CHALLENGE OVERVIEW
Furniture, jewelry, fine art, architecture are all objects that people tend to care for and hand-down through generations. What are the qualities that set these objects apart and how can a digital product transcend to having a place in this exclusive group? Consider the concept of “heirloom electronics”: What factors are involved with a person wanting to keep something for a long time, to hand-it-down between generations, to appreciate it beyond its monetary value. What sensual qualities make an object covetable? How can natural organic materials be synthesized with electronics? How can these parts and the interactions that they afford as an interface be intrinsically related—feel as if they were naturally born together; to be parts of a single anatomy; be singular and precious.

This project will embrace a material exploration as the ultimate deliverable. Through a series of sketches, swatches (simple abstractions involving both organic and digital materials), I will explore a variety of form and behavior compositions. This process of sketching with natural physical materials, hand craft, and both the hardware and software of digital interaction will be driven by intuition and will rely on iteration and discussion with colleagues to continuously and spontaneously guide next steps.

The few constraints that I will start with include: combination of natural materials and digital materials; objects/interfaces will be designed for humans; high quality natural materials and high craft will be valued over hyper-efficiency for mass manufacture. The majority of “swatches” (interactive compositions of natural and digital materials) will be relatively small scale and abstract. Their function will be as a sketch, to enable design exploration—to act as a sounding board for myself and as vehicles for conversations with colleagues. Success of a swatch will be measured by the contribution it makes to the sketching process and the curiosity, surprise and delight it brings to a participant—they should be coveted. Together the swatches should form a palette from which one could imagine a variety of applications.

* “New Covetables” is from a short film by the same name by Charles Eames