*Admiring the exceedingly design-fictional black-and-white cartoon drawings at the bottom of this page.
via Peter Horvath's SPIME blog, which is pretty well meeting mankind's spimey needs lately
http://www.auger-loizeau.com/index.php?id=23
"The concept of the smart home has been around for some time. Spectacularly toyed around with in Science fiction literature (Ray Bradbury, J.G. Ballard) and more recently realised on a slightly mundane level by several telecoms and IT companies, there is something about the concept of a reactive home and intelligent products that captures the public imagination.
This project explores such themes taking inspiration from Bradbury’s Happylife Home and Ballard’s Psychotropic House:
'Maybe I don't have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don't we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?'
'You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?'
'yes.' she nodded.
'And darn my socks?'
'Yes.' A frantic watery-eyed nodding.
'And sweep the house?'
'Yes, yes - oh yes!'
Ray Bradbury: The Illustrated Man (1952)
“It's always interesting to watch a psychotropic house try to adjust itself to strangers, particularly those at all guarded or suspicious. The responses vary, a blend of past reactions to negative emotions, the hostility of the previous tennants...”
J.G. Ballard: The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista (1962)
(((It's great that they parade some top-end sci-fi to justify their creative efforts, and then just briskly sweep it out of the way.)))
The background
The project is part of the Impact exhibition, a unique collaboration between science and design that explores the importance of engineering and physical sciences in all aspects of our lives.
16 EPSRC funded research teams were paired with designers from the Royal College of Art, (((that figures))) Design Interactions Department to work together to produce conceptual designs.
This is a joint project between EPSRC, Royal College of Art and NESTA.
The science
Happylife is the result of an ongoing collaboration with Reyer Zwiggelaar and Bashar Al-Rjoub of Aberystwyth University Computer Science Department. Their EPSRC funded research is described below:
Real-time dynamic passive profiling technique will be based on the modelling of facial expressions, eye movement and pupil changes in both the visual and thermal domains and link these to malicious intent and physiological processes (such as blood flow, eye movement patterns, and pupil dilation).
To facilitate this process, one of the initial aspects of the project will be the collection, analysis and development of the dataset used to model the baseline of facial imagery behaviour of the general population against which physiological behaviours in people with malicious intent would need to be detected. Both the baseline and the dynamic profiling will be based on the response to a series of questions. The developed techniques will be evaluated in operational trails at border control points. The multi-modal facial analysis will provide additional information to the current profiling and the developed techniques will have a wider remit into other domains.
(((So, okay, basically the thing is a magic lie-detector, but this somber design-fiction rhetoric is so totally Dunne and Raby that one really has to enjoy it)))
The design
In the context of national security, criminal activity and human safety, technology is usually seen as a means to an end; however dark or invasive the application, its presence is accepted because the worst case scenario would be infinitely worse. Thus, through these means ‘smart’ technologies are entering our lives and being applied as infallible judges and experts of human character and state.
But with a slight shift in context: applying their powers in the domestic setting, the political justifications are removed allowing us to freely explore these technologies for what they are. ...
