Hasta La Creative!

By Masashi Kawamura.
 
Beautiful, simple and smart.
 
Via: DesignYouTrust.

The fellas over at Coroflot take a yearly survey to designers from different areas and places all over the world. It’s purpose is to answer different questions regarding salaries throughout countries, creative fields, specialities, etc.
 
The image shown above shows the yearly income around the world for a designer in year 2007. For our short-sighted friends around here, the country with the lowest yearly income is Brazil with US$25,869, and the one with the highest is India with US$65,262 a year.
 
Be sure to check the survey to see several other interesting charts as well as prior years’ surveys.

I had to post this. Star Wars credits as if they were made by Saul Bass.
 
Superb.
 
Via: Vecindad Gráfica.

Avenue A | Razorfish suggests we “treat every page like a home page.”

Every page is now a home page, each of which will have a wider reach, a lasting shelf life, and the ability to attract a new audience like never before. To capitalize on this, ensure that every page has a strong, clear global navigation scheme and related content that is visibly promoted. And don’t forget to make sure that display advertising gets prominent, above-the-fold, home-page-like treatment (300×250 rectangles and 728×90 leaderboards). Remember, every page can be accessed in any conceivable manner and in any conceivable order. You can’t design properties to control user flow anymore.

Yaniv Steiner has been running a class at the Visual and Multimedia Design graduate programme from the University of Architecture in Venice a few weeks ago. Its approach was slightly different from classical physical computing classes, starting with the name of the class: Usable Witchery. Students learned magic tricks with coins and cards, and then built up some Animatronics elements trying to humanize machine and robots to look and feel more like humans.

I’m just going to give a summary of the course as i feel its spirit might be relevant to the interests of many readers. But i’ll keep it short as i’ve decided a while ago not to cover anything i haven’t had the opportunity to see nor experience myself. Rules are supposed to have exceptions, right?

Usable Witchery investigated how products could be less a result of technical thinking, and become more “humanized”, natural and intuitive. As Yaniv told me recently: “I will trade many functional elements to magical and slightly more poetical element in any of my devices. I hope the student will apply it one day as they go and work for IDEO and Nintendo J.”

Image by Yaniv Steiner

He explains with further details this association between magic and interaction design in a list of reasons why advanced technology can be compared to magic. According to him, interfaces are actually doing the same to some extent. His text illustrates the point by giving examples of interaction procedures, viewed from this frame of reference: calculators displaying, without revealing how, the correct series of digits, mountains of information “leaping” invisibly in the air, “hold” switches, etc.

But still… Harry Pottering design students?

“Regarding the animatronics part, I feel it is dealing with humanization of machines in relation to Physical-Computing,” he goes on. “We all saw the blinking LED – Blink; and how motors can move robotic limbs with the grace of “Marvin the paranoid android”. We conducted experiments with ways to humanize these artifacts, making them closer to the way we, humans, interact and communicate with the world around us. And thus giving a small humanized illusion.”

Image by Synodic Month

Tons of images from Usable Witchery.

Related entries: Yaniv Steiner’s talk on rapid prototyping process and Opensourcery (where Zach Lieberman learns a few tricks from Mago Julián.)

The theme of Susanna Hertrich‘s thesis at the Design Interactions department, RCA, in London, is a reflection on humans and animals in the context of “Human Enhancement”: How much do we want to borrow from animals and what are the risks this would involve? How much of the animal is still living inside us? How much of the original animal that we once were has been has been lost in the evolution process?

The project that Susanna was showing at the work in progress show a few weeks ago is the Alertness Enhancing Device.

The risks we fear the most are often the ones most unlikely to be encountered. The human animal has lost its natural instinct for the real dangers. When worn directly on your skin, the Alertness Enhancing Device will act as a physical prosthesis for a lost natural instinct of the real fears and dangers that threaten us – as opposed to perceived risks that often cause a public outrage.

The idea is it stimulates goosebumps and shivers that go down your spine and make your neck hair stand up, waking up the alert animal inside. You become more alert and ready for the real dangers in life.

Before / after

Why would we need such device? Studies on risk perception show that many people are seriously afraid of terrorist attacks and their anxiety is heavily exploited in media and politics. A look at statistics shows that the probability of becoming a victim of terrorism is quite small. Meanwhile other real hazards are perceived as rather uninteresting and raise far less fear, for example environmental pollution or car traffic.

