I Gave the Internet a Wooden Heart

Full description

BACKGROUND
I Gave the Internet a Wooden Heart centres around ubiquitous computing. It is a reinvigoration of calm technology (Weiser and Brown, 1995) and slowness (Hallnäs and Redström, 2001) through current technological lenses. Key discourse surrounds formgiving (Djajadiningrat et al., 2004) towards internet-connected devices and issues related to digital media meaning and the attention economy (Davenport and Beck, 2001).

It informs research around the crafting of digital 'rituals' (Dourish and Bell, 2011), exploring third-wave ubicomp (Bødker, 2015) with interaction proxemics (Marquardt, 2015) and artifact ecologies. A transmateriality perspective (Whitelaw, 2013) blended formgiving and aesthetics creative practice with digital media and embedded electronics.

CONTRIBUTION
The work is a heartbeat generator. Milled from pine to evoke a cracked wooden heart, it generates heartbeats that slew to rates driven by a sentiment analysis of an area's tweets in real-time. It examines the feasibility of haptics as a manifestation of social media and questions the duality of artefact as prototype/experiment (Loh et al., 2020), furthering critical making (Ratto, 2011) towards holistic IoT design. Using highly-integrated and parametrised hardware and software for effective design iteration (named ‘IoTa’ – an affective Internet of Things), this framework espouses designer-friendly creative/engineering efforts.

SIGNIFICANCE
36 works were selected for Future Prototyping, a blind-reviewed exhibition at Melbourne University's School of Design's Dulux Gallery as part of Melbourne Design Week 2020. The review panel included Prof Jane Burry, Dean of the School of Design at Swinburne University of Technology; Prof Donald Bates, Chair of Architectural Design at the Melbourne School of Design; and Jon Yeo, curator of TEDxMelbourne.