Design Interactions Research

Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 03:08:18 Europe/London

This project explores how through the medium of speculative design proposals we can find new ways of thinking about robots.

By viewing the robot as a product rather than a technology it becomes exposed to a whole different set of rules and expectations than those which currently inform and direct robot development. This contextual shift; from the screen and laboratory to the domestic and the everyday is aimed at introducing new ways of informing the design of robots; our relationships and interactions with them and their meaning not as visions, props or demos but as real things in our homes.

The project challenges normative notions of robots on two levels:

1. How robots look.

2. What robots do.

Between Reality and the Impossible Exhibition

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:05:56 Europe/London

The exhibition consists of a number of design proposals presented through models, photographic scenarios, videos and 3D texts. It's an experiment in how to exhibit conceptual design proposals where the narrative and ideas are as important as the designs. Everything is treated as an object, including texts and images.

It is absolutely not about prediction, but asking what if..., speculating, imagining, and even dreaming, to create and facilitate reflection on the kind of technologically mediated world we wish to live in. Ideally, one that reflects the complex, troubled people we are, rather than the easily satisfied consumers and users we are supposed to be.

Commissioned by Constance Rubini for the the 2010 St Etienne Design Biennale.

Afterlife

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:22:28 Europe/London

This project was originally conceived for an exhibition organised by designers Auger-Loizeau to explore different uses for their Afterlife battery project. We decided to use our battery for a euthanasia machine. With couples, when one person goes, we’re never sure how long the other is going to hang on afterwards.
If it all proves too much for them, we could use the energy created by the first person to go to help the second one on their way. We’re not sure if it would be a form of conceptual murder or not, but it would definitely be a kind of ‘assisted’ suicide.

We imagine you would set the device up on a small table by your bed or favourite comfortable chair, insert the battery, put the mask on, then, after a few minutes, insert the tube into the device, so causing a green light to come on and let you know it is working and ready. You can lie back in your bed or armchair, close your eyes, and thirty seconds later the carbon
dioxide will begin to flow.

Stop and Scan

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:02:02 Europe/London

We live in a surveillance-obsessed society – from cctv cameras to loyalty cards and Big Brother, we just love it. But all this security, convenience and entertainment comes at a price: we are becoming acclimatised to social transparency, we’re easing the way for total surveillance and the end of privacy. Our minds are the last private space we have. For the time being, unless we say something out loud or write it down, nobody knows what we are thinking… but this could all change soon.

Scientists are working on a number of technologies that attempt to decode what we are thinking. They would like to be able not only to read our thoughts but to affect them too.

This, however, is still a long way off. For now, they are mapping brain activity – which bits of our brain are activated when we do, think or feel

Foragers

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 05:20:12 Europe/London

The world is running out of food – we need to produce 70% more food in the next 40 years according to the UN. Yet we continue to over-populate the planet, use up resources and ignore all the warning signs. It is completely unsustainable.

For this project we looked at evolutionary processes and molecular technologies and how we can take control. The assumption is that governments and industry together will not solve the problem and that groups of people will need to use available knowledge to build their own solutions, bottom-up.

Euthanasia Coaster

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 08:34:19 Europe/London

“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetical euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in aeronautics/space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful. Celebrating the limits of the human body, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster: John Allen,former president of the famed Philadelphia Toboggan Company, once said that “the ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people

What If...

Sat, 09 Oct 2010 23:48:36 Europe/London

We were commissioned by the Science Gallery in Dublin to curate an exhibition exploring interactions between design, science and futures.

For a while now, we’ve both been very interested in the space between reality and the impossible, a space of dreams, hopes, and fears. Usually this space is occupied by future forecasts (commercial world), design scenarios (corporate world) and utopias and dystopias (literary and cinematic worlds).

It’s an important space, a place where the future can be debated and discussed before it happens, so that, at least in theory, the most desirable futures can be aimed for and the least desirable avoided.

Usually when we discuss big issues we do so as citizens, yet it is as consumers that we help reality take

Wellcome Windows

Sat, 09 Oct 2010 07:39:30 Europe/London

Dunne & Raby were commissioned by the Wellcome Trust to design the windows of their HQ on Euston Road for 2010.

Our proposal was to use them as a mini-exhibition space where work by staff, graduates and students from the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art would be displayed throughout the year, six projects at a time with 3 new projects being introduced every few months.

Each project is framed as a 'What If..." question presented on a chroma screen green background.

Their purpose is not to offer predictions but to inspire debate about the human consequences of different technological futures, both positive and negative, by asking ‘what if…’

Jaywick: A Circle of Happiness

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 22:42:46 Europe/London

Nina Pope is currently working with co-director Karen Guthrie on their third documentary feature film which they are shooting during 2010 in the Essex coastal town of Jaywick, with planned release in spring 2011.

"We got to know Jaywick through our project Jaywick Escapes (link) – which was a creative strategy for Essex County Council on how to improve the design and use of green space locally. We found the town really intriguing, and feel that both the place and the people have something unique to say"

Once the favourite holiday destination for London's Eastenders, with its social club "A Circle of Happiness", Jaywick in Essex is now 'rated' the third most deprived place in the UK. Locally notorious for high levels of crime, unemployment, dependency and anti-social behaviour, outside of the town you rarely hear mention of its

Cat Fancy Club

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 22:39:15 Europe/London

"Everything you need to know about genetics you can learn from your cat" – Associate professor Leslie Lyons PhD of the UC Davis Genetics Laboratory at the University of California.

Cats are now the UK's most popular pet and in addition to the thousands of moggies we own are the increasingly diverse pedigree breeds. This documentary film will follow breeders into their homes and the show-ring exploring their complex, creative and often scientific world. It will show genetics at work in the home and the laboratory and question whether 'community' science can have a meaningful connection to 'professional' science.

The film will follow several characters who are key to the development of specific breeds in the UK.