While we consciously know what are the things that really threatens us, we tend to dedicate much more of attention to spectacular disasters with many deaths.

That’s when the Alertness Enhancing Device comes in. If you feel dispassionate and bored when reading news stories about another environmental pollution scandal, it’s probably time to turn the dial of the device on.

And since it’s a wearable device, you can even alert yourself in any situation, even in public contexts.

“The project is pretty much in a work-in-progress state,” explains Susanna. “What I’ve shown in the exhibition was “just” a form prototype, but I have been experimenting with micro-current stimulations. This is quite unpleasant if placed between your shoulder blades and on your neck, but not as “in your face” as a plain electrical shocks. And…it allows you can alter the current, so you can decide how much you can take for now. Which is how I intend this first prototype to work.”

How is the project going to evolve?

“For the next version I plan to work with much more sophisticated sensations on the skin than microcurrents. The project now has shifted more into “skin as interface” and I plan to play with “apparent movement” sensations and “somatosensory illusions” as beeing explored in haptic research. I’m currently in touch with scientists in London and Tokyo to get an insight into how these things work and how I can use those techniques.
I’m not sure if the second version will work the same way as the first prototype. Probably the second version will be triggered automatically by data that is collected from some other place. I see it rather as “desktop device” than a wearable, and maybe it is something next to your door that you want to check before leaving the house. But I need decide on all the details during the next weeks…”

Thanks Susanna!

All images courtesy of Susanna Hertrich.

Ticker Tape is an internet radio for people who suffer from Euphobia, “a persistent, abnormal and unwanted fear of hearing good news”. Designed by Will Carey, it was exhibited at the work in progress show of the RCA in London a few weeks ago.

Ticker Tape is a working prototype that simulates the interaction but as this was a project done in only two weeks some details are still to be fixed. Using RSS feeds, Ticker Tape scans for light-hearted news stories from around the world broadcasting them to the listener who can manage the content via the Ticker Tape website (still in construction).

Activating the radio

Pulling the cord allows the user to choose the duration of the broadcast.

Tuning direction

The origin of the news stories can be selected by the dial on the top of the radio.

This project explores playful interfaces for the future of digital radio, and is part of wider ongoing research.

As Will was in Tokyo when i visited the show, i wrote him to get more information on the radio:

The first time i read the description of the project, I thought the radio was meant for people who are afraid of bad news. But it is the exact opposite. You created it for people suffering from “euphobia”. Do such people really exist?

Yes they do, although very few people experience this condition. The intention was to use a phobia as a starting point for the design process, and the radio was inspired by euphobia, “a persistent, abnormal and unwanted fear of hearing good news”.

So why not make the radio that everyone would expect, the one that people who hate hearing bad news would want to buy?

I think this would leave less to the imagination. I wanted to suggest how someone who really suffers from such a fear could overcome it, either via team therapy or by getting used to hearing good news once they had had the initial support from a therapist. By pulling the tape the person can acclimatise themselves to hearing good news in small measured doses.

While the original intent is to cure a phobia, it can also be used to create more insightful solutions for interaction with technology. (This is not to say that one is trying to make light of what are indeed serious and real fears. But changing oneÂ’s mindset as a designer and moving away from marketing-driven design and thinking about solutions from a completely different perspective, can encourage new interactions and designs to emerge.)

Assembling the prototype

Ticker Tape has a very sleek, pure and shiny design, does this reflect its own “mission”?

The design has considered a neutral and inviting form, which means you almost have to encounter the object and discover out how it works, yet there are some cues and signs that it is a domestic product. I wanted the radio to be made from ceramic – the prototype is plastic, perhaps that is why it’s so shiny. The void running through the object is for the speaker and the overall form is inspired by an old Braun SK25 radio designed by Dr Fritz Eichler in 1955.

Thanks Will!

All images courtesy of Will Carey.

Tuning the radio

ESC – Enter Spanish Creativity, edited by CLA-SE (Amazon USA UK).

Been lazy with the book reviews this month so i’m slowing going back to business with an easy one.

Publishers Actar says: Every system needs an escape valve, a decompression mechanism. In professional graphic design, this escape device is more than the ‘escape’ (esc) on a keyboard; it is the visual seduction by new and experimental formulas. This is the defining concept of emergent Spanish design today. Spain has become an international laboratory where creators from all over the planet retro-nourish and influence one another.

