Digital Selves: Devices for intimate communications between homes

  • Authors:

  • Konstantinos Grivas

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Interaction Design, Royal College of Art, UK

  • Venue:
  • Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

The technologies that pervade domestic spaces mainly focus on utility and efficiency. They also become ever more so immaterial and non-spatial, concentrated on tiny “magic” devices concealed inside the environment, or dispersed into invisible networks. Yet, they fail to create a strong feeling of place that is intimate and reflects our identity, relations and domestic history. In this paper I am presenting a proposal for a spatial system that organizes the positions of a new type of electronic object inside the two disparate homes of a couple living apart, in order to produce a kind of intimate communication between them. The resulting architectural space is an imaginary merge of the two homes, but where real locations in each house correspond to trans-located presences of the other person/space. The system is based on simple ubiquitous technologies and the intimate relationship of the couple. I am also presenting here the attempt to implement some of the objects and to carry out a concept evaluation with potential users in order to test its validity and to highlight important issues or concerns.