Today I've been watching some lectures from TransNatural, a program looking at the where art, design and future technologies intersect. There are quite a few good-looking recent projects I haven't got around to looking at quite yet, but I wanted to get down some thoughts that cropped up when watching a talk done by my tutor Jimmy Loizeau and his partner James Auger.
There are kind of 3 main points that caught my attention when listening to this. The first was their process, the way they approached their investigation in Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots. The individual decisions they outlined when thinking about how to take emerging technologies out of the laboratory, or even out of a gallery context, and make it a point of discussion or relatable, non-intrusive product for the household is definitely something I need to remain aware of for my own project.
The second point was just about the way Auger explained the products, how through the implementation of biomimetics and metabolic processes these things had entered this new realm between a plant, a pet and a product, creating new relationships between product and user. This is more of an abstract explanatory factor, but I feel like it kind of switched on a different light bulb with the way I'm looking at my own work.
And the last thing was about 'spectacle,' the pure entertainment value of the project. This ties more in with the execution of the project, the way it draws attention or makes itself noticed initially, regardless of the 'critical thinking' behind it that will later validate its success. My projects have always tended to be a bit weird, and this idea of 'spectacle' is definitely something I think I could capitalise on.