Works by Basedesign, Ipsum Planet, Enric Jardí, Paco Bascuñán, among many others.

I love Spain. They make my favourite food (tortilla de patatas), the most wonderful landscapes, some of my favourite activists (list is too long) and architects (or both as in the case of Santiago Cirugeda), some of the smartest blogs in my rss readers (again, way too long but you can try this one), etc. As my Italian (and slightly annoyed) boyfriend would tell you i could go on for hours.

Design from the latest collection of José Miró (Pasarela Cibeles)

Maybe the most appealing characteristic of Spain is that while visiting it you keep on switching from the utterly ridiculold-fashioned to the very edgy. ESC has a lot of the latter and nothing of the former.

The design studios selected in ESC are ordered alphabetically. Each designer showcases up to 4 works and has a little bubble space to explain what the work is about and leave their website url for more if affinities. Easy, fuss-free, fast and delightful. Most of the designers are based in Barcelona though, does that catalano-centrism really reflect the state of graphic design in Spain?

Here’s my pick:

max-o-matic. I have spent what? 40? 60 minutes? on his website, going from one image to the other and doing it a second time just for the pleasure.

Ping-Pong Remix

Un mundo feliz for the 5th anniversary of Guantanamo detention camp (almost as great as those Agent Provocateur Fair Trial My Arse pants):

Spy. For their “Interventions” and re-use of street furniture.

Street Wars

Gregori Saavedra. I still have to master the art of navigating his b&w website but whatever…

Pop-up wedding invitations hand-made by Fundición Gráfica:

Oh! Look! i made a little trailer for you:

A last one that made me happy. Twopoints (who designed the very swanky book Super Holland Design) made a poster explaining how to cook a real “Tortilla de patata”.

Photo by Magdalen Green

As i receive so many emails from young people who would like to graduate in media art, interaction design and other “cool stuff you write about on the blog”, i thought i should discuss more often with the teachers and researchers who run these courses in Europe, the US and in Asia. I’ve interviewed several of them before (Tom Igoe from itp in New York, Tony Dunne from RCA, Stephen Wilson from the San Francisco State University, Alejandro Tamayo from the Javiera University, etc.), today the victim of my curiosity is Graham Pullin.

Graham Pullin joined Interactive Media Design at Dundee after nine years as a senior interaction designer and studio head at IDEO where he most notably created together with Crispin Jones the Social Mobiles series. He has been involved in the design of mobile phones, hearing aids, furniture for children with disabilities and remote-controlled submarines. Previous to entering the design industry he gained an MDes from the Royal College of Art, this after a number of years as a medical engineer, having studied engineering at Oxford University.

The Home Viewing Chair (Boston, 1956) by Dave Reid and Craig Mitchell

Dundee is a small city situated on the east coast of Scotland. I must confess that i had never heard of it until one or two years ago when the pieces developed by the students of Interactive Media Design (IMD) at Dundee University and shown at the Museum of Lost Interactions started to make a glorious tour of all the design and gadget blogs.

The BSc in Interactive Media Design brings together Computing modules, Design Studies modules and Interactive Media Design modules, in a range of hand-on projects that prepare students for a career in interaction design.

Your bio on the School of design website says that you are “passionate about work that blurs the boundaries between interaction design and industrial design”. Could you explain us what this involves? Any concrete example of this blurring of the boundaries?

Muji’s CD Player, designed by Naoto Fukasawa, has always been a favourite. The industrial design is the interaction design, suggesting a ventilation fan and inviting you to pull the cord, in the designer’s own words “Without Thought”… which is about so much more than ease of use – there is such a lightness of touch, such delight.

Forgotten Chairs, website designed by Jamie Shek and Ryan McLeod

Perhaps I feel more at home at these intersections – or in the gaps between – because of a twenty-five year journey from computer programming, via engineering and industrial design to (back to? I’m not sure) interaction design. I’m a little envious of my Interactive Media Design students for getting transgress these boundaries right from the start.

The Gentleman’s Chair (Edinburgh, 1898) by Ryan McLeod, Jamie Shek and Ian Shiels

For them, Forgotten Chairs is an introduction to designing interactions in the round rather than on screen. Recreating historical artefacts allowed them to find objects abandoned in charity shops and recycling yards, rather than build from scratch. Whether their exhibit is credible is a real test of whether they mastered the relationships between the three-dimensional and graphic design languages for their chosen period and the qualities of different media and technologies. The Gentleman’s Chair has a coherence and attention to detail that I hope Ian Shiels, Ryan McLeod and Jamie Shek will apply to everything they do next.

