Interactive Telecommunications Program
Designs by Adi Marom and Hans Hemmert explore how daily functions and especially face-to-face communication can change simply by tweaking and tinkering with people’s height. Marom’s robotic footwear extends and contracts via an iPhone application, so that the wearer becomes taller or shorter to fit various needs and moods— from reaching a higher supermarket shelf to smelling a flower on a tree branch; height thus becomes what the designer calls an “interactive variable.”

Light Cloud
The Light Cloud at the Merck Innovation Center detects visitors’ movements in the room and translates them into many different moods. The generative sculpture stimulates and facilitates intense encounters between people and technology. The room-filling installation consists of four curved strands that are concentrically superimposed and slightly shifted in relation to each other. OLED elements that are attached to the strands and controlled by sensors react to the visitors’ movements and to sound compositions. In combination, this generates a complex mosaic in which sound and light interact playfully and the viewers leave traces.