interacting in paris

here’s a brief summary of the whole project in form of a 3.5 x 1 m board:

to simulate the function of the couch in my presentation at strate, i built a small prototype.

the prototype reacts to the distance of the observer and mixes two soundfiles depending on his closeness.
when you’re far away, the only thing you’ll hear is white noise, but the closer you get, the better you can hear the couches recorded voices.

to accomplish this task i made a simple arduino mock-up where i took an infrared distance sensor and wrote a small script in vvvv that mixed the two pre-edited soundfiles together.

the mechanism of the piece of furniture that i finally came up with is rather simple: it will record voices of your friends while they’re there and plays those sounds back when you are in need of remembrance of your friends.

this is how it works in detail:

imagine you invite your friends over, they will be sitting, chatting and having a good time on your couch

your couch absorbs their voices and records the positions where their voices were most present

when they’re gone.. and you feel alone…

simply lie down on your couch and wait. your couch will feel that you are alone if you’re calm and quiet and slowly and subtly start playing back the sounds from the past. not whole conversations, obviously, not even full sentences, but only random words, sounding as if they were far away but still close.

only if you take your time, concentrate, and snuggle closely into your couch you will be able to hear their voices become clearer. you have to make an effort and you have to be really needy for some memories.

as the couch knows the positions of the voices recorded, you can move along the couch, search for different people, as you remember the event where the voices were recorded and the images of the people they belong to come back to you.

i finally came to the conclusion that the best way to be reminded of the presence of humans is (besides smell) by sound. not without reason is it that you call a friend when you’re lonely “just to hear his voice” as friends are often told. it is by the voice of a familiar person that you are instantly reminded of happy or unhappy situations, feelings and thoughts. even through the lossy connection of a telephone or internet cable you can recognize a friend’s voice, as you can immeadiately tell his state of mind, whether he’s tired, excited, bored or sad, just by the way he says “hello”.

every sound creates certain emotions within us. not only can you see this in the cinema, where it’s the creepy soundscape that makes a scary movie scare us in the first place, but also in smaller scale, in everyday things. the sound of hot tea poured into a cup makes us feel comfortable as does the cracking of a fireplace.
also, sound is ubiquitous. you cannot shut your ears. it’s always with you.

so this is what i want to do: to use this premisses to create a reactive piece of furniture that helps you fight your loneliness by the use of sound.

do you know that lonely feeling when you’ve had a party at your place and the next day everybody is gone?
a wall that records the shadows having been cast on your wall by your friends, playing them back when you’re alone again, can conserve that feeling of a crowded place for a little while longer.

if you are in a long-distance-relationship you might want to feel your loved-one next to you at night although he’s miles away. a set of two beds, equipped with pressure sensores and connected to each other, records your movements and displays them on its other half. that way you can always feel where your loved-one lies, how he moves or even if there’s another person lying next to him…

again, an idea to get into a dialogue with the foreigners who might pass by your garden fence every day but still don’t know what’s happening behind the walls of your house.

are you one of those people who don’t like cooking for themselves alone? with the invitable you can always make the tripple amount of food. it will realize when there’s only you sitting on the table and hence expand towards the outer side of your walls, sending a subtle invitation to the passers-by to sit down and share your meal with you.

…so I decided to make furniture for all those lonely people. Making them feel more comfortable by giving them company in a virtual or analog way.

But why would you possibly be lonely? Is it because you’re a computer nerd who’s only social environment is that of mmorpgs?

How about providing them with an opportunity to feel close to their far-away-friends even when they fall asleep on their desk at 5am after a long night of gaming?
A wooden table, including 4 speakers and a map of the world, would do the job. Moving your ear across the world map you can listen to your friend’s broadcasts all across the world.

the garden-path that invites you to come in

to make a step back again and think about what i actually want to achieve with my project i put all my thoughts and ideas about social behaviour, loneliness, foreigners and public spaces in a blender, pressed the button and sat and waited for a week.
the result is a rather grey looking mass, which still has to be given a shape..

being influenced by the minor “intelligent objects” project, which also dealt with social networks, i thought about the facebook-phenomenum and how people these days tend to be exhibitionists. maybe they have always been that, though in web2.0 days it’s a lot easier and more obvious how people not only publish their opinions and beliefs, but also their most intimate details, friends and thelike. in the non-digital world you achieve the same goal by the way you dress and the slogans you put on your shirts. basically, the only place where you are private is your home. so why not give all the exhibitionists out there a tool for exhibiting themselves even in their private space? “turning your apartment inside out”, making private space public, living in the garden or – getting the outside world into your four walls.
now there are different ways how this issue of interacting with the outside world could be approached:

either by exposing yourself to the passers-by, at the same time making them (voluntary or unvoluntary) voyeurs (which they already are when spying through your gardenfence or window). speaking about which, one could also make this voyeurism the theme and attract curious glances while actually fooling the voyeurs and criticizing their behaviour.

or i could keep focusing on the fight on loneliness by letting foreigners influence your home and thus giving you the feeling of interaction or exchange with them. i like the idea of furniture being somehow dependant on the outsiders, itself suffering from their absence and hence giving you a soulmate in your loneliness. the furniture could grow and change its appearance permanently like a plant being watered with closeness to human beings.

a more friendly approach to the above mentioned self-exhibition/voyeurism would be to design a system that is rather “inviting” foreigners to participate in your life, to come and spend time with you or just leave traces or messages for you to be reminded of their past presence. letting your home have a “memory” of the people it has met could be an interesting theme to work with.