Why focus on “lost interactions”?

The theme of lost interactions connects young interaction designers to a heritage that is older and broader than the history of the personal computer. At the same time, it can provoke reflections on the pursuit of technical innovation for its own sake. PESTER by Euan McGhee and John Drummond is a 1970s mobile phone with built-in camera, music player and games.

PESTER (1970) by John Drummond and Euan McGhee

Designing within a historical period can also help the students to be more conscious of the possible social impact of technology, issues easier to gloss over when looking optimistically into the future. The Case Communicator by Alison Thomson and Shaun McWhinnie promises liberating mobility to the modern businessman, but condemns his 1930s secretary to even longer working hours, tethered to her telephone exchange.

The Case Communicator (1936) by Shaun McWhinnie and Alison Thomson

… and do you feel that in general some kinds of interactions get lost over the years? Can an interaction became obsolete and how?

The radio dial is a loss: a magical interaction, a bit like safe-cracking (I’m told), to navigate a frequency band by half-second snatches of sound, occasionally stumbling across surprises. Instead, we now select a station name from a list – but isn’t this just because a little display has been added for the text streamed with Digital Audio Broadcasting and then adopted for the interface as well? If we browse images through thumbnails rather than filenames, why shouldn’t we continue to browse radio by its content?

Rather than lose this interaction, we could reinterpret it. True, there are inherent time delays in the way a digital radio tunes to a station and buffers sound, but this is a limitation of imagination more than technology – perhaps a secondary tuner might harvest recent content across all stations in the background? Making the technology work harder towards a richer, ultimately even simpler experience excites me more than adding features.

To be honest with you, i’m in a phase when i’ve seen so much interactive anything that i’ve started to be tempted to change room when someone invites me to “interact” with their screen/coat/clock/lamp, etc. I mean it is funny for a few minutes then my attention drifts away. Am i the problem in this scenario? Do you think that i need to see a doctor? What are the characteristics that makes an interactive work engaging and challenging beyond those first few minutes?

Can you make a double appointment for both of us? I am just reading The Poetic Museum by Julian Spalding which argues that the profundity and richness of original artefacts are being overlooked in the indiscriminate move to interactive exhibits. And MoLI certainly isn’t about where to draw this line…

But what it is, is a first opportunity for our students to jump in and learn that the success of an interaction depends on its realisation as much as its conception. And this is the reason it’s difficult to answer your question – you have to experience the experience for yourself to know if it’s working.

The Amazing Musical Chair (New York, 1937) by Graham Hancock and Raymo Holloway (photo: Chris Phillips)

The Amazing Musical Chair lets its occupant create a complex mix of 1930s instrumental sounds. This might have been a cacophony, but the whole exceeds the sum of the parts because Raymo Holloway and Graham Hancock crafted each loop and went to the trouble of recording musicians playing real instruments. Whereas the Barrow Rocker is just a mechanical music box that plays a note for each rock back and forth and owes its delight to Kirsty Woodend and Rebecca Rumble keeping it this simple.

The Barrow Rocker (Dundee, c.1870) by Rebecca Rumble and Kirsty Woodend (photo: Chris Phillips)

There is a high focus on documenting the students projects using videos. Is it important to the whole creative process? Or is it just the icing on the cake for the video-hungry web visitors?

On the Forgotten Chairs website, video is used to tell the story of each exhibit and place it in context (there’s some nice archive footage) but also to convey the interactivity to those who couldn’t make it up to Dundee and experience the chairs for themselves. I think that’s something I got wrong on the original MoLI site – most web visitors didn’t realise that the models actually worked.

But in general, video is an important and versatile tool for our students – to sketch ideas, even as they are building them, and also to make documentaries and advertisements to disseminate their designs. And some may pursue careers in which video is their primary medium, whether as design ethnographers, researchers or artists.

I had a look at the Degree Show projects from 2006 and was quite intrigued by Andrew Cook – Tactophonics. Could you give us some details about it, how it works, what inspired the project and what in this project embodies the IMD department way of thinking and teaching?

