reality check post design freeze and settling for a design:
what we liked about our idea: – movement as a factor in social dynamics – our chair having “a mind of its own” – our chair reminding the user they’re not the on in control
but: – our original idea was too complicated – we struggled to take necessary next steps in the design process – feedback: reduce and focus on one movement/aspect of interest
after talking and sitting with the feedback we got:
a chair that senses your presence and reacts – making itself unsittable
Karim modelled different mechanics:
we had several meetings with Mathias and decided on mechanics
as well as meetings with electronics & microcontroller professors
we looked at samples for the fabric of the chair
wrote a shopping list and ordered parts
built models
and tried out the programming small scale
motor starts if less then 5cm from ultrasonic sensor – waits 10 seconds – starts in the other direction – cycle complete
next steps:
measuring the mechanics to order the base of the chair
After the Midterms, I had been floating, partly on post-stress stupor, but also around a fundamental question surrounding my project: What is it about? What holds it together?
Now when people ask me, I reply with the standard “Most people are intimidated by electronics and I want to bring it closer to people.” but this is a very broad answer, it doesn’t really answer the question “what are you working on?”.
Collab announcement: Ana Mikadze!
(Ana indtroduces their topic)
They approached me saying they know a place that would fit my interest and skillset.
The place is called Mz*Baltazar’s Lab.
The Lab is currently looking for more participants in their exhibition starting June 25th.
The project is now given a specific stage to work within, since the exhibition has restrictions on size etc.
Concept / Installation
The Tinkerer’s Desk
The Tinkerer’s Desk is an installation that takes the classic image of the lone genius at their workbench and quietly dismantles it.
The desk presented here is designed for multiple bodies, multiple intentions, no hierarchy of skill. During a [three-hour] live activation, visitors are invited to record a six-second sound – a breath, a word, a tone or accidental noise and program it into a broken speaker, assembled and disassembled by hand on the spot. The broken speaker is not repaired so much as redirected: imperfection is retained as character. The speakers produced across the activation accumulate into a site-specific polyphonic instrument — a spontaneous archive of a particular space, a particular group of people, a particular slice of time. Each speaker holds one voice. Together, they can be played: triggered individually or in combination, they produce a sound environment that belongs to no single author and no fixed composition.
What results is less a concert than a conversation between objects, a collective memory that remains activatable – catchable — long after the workshop has ended.
A backwards tilted seating surface supports the pressure of the massage wheels on the users back.
A footrest has been added to give the user the ability to rock through their legs and not just weight shifting their upper body.
The massage wheels distance has been adjusted to fit to the shape of a human back.
The distance in which the massage contraption will be installed will be determined by trial and error after building the chair itself.
Technical views
Wood type is going to be ash wood, since it’s bendible and withstands they various forces beeing applied by rocking. Ash wood is luckily directly available in stock in the universities wood workshop.
Building a narrative
Terms:
Active interaction
Consoling touch
Constant motion
Energy humans passively apply to their surroundings
Consumption of human power through usual carework
How could the narrative built around the rocking chair include the positive effects of these ideas to form an innovative, speculative concept?
What kind of symbolism could be used to convey this idea?
I want to shift the focus a bit back to the anticipatory nature of anxiety and how we can reframe our (sometimes mislead) predictions about future threats.
(Quick) Reseach
Christian Nold’s Emotional Geography & time-geography
Episodic Memory and Mental Time Travel:
Mental time travel as a reflection exercise to create relief from anxiety: Create confidence in the prediciton that there will be an “after” to the situation
Help you overcome fear about things you actually want to be doing
Updated Version: Flow
Notice when and where you are anxious
Log in how long you estimate the “event” that is causing distress will take (i.e. when it will have passed)
A column is created along the vertical time-axis that represents that duration. It is shrinking as time moves on.
When the column is completely gone (i.e. the “threat” has passed), you can log in whether you perceived it as:
“Better than expected”
“About what you expected”
“Harder than expected”
Additionally, you can leave a little note to yourself to remind you of that moment and how you felt (optional)
A mark is left where the column has stood with the respective colours of how you reflected that the experience actually went. It serves as a reminder to “retrain” your brain about how and when you were able to subvert your anxiety and actually create good experiences out of it.
The topography that is created is split into your “personal map”, showing only what you logged in, and an opt-in “shared map”, showing what others logged in as well.
Include a compass to lead to nearby marks + a camera reset button
Possibility to reflect from anywhere on a past situation, if you forget to do it at the point you logged an anxiety in
Reminder when an event is over
Setting a time didn’t really impact the event itself, but coming back later to check it off felt like a conclusion
Helps to recognize success: “… I expected to do much worse than I did. I can imagine that building a map with these sorts of scenarios would help manage anxieties/ seeing past successes visualised would lessen the blows of failure.”
What to add/change/general Questions
A possibility to log in “positive” expectations as well?
Would that take away from the idea of “reframing”/”subverting” negative expectations?
Would the reflections be disproportional to the ones about negative expectations? (If an event that I expect to be positive went as I expect, it would leave the same mark as an event that I expect to be negative that went as I expected)
Create little “tokens” that grow or multiply as reflection marks are created
Only for positively subverted expectations or for all reflections?
What exactly would “grow” there? (abstract geometry, trees, creatures, lanterns, …)
Next Steps
More testing: ideas for things to do that are scary?
IT support for the “shared map”
Get a version ready to share with more people by design freeze
