After io9 posted this story about 3D printed sonogram technologies, allowing prospective parents who are blind or have low vision to experience their developing fetus, I got to talking with Aimi Hamraie, assistant professor of Medicine, Health, & Society at Vanderbilt University, about all the interesting questions this practice might raise. The article lists both …
You might think of this project as a poetics of sensory substitution: swapping one capacity for another. There are a number of tools in development now that translate visual material into audible “colors,” or use tactile signals to “see” the environment—they create an artificial form of synaesthesia that’s meant to compensate for lost function in …
From Wired Design: “Lantos Technologies, a small startup spun out of MIT, has created the first FDA-cleared digital ear-canal scanner. While that may seem wildly specific, and maybe a little gross, it could dramatically improve your grandfather’s hearing aid, Lady Gaga’s in-ear monitor, and mission-critical communication devices used by the military. The Lantos 3-D Ear Canal Scanner should …
Jennifer Crupi is externalizing body language cues—some iconic, some more insidious—with wearable armature. Largely made with sleek aluminum parts, these tools recall a medical grammar of the early 20th century: braces, stirrups, or dentistry tools. So the emotionality of their gestures comes as a gorgeous surprise: Her “Posture Gauge—Chin“ measures chin placement and its associated degrees …
Ana Rajcevic’s collection, ANIMAL: The Other Side of Evolution, proposes a set of wearables that explore “animal anatomy, building upon existing skeleton structures to create a series of sculptural pieces that appear as natural properties of the human body.” Made of gelcoat, fiberglass, resin and silicone rubber, the suite of works form “a collection of …
Matthias Gommel’s Delayed places two participants in conversation via headsets–except their communications are postponed for five seconds. No instructions are given when you encounter this work; it’s a game of trials and tests and repeats. It’s striking to me that this piece originates from 2002, precisely when it would have registered most strongly around the …
Anthony Ptak pointed me to this vintage cane camera—old school private-eye gear, from the 1920s, 30s, 40s. For covert spies of old, or for the collector. Continue reading »
Elasticbrand designers Arjen Noordeman and Christie Wright created this suite of sonic wearables. The series is inspired by idiophone instruments—those which make sound primarily through the instrument’s vibration, without the use of strings or membranes—and aerophone instruments—those whose sound is produced by the vibration of air, again without strings or membranes, but also without the … Continue reading »
Yoony Byun’s prosthetic leg concept repurposes sneaker parts, making a user-adjustable, low-cost limb: Byun had in mind the common injuries that happen in landmine encounters—lower leg amputations sustained in parts of the world where landmines can linger, hidden, indefinitely. (78% of landmine injuries in Cambodia, for instance, are this “transtibial” kind.) Byun’s … Continue reading »
I’ll be at NYU next Thursday and Friday, April 11 and 12. Thursday’s talk, “When Prosthetics Speak,” is with the NYU Council for the Study of Disability—5:30 – 7 in the Payne Room, 4th Floor Pless Hall, 82 Washington Square East. On Friday, I’ll be speaking alongside Geoffrey Bowker in the Media, Culture, and Communication … Continue reading »
I came across a succinct and probing summary of Michel de Certeau’s ideas about strategies versus tactics in Tim Cresswell’s On The Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. This comparison—and the affirmation of the tactical—is referenced so often by artists, but usually without sufficient explanation as to why. A long time ago I pointed to Mitchell … Continue reading »
A while back I wrote about a set of china from the Design for Dementia project, made to maximize independent eating for older users whose hand coordination is declining. In this beautiful set of sculptural cutlery, Mickael Boulay provides an on-ramp for people developing motor skills for the first time—especially when those skills are already hampered … Continue reading »
Stuart Firestein narrates the origins and case studies of his course, offered in the Biology department at Columbia, called Ignorance. It started with his dissatisfaction in teaching a stock-in-trade course called “Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience”: “[A]s a lecturer, you wish to sound authoritative, and you want your lectures to be ‘informative,’ so you tend to … Continue reading »