Andrew Cook is also a computer musician (under the name of Samoyed) and his project was inspired by how unengaging performances of computer music can be – how difficult it is to understand what sounds are pre-stored and which are being manipulated or created live. The difficulty in setting up any kind of rapport between the audience and the performer is unrewarding for both.

Tactophonics was about making interaction with computer music more physical by letting a performer choose any object – for their own reasons – and turn it into an instrument. It worked by attaching a series of contact microphones to the object, not using these sounds directly, but shaping other sounds generated in MaxMSP. At his degree show, Andrew exhibited a tree branch that had been wired up: shaking the whole bough, bending the branches, scratching the bark, even snapping off the twigs, each produced different sounds. The relationships between action and sound was at once abstract and intuitive, engaging to play, and also a compelling spectacle for other visitors.

Tactophonics by Andrew Cook (photograph: Paul Gault)

I suppose this embodies our approach to thinking by making and playing. Andrew crafted a beautiful kit of parts and instructions, but this was just the starting point for each musician to create their own instrument and performances. It was about understanding this distinction, but also that design has a role within this creative whole.

By coincidence – well, not really coincidence – Cook is now working with me as a PhD student. We are trying to make synthetized speech more expressive – in particular for some people with impaired speech who use communication aids based on Text-To-Speech technology. Current devices offer little or no control of tone of voice, which can give a false impression that the person using them is also emotionally impaired. We are going to start off by building six speaking chairs.

Six Speaking Chairs by Graham Pullin and Andrew Cook

This research is the real reason I left IDEO and came up to Dundee. My exploration of new interactions with speech started with Social Mobiles, a project that Crispin Jones and I led. The Speaking Mobile asked how much could be communicated with only the words “yes” and “no”, if their intonation could be controlled. Once bitten, I decided I had to devote more time to this intriguing and under-explored area.

Social Mobiles by IDEO and Crispin Jones (photo: Maura Shea)

The Speaking Mobile (photo: Maura Shea)

The Speaking Mobile (photo: Maura Shea)

Have you ever come across projects from interactive art which you found relevant and interesting for an interaction designer?

One of the most relevant and inspiring to my own work was Listening Post by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, an installation that sampled text from internet chat sites and played it back as hundreds of synthesised voices. Its aesthetic qualities came from these voices being deliberately monotonic and tuned to a scale. The whole effect was reminiscent of Gregorian Chant, eerie but quite beautiful. In a field dominated by the quest for so-called ‘natural’ speech, Listening Post is one of the few examples I have come across of synthetic speech being treated as a design medium.

Listening Post, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Next Wave Festival, 2001

Could you name us one or more interactive media designer(s) whose work you find particularly inspiring?

Oh dear, I think I know how this is going to sound Régine, but please bear with me…

Wofgang von Kempelen, better known for the Mechanical Turk, built the first speech synthesiser in 1791 (here’s a sketch I made of it in the Deutsche Museum in München). Obviously, in those days, his Sprachmaschine was a mechanical analogue of the vocal organs and so speech sounds were derived from actions, not written language. But the design is also rather theatrical: the operator placed their hands through holes in a wooden box, so that no-one could see what they were doing, heightening the magic.

The Speaking Machine (1791) by Wolfgang von Kempelen

I realise this may sound nostalgic, especially following the Museum, but there is nothing nostalgic about the research that I am engaged with. I am quite serious about gaining inspiration from Kempelen and applying it to computerised Text-To-Speech. It’s the interaction that counts, not the technology.

The IMD website mentions that “Interactive media is one of the fastest growing sectors in the international economy”. I noticed when visiting design student shows that other departments, such as for example product design and industrial design, are getting more and more engaged in interactive projects. What is the specificity of IMD in Dundee?

I suppose I’m more interested in blurring again: interaction design and interactive media are part of so many sectors. In my 9 years at IDEO, leading projects and running a studio, that was increasingly the point: that interaction design had a role within a wide range of businesses and organisations, not just those focused on interactive media or interactive products.

Compared to product design courses, IMD is coming from the opposite direction, if you like. My current role is to introduce this shared territory to students who are already immersed in media and coding and narrative and interaction design – my colleagues Catriona Macaulay, Ali Napier, Shaleph O’Neill and Morna Simpson have backgrounds in design ethnography, sound recording, semiotics and content design.

