How close do we feel to the digital tools that surround us? Most often the digital layer of smart homes remains invisibly in the background – impalpable and distant. How would they have to be designed in order to become truly engaging? In the installation ‘Within Touching Distance’, visitors are cared for by a set …
As Artists in Residence in Shimane (Japan), designer Jonas Althaus tied in with the 1500 year old UNESCO cultural heritage of sekishu washi paper making. How to deal with such craft heritage today – conserve or update? In Japanese architecture, handmade paper was once widely used (to build paper walls shoji, famous for their interplay …
Complex systems such as stock markets and multinational corporations arise from invisible (partly non-human) collective authorship, but act as autonomous entities. Would temporarily using a proxy as placeholder help stimulate public discourse around an ungraspable topic, and add a fresh perspective? Because we enjoy having something concrete to blame, like in the Middle Ages when …
The idea of an unconditional basic income (UBI), is an increasingly prominent topic in progressive economics. This complex idea is often understood in a rather simplistic scenario where every citizen receives a guaranteed monthly income, hopefully enough to live by, with no questions asked. But basic income is not basic income! In this interactive installation …
Set up as an interactive installation, the Augmented Mundanity OS offers an alternative approach to common digital interfaces by allowing the citizen-user to directly take action on digital processes i.e, clearing one’s cache and cookies when wiping the screen with a cloth, switching to TOR browser for anonymous web browsing as soon as the curtains …
What if we understood history not as a linear story, but as one of versions, loops and profound correlations? Which alternative media formats are required to counterbalance today’s news feeds that only display content in the light of recent events, making the journalistic landscape easy prey to polemical spin? 4-D News practically experiments with media …