After yesterday’s kind of ridiculous etching failure, I’ve moved into building out the circuits for the final revision of the alienation prosthesis. Two arduino/xbee circuit boards are built into a single perfboard. Eventually I’ll split them on the bandsaw. Below are some shots of them in progress (and untested).

Later tonight, I’m going to sit down and try to get down an early draft of my introduction and prior art to contextualize my work. I think it’ll be pretty fun.

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.”