On the other hand, we are a design course, which distinguishes us from a number of Computer Science or Human Computer Interaction courses that have rebranded themselves ‘interaction design’ or ‘interactive media design’. It is important that our studios are at the heart of an art college, sharing ideas as well as workshops with product design and textiles and illustration and fine art… as well as computing.

Why Dundee? Apart from IMD, what should make us put Dundee on a map?

It’s no coincidence that IMD is in Dundee, as it’s a collaboration between the School of Computing here and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. The School of Computing has always focused on what it calls ‘applied computing’ rather than computer science and Duncan of Jordanstone has a great reputation in Scotland.

This year we are launching a Master’s course in design ethnography, aimed at students and professionals from human factors or design backgrounds. And there is lots of research going on across these traditional discipline boundaries.
http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/mde/

IMD has a sister course called IPD, which (a bit confusingly) stands for Innovative Product Design – where IMD is a blend of design and computing, IPD is a blend of design and engineering. IPD too has a strong point of view on “lighter and smarter” interactive products. Course director Polly Duplock has built a team with strong links with the RCA, Goldsmiths and industry, which now includes Jon Rogers, Andy Law and Pete Thomas. Second Year students on our two courses are currently working together on an invited brief for Microsoft’s 2008 Design Expo. We’re getting them to look at their relationships with their grandparents and consider where simple networked objects might play a role.
I will send a link for IPD next week – their new sit will be going live then

Any upcoming project, either personal or school related, that you could share with us?

I have just written a book, ‘Designing Braille for the sighted (and other meetings between disability and design)’ which is being published by The MIT Press and should be out in the autumn.

Designing Braille for the sighted to be published by The MIT Press

Twenty years ago, I spent three years as a medical engineer in a hospital designing products for disabled people. Then I went back to the Royal College and spent the next twelve years in design consultancy, designing all kinds of things for all kinds of people. The starting point is how distant these two cultures still are from each other – but how much each could inspire the other (sorry, it’s about boundaries blurring again…)

It starts with seven tensions between conflicting values and priorities. Is it more important for a wheelchair or a hearing aid or a prosthetic hand to be discreet or fashionable? Universal or simple? Sensitive or provocative? Is it more important to solve known problems or to explore new possibilities? Striking the right balance – and a different balance for different disabled people – requires the skills and sensibilities of both design cultures, not either one working alone.

It ends with conversations with some designers I like – including Tomoko Azumi, Vexed, Crispin Jones, Michael Marriott and Graphic Thought Facility. We discuss design briefs related to disability in some way – wheelchairs and wheelchair clothing, prosthetic legs, watches for visually impaired people and Braille. Their first trains of thought are diverse and inspiring.

Sketching thoughts about step stools, by Tomoko Azumi

Collecting bicycles and chairs to inspire wheelchairs, by Michael Marriott

Sketching a Braille wall for visually impaired and sighted people, by Graphic Thought Facility

Despite the subject matter, this is anything but a textbook (there are several of these already!) It’s to be an affordable – and I hope beautiful – little book to carry in your pocket and read on a train journey.

…and some dates for your diary:

24 February – 12 May 2008: Social Mobiles exhibited as part of Design and the Elastic Mind, MoMA, New York

16 – 24 May 2008: IMD degree show at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. This year’s IMD graduates were responsible for the first Museum of Lost Interactions

27 – 29 July 2008: Microsoft Design Expo 2008, that will feature the work of Dundee IMD and IPD students

Autumn 2008: The MIT Press due to publish ‘Designing Braille for the sighted’

December 2008: the opening of the next gallery of MoLI (sorry, the theme is a secret!)

Thanks Graham!

Just back from London where i visited the Work in Progress show at the Royal College of Art (you’ve got until Thursday 7 February to visit it). I’ll come back with more details later but here’s an appetizer from the department of Design Interactions.

Revital Cohen got interested in Life support machines and the way the technologies involved in keeping patients alive in intensive care enter and merge with the body. By doing so they redefine its material and functional properties. As the human anatomy gains technological capabilities, where does the body end and the machine begin?

The Telepresence Frame is a domestic object which utilizes the fact that one’s bodily functions are digitalized in order to create a new form of telepresence. Your family would have the frame at home as a presence that keeps them constantly aware of your physical state while you’re being kept alive at the hospital.

The Human Black Box records and stores this information, keeping a record of your very last moments. Once you die, the frame plays your life data back. In loop.