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PROMOTION VIDEO


Model
Sall Lam Toro
DISCOVER THIS COVER
DISCOMFORT THIS COMFORT (2017)

Created by 
Alena Komperova, Anna Major, Irene Liut, Kamilla Mez & Roxana Rosu

With our wearable device, Discover this cover, discomfort this comfort , we are investigating our perception of the environmental issues, and translating it into a tactile instrument with usage of soft robotics. It is common knowledge that there is an excess of air pollution in atmosphere, and we still contribute to it. Even though it is not something that visibly influences our everyday lives, it has a huge impact on us and a number of other species, as well as on the planet. We are provided with information about the environmental issues through the media, newspapers and it is present as a topic of everyday discussions in our lives. In this project we took a different approach, since we believe it is not efficient enough to perceive this information in such an indirect way. 

By providing an immediate, bodily effect of the air pollution, we aim to create an alarming device, which can help us to become conscious about the issues in a different way. With this new way of interaction we would like to encourage our visitors to make a change and act upon these issues.
    The first part of the title refers to the physical form of the art piece, which is a vest that was created with taking aesthetic aspects of a traditional life-saving vest into consideration in order to provoke curiosity with its unusual composition. The aesthetics are also supporting the idea, what the second part of the title implies, which is that we invite the audience for a participatory experience to leave their comfort zone. 

Doing that by leaving the mostly comfortable, sometimes even too comforting conditions of everyday life, and entering an installation where their perceptual systems are challenged to experience a usual thing, as the atmosphere around us, in an unusual way. 

For the ArT Fall Exhibition 2017, we created an audio-visual-tactile installation with the vest because we priroritized the experience of the project at the exhibition instead of creating a vest that would be worn outside in the cityscape. Here, we had the device reacting to the content in the video the participant would be watching instead of the levels of air pollution through a sensor. 
        Silicone pillows created with inspiration from soft robotics would be pumped up with air from an air compressor, connected and controlled with a valve and an Arduino Uno and through this feel a pressure on the chest. With this, we intend to create a new way of perceiving environmental issues, through an audio-visual-tactile installation.

The device provides a new way of interacting with the world, taking into consideration the importance of the balanced existence of humans, technology, and nature.

Public domain videos and pictures can be downloaded and shared with others as long as the authorship is credited and there is a link back to the website of the author.

These works cannot be altered in any way or used for commercial purpose nor be displayed or exhibited without the consent of the artist. 
Kamilla Mez © 2020
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