project02:Frontpage

_The Living Room_

Why?

Anthropomorphism – attributing humanlike characteristics and behaviour to gods, animals, plants or objects.

The Living Room would be an artistic installation to redefine the relationship between humans and their surroundings. It intends to overthrow the conventional forms of usage and how we perceive and treat our surroundings in order for the user to rethink, maybe even recalibrate his perception and interaction towards his surroundings.

How?

There are two ways to approach this: The first approach is to start with a familiar object/environment, and then transform it. The second approach is to start with an unfamiliar object/environment.

Research

Research_01_Tactility

Variations

Variation_01_Living_Chair

For example, chairs are designed and manufactured by man in order to serve a very specific purpose, to be sat on. The relation between a chair and its user is very one-directional, subservient, where the chair is the lesser of the two. By giving anthropomorphic qualities (and some sort of intelligence to act upon) to objects and environments the user might take a different perspective and approach in treating or using these objects. The intent is to stimulate a more give and take, bi-relational interaction. Both participants (object and human) being more or less equal in their relation. The chair might just want to stretch its legs and go for a stroll after a while of being sat upon, it could even reward its user with a massage for certain behaviour.

Imagine an entire living room filled with animate objects, an abundance of social interaction between you and your house, altering the conventional daily routine.

The theme of giving objects or animals live-like characteristics or even human behaviour isn’t particularly new – many examples can be found in animated movies such as ‘ Beauty and the Beast’ , ‘ Alice in Wonderland’ , ‘Aladdin’, ‘ Cars’ and of course the Pixar lamp from ‘Luxo Jr’. Artificial Intelligence: J.A.R.V.I.S. (Iron-man), Cortana (Halo), Her (movie about falling in love with your artificial intelligent assistant)

Variation_02_Living_Room