths” of the mouth and the eyes. Sensor-embedded shoes map footfalls to soundtracks. A camera-coated hat only displays its cameras’ signals when the wearer’s head comes in contact with a television. A Polaroid picture is taken every time someone blinks. In order to control the media, a performer must also control his/her body in artificial ways. The performer controls the media controls the performer. ”

KATE HARTMAN–This Device is For You

“I am developing a new line of communication devices. These devices examine the way we relate to ourselves and to others. They are assistive, demonstrative, and potentially invasive, demanding both performance and play through the avenue of physical involvement. They are an attempt to simultaneously transgress personal, social, and geographic space. They are, in a sense, a form of social intervention.”