highlike

Repeat
In the midst of the promises and fears surrounding robots and Artificial Intelligence, especially in the manual labour sector, Repeat attempts to imagine the illusory dance moves of the so-called augmented body tainted with the gender stereotypes of human ballet duets. Repeat shifts the performing body of the assembly line into the performing body onstage, unceasingly carrying out its tasks. The body meshed with the industrial exoskeleton tolerates and sustains strenuous tasks but ironically, it enables those actions to be repeated even more. Repeat uses passive industrial exoskeletons that are currently deployed in the workplace. This ain’t no fiction, this is the future promised to the human worker.

geist.xyz
A synthetic ghost shifts simulated textiles from passive matter to live organisms. They behave like apparitions in an artificial choreography, with movements that are imaginary yet familiar. Like a constant metamorphosis, the same sequence gets transformed over and over again. At each step, all aspects of the designs are modified, from algorithmic pattern to color scheme to fabric behaviour. The results are meandering layers of style changes. A linear montage shows the intricate details. Shuffled layers of metronomic sounds emphasize the transformation fluctuating in and out of sync.

transdock
Ken Nakagaki, Yingda (Roger) Liu, Chloe Nelson-Arzuaga, and Hiroshi Ishii
TRANS-DOCK is a docking system for pin-based shape displays that expand their interaction capabilities for both the output and input. By simply interchanging the transducer modules, composed of passive mechanical structures, to be docked on a shape display, users can selectively switch between different configurations including display sizes, resolutions, and even motion modalities such as rotation, bending, and inflation.
In our paper accepted to TEI 2020, we introduce a design space consisting of several mechanical elements and enabled interaction capabilities. Our proof-of-concept prototype explores the development of the docking system based on our previously developed 10 x 5 shape display, inFORCE. A number of transducer examples are shown to demonstrate the range of interactivity and application space achieved with the approach of TRANS-DOCK.

last breath
I understand passive instruments to be different multimedia objects that do not require management so much as co-existence with them based on relations born of a mutual “hybrid” symbiosis. The operating principle of the object is fairly simple – the exhaled air (its pressure and flow rate) activates the generative process, which depends on the exhalation parameters and is managed by the air movement in the organ. The object does not require any special game technique, although any change in the breathing (either premeditated or caused by physiological factors) is directly dependent on game dynamics and also on all the other parameters used to generate the sonic flow.

ACTS/ALPHA BLOCKER
In ACTS—short for “Absolute Contempt for Total Serenity”—Ruby captures liquid dye inside clear urethane and balances these pure prisms atop scuffed, inscribed, and spray-painted Formica bases. These works expand upon his earlier Formica sculptures such as Big Grid/DB Deth (2008), a scratched-up monolith that exudes a cold, prisonlike institutional menace. In ACTS, the juxtaposition of unfeeling laminate slabs against vibrantly pigmented urethane is a potent one; it transforms the urethane from a passive, glassy vitrine into an active agent of incarceration that suffocates the blossoming furls of dye.

Designed to interact with the environment in which they are situated, Nathaniel Rackowe’s large scale architectural structures are built using light, kinetic elements and common industrial materials. Drawing on Minimalism’s attention to the relationship between viewer, object, and space, and fusing the structural codes and material outcomes of Modernism, Nathaniel’s works transports the viewer from passive observer to participant, exposing the otherwise unseen dimensions of visual and temporal spaces.

Waiting Room Survival

A ‘Sneak in front tool’, ‘Incognito nose stand’ and ‘Waiting Room Survival Book. Philip Lüschen has designed these objects as part of his project on waiting rooms, Waiting Room Survival. The Incognito nose stand seduces us to wait incognito in waiting rooms in places where we would prefer not to be recognized, such as a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. And if you want to be seen by a doctor as fast as possible, Philip Lüschen has got the answer: The sneak in front tool, with which you can make everyone else in the room disappear behind the empty waiting room chairs.‘’Although the objects were designed as practical implements, when not in use they function as icebreakers. They stimulate the imagination and break through the tension and passive dynamic of waiting.‘’ The objects displayed are the result of the many studies drawn in waiting rooms, which also served as the basis for the ‘Waiting Room Survival Book’. A guide with useful illustrated strategies on how to survive a waiting room visit.
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