"Declarations of Interdependence" (declarationsofinterdependence.com) is a series of interactive prototypes that reposition individual and collective roles:
- A computer with multi-user keyboard requiring two or three users for operation.
- YouByUs, a social media platform in which your profile is crowdsourced by your social network.
- A website only accessible by quorum browsing: when a minimum number of users simultaneously connect from the same location.
- A machine that monitors group interactions to algorithmically select and visually represent the most dominant individual.
Through these designed experiences, the project questions the centrality of the individual user in the interactions of contemporary social media and human-computer interfaces.
Slides, video clips, and audio from my presentation at SVA's Critical Information Conference on December 8, 2013. The 20-minute long presentation covered the research and making that made up my MFA thesis project "Declarations of Interdependence." You can find out more details about the work at declarationsofinterdependence.com
I was contributing to a panel entitled "Communication/Isolation/Retaliation: Our Responses to the Age of Information." Panel description: "How are we connected? The virtual, the simulated, the networked: we refer to our technological state of existence by many names. From studying the impact of the Internet, to exploring the function of logic, computation, game theory and surveillance technologies, in this panel, we will explore a number of ways in which we communicate information and why it is important to study the ways in which we are connected."
How might self-effacing and identity-merging communication technologies alter the ways in which we communicate one-to-one online?
This quick experiment integrates Arturo Castro (arturocastro.net) and Kyle McDonald's (kylemcdonald.net) OpenFrameworks Face Substitution (github.com/arturoc/FaceSubstitution) with Skype to explore video communication that substitutes your face with the other person's in real time.
If a mirror is the classic interface for experiencing your own presence, what would a technologically-mediated mirror be like that doesn't let you see your own face?
This is a prototype of such a mirror I made as part of my Thesis research. A Kinect tracks the movement of users’ heads, and a Processing sketch triggers the mirror perpendicular to the user to turn via a small servo, obscuring their reflection. The prototype works with multiple users, allowing them to see other faces, but never their own.
Personal++ Computer is a small app which disables individual computer use. Running in the background, it deactivates the screen unless it can identify a minimum of two users in front of the computer's webcam.
Download the app and give it a try: http://bit.ly/PersonalPlusPlus (Requires Mac with camera)
Declarations of Interdependence is a body of work that explores the complexities of Networked Interdividualism, questioning User-Centered Design's assumption that agency must always lie with the individual. A series of critical prototypes, collaborative…
Declarations of Interdependence is a body of work that explores the complexities of Networked Interdividualism, questioning User-Centered Design's assumption that agency must always lie with the individual. A series of critical prototypes, collaborative experiments, and self-effacing interactions probe, question, and critique our experiences of these new social spaces.
