Callous Computing / Working Class Computer
- also see DmIhitIhate (proposal for DmContinuum course)
bringing physical labor to digital work
Traveling and working has taught me, among other things, that no matter where I am or what I am doing, I am at a computer with a little mouse and keyboard and backache of the wrong sort. Maybe its just the overprivileged white boy speaking, but I want some calouses that don't come from the gym. When I lift a heavy file, I want to feel it. When I save something, I want to have to really nail it down hard so it stays where I want it. I want to have to generate the elelctricity needed to run any process before that computer will let me run the process.
So physical computing as physcial as it gets. You run around a room to move the mouse, pull a lever to open objects that increases resistance the larger a file is, smash a sensor with a mallet to save, and the bigger the file, the harder you have to hit it. And all this time I am pedaling a bicycle to generate the energy to keep ths thing running.
Download a pdf prototype description. Its pretty watered down, because I can't figure out the bigger-the-file the harder-to-open thing, and everyone says I can't generate enough energy from a bicycle to run a computer. Dare to dream?...
Related projects
- Jeffrey Shaw's Legible city makes you work, bicycle for a long time to read the city
- Chris Burden
Perry Hoberman's
Cathartic User Interface lets user vent their frustrations at computers by hurling mouse-like objects at a wall of keyboards to trigger reponses and respond to messages from the computer.- Jonah Brucker-Cohen's Crank The Web forces users to physically turn a crank in order for web pages to load. He maps an obvious and ancient technology to the blackbox of how it actually works, and turns out that people appreciate this visceral satisfaction.
A
sledgehammer-controlled keyboard by Taylor Hokan
Hit me
The object of the game is to hit the opponent's button and whoever has the highest number of hits in a limited amount of time is the winner. When a player hits the opponent's button, the camera on the player's head will take a snapshot of their opponent. The snapshot, the scores and the timer will be projected on to a large screen for everyone to observe.