…i actually thought about the concept of furniture itself beforehand and there is a reason why i’m focusing on the social part: it resembles the biggest branch on my mind-map ;)

seriously, this sheet is more a research on mind-mapping tools and my disability to use them (i think the producers forgot to implement the “vicious circle”-part)

it looks really colourful though, so if anyone feels like reading this: enjoy!

my-thoughts-on-furniture

a big issue which western worlders seem to face these days is loneliness. the shadow of a person which is not actually there, to talk to and spend time with, could help.

this idea is not all nice and comfortable, there is also a mysterious, almost creepy atmospere around it. depending on how you interact with it and how it responds to you, it might seem like a ghost from a person who is not there (anymore) or the presence of someone constantly monitoring your moves…

..huuuhh…

so i want to focus on the social aspect of furniture.. a behaviour that one might not immeadiately think of being social is arguing. here is an invention that could act as a reminder to argue less or at least to argue more..friendly:

like a child, this piece of furniture starts crying when the people around it argue.

you are tempted to scream even louder as the crybaby starts whining, but it will just increase its noise as you yourself raise your voices.

the trick is to calm down stop screaming at each other. noticing your will to discuss the matter in a more human way, the crybaby will be content and fall asleep again.

* (working title)

the first thing i did for finding out how people could be brought together was making a list of all those social networks that there already are. you probably know those dating-sites where one can meet ones soulmate in a very profane and boring way? everybody knows that they exsist and apparently they’re pretty successful, too, but personally i wouldn’t want to use them because it seems like the most unromantic way to get to know ones loved-one. so i was wondering how the same function could be realised in a more subtle way.

what i came up with is a tiny pill-shaped device that you can carry like a necklace close to your heart so it can measure your heartbeat. like in an online social network you can upload your profile onto the device and it will start searching for people that match your likes and dislikes. once there is a match close to you the devices will start beating time to each other’s heartbeat. very weakly at first but growing stronger the closer you get to your soulmate.

wandering through the room, trying to find your counterpart, exchanging glances and finally approaching somebody who seems appealing, without knowing if he is indeed the person you’re searching for, makes the process more game-like and exciting. even if you end up talking to somebody you were not searching for, the heartbeatbox has fulfilled its function. because, as we all know, love is not so much about comparing hard facts than about the right situation..

i was thinking a while about a way to make furniture for public spaces when this idea came to my mind. as i have been travelling a lot with public transport lately, i noticed that people are quite reluctant to sit directly next to another person even if there’’s no other free place to sit.

the usual situation is this:

but how about making a bench that makes people get into contact by forcing them to sit next to each other? the idea is a seating, consisting of several stools attached to each other, that notices when somebody is sitting down and automatically closes down all the seats except for the one next to the sitter.
as soon as the next person sits down he will create another open seat right next to him and so forth..

if this would actually make people more communicative is still in question, if not it could at least make them think though. to be quite honest i already fell a bit in love with the idea, and think i’ll develop it a little further.

sitting in a room for 3 hours with 50 people and without a window (!) listening to a french lecture that i barely understood, i (almost fell asleep) and thought “wouldn”t it be nice if there was a warning system if the oxygen in the room sinks beneath a certain level?”

here’s what i thought of:

a wall paint that reacts to oxygen by changing its color so one would notice when it’s time to open the windows and let some fresh air in. in theory this might be possible although i haven’t heard of a dye that can accomplish that task yet. my knowledge about chemistry is very limited but as far as i know oxydized materials tend to keep this condition and won’t go back to their previous state.. but i’d be happy if someone would proove me wrong!

having done a project about mobile applications before, i find myself asking the same questions all over again.
the task to invent a new mobile device is especially hard because the reluctance to buy another tiny shiny piece of plastic to carry around is, i think, a lot bigger than just loading a new software onto your cellphone.
so what is the justification to develop another mobile device that would, in the end, never be able to survive on the real market one wonders?
fortunately being a student means studying, not working (as in working for a company) but researching, finding borders, believing in hopeless endeavors and failing, so as a student you don’t neccessarily have to put yourself under the rule of markets and numbers but you can approach the issue from other perspectives.

you could, for example, make something provocative, commenting or simply surprising and new.
personally though, i’d like to do something emotional that touches people in some way or another.

but let’s see how things unfold…

today i finally found out what my main project will be: “mobilier intelligent” is its name and as you can guess from the title it will be about inventing a piece of furniture which reacts to or interacts with its environment.

to realise the final product we are working together with main d’oeuvres, a studio which provides us with a laboratory full of all kinds of sensors which are controlled via puredata.

we will also be taught in using and programming arduino, a small microprocessor that is designed for developing quick prototypes and can be extended with different kinds of electronic components.

yesterday we were introduced to one of my minor projects which will last for about eight weeks. the title of the course is “intelligent objects” which basically means to invent a product that connects you to the people around you. kind of like a mobile version of a social platform for the outside world.

the final product can either be a piece of software for an exsisting mobile product, like a cellphone, or a new, individual device which should be wearable in one way or another.

the approach is very free and can be either usefull and realistic or more artistic and emotional.

so far for the description, what it will all be about is still to be found out…