In yesterday's post we looked at a team of students from the Design Academy Eindhoven showcasing during Milan Design Week designs and projects that rediscovered the importance of the physical world in our lives influenced by digital media.
Bachelor Media and Interaction Design students at Swiss ECAL/University of Art and Design brought instead to Milan Design Week a showcase entitled "When Objects Dream", that can be considered suspended between real and virtual reality.
The starting point for this project consisted in a series of questions such as "can objects dream?" and "what would happen if we could enter their dreams?"
To answer them, students developed two groups of objects: the first group integrates a virtual reality principle; the second is augmented or transformed through sensors.
There are objects that allow the users to interact with a virtual scene, such as a bicycle pump that inflates a balloon; a scale that alters an image according to the user's weight; a toaster that doubles as a launching pad for virtual objects; a hairdryer that melts digital items and a fan that turns the pages of an immaterial book.
Students also integrated virtual reality video displays into books, brooms, vases, tables and other assorted objects through which visitors can discover a mysterious world of plants or perceive a dramatic drop.
But more surrealism awaits visitors thanks to teapots that produce different soundscapes (depending from how you tilt them…) when you pour them into your ear, and to a bottle filled with a marvellously alien digital fluid.
Behind all the surreal fun of the objects and the images produced to accompany them, there is actually a wider and deeper meaning that hints at our relationship with technology and with objects that, in a not so distant future, may be able to make statements about themselves and offer us an unsettling – rather than a reassuringly practical – experience.
"When Objects Dream", Spazio Orso 16, Via dell'Orso 16, Milan, until 17th April.
Image credits for this post
All images courtesy of ECAL/Younès Klouche
Ear Cup
ECAL/Salomé Chatriot
Bloom
ECAL/Mélanie Courtinat
Browse Air
ECAL/Pierry Jaquillard & Justine Rieder
Broom Broom
ECAL/Erika Marthins & Hélène Portier
Scalastic
ECAL/David Nguyen & Fabiola Soavelo
Look Book
ECAL/Pietro Alberti & Elise Migraine
Tabula Rasa
ECAL/Thomas Faucheux & Arthur Moscatelli
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