It’s Alive! Smart Things for Gaming Chairs: Exploring Animism as a Resource for Building Relations
2022 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
In this project, the intersection between animism and smart things is being explored, with a special focus on gaming chairs. Integrated sensors and actuators become an opportunity to create interactivity and autonomous behaviour which creates illusions of life. Gaming chairs are interesting to explore because it’s a piece of furniture that is often and well used, for longer periods at a time, allowing a space to create a personal relationship between the human user and the chair. With the goal to develop design beyond the current norms of interactions and relationships between the user and belongings in their home this project uses Research Through Design, Speculative Design, Animism and Posthumanism. By transferring insights of visual expressions, capabilities of beloved belongings, familiar interactions and behaviours to a non-living entity combined with technology and smart things as a contributor for animistic expression - this project proposes that it is possible to create an illusion of life and for humans to develop a relationship to a non-human entity. The actuators applied on the conceptual gaming chair affected the participants testing it - the participants seemed to care for the chair and perceived it to be an extension of themselves.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. , p. 22
Keywords [en]
Research Through Design, Animism, Posthumanism, Speculative Design, Smart Textiles, Interaction Design, Human-Non-Human Interaction
National Category
Interaction Technologies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-49394OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-49394DiVA, id: diva2:1675998
External cooperation
IKEA
Subject / course
Media Technology
Supervisors
Examiners
2022-06-302022-06-232022-06-30Bibliographically approved