Title: E, U, And Their Inner Life (2009)
By: Gerard Rallo
Link: http://www.ideesabsurdes.net/wordpress/?p=420
Image: on my flickr

Concept:
Based on real neural networks, E and U, are two electronic monkey toys designed solely to find inner neural happiness.
Description:
To achieve such a goal, they perceive their environment (their owner, and their partner) and themselves. Depending on their own personality they balance the importance of each entity depending on the happiness they bring to them, they modify their inner structure in order to adapt themselves to their perceptions, and at the same time, modify the way their environment interacts with them.
As a result of this chaotic system, we can find and interpret infinite behaviors and relationships; stable, with ups and downs, unstable, uni and bidirectional dependency, independence, bullying, chronic depression,…

All their interactions and states are offered up for people interpretation, represented in a barely decipherable pattern on the LED panels on their chests.

Opinion:
We will notice here the system of representation of the little monkey toys emotions, an abstract modulation of a LED matrix. The interpretation is leaved to the observer / user and might significate something or become interpretable with the time. In the other hand there is a main design problem in the appearance of those monkeys. Their face is represented as smiling (without any interaction with it) then it influence the way we interprete the LED matrix. The LEDs should represent an emotional state for those monkey therefore either LEDs should be placed on the face or the monkey should have no facial expression – as it is our main emotional expressive output.

http://www.csm.arts.ac.uk/67192.htm

Source: Swiss Design Network. (2010) Negotiating Futures – Design Fiction, 6th Swiss Design Network Conference 2010. Basel, Swiss Design Network

Betti Markento (2010) – Central Saint Martins College of Arts & Design, University of the Arts. London. b.markento@csm.arts.ac.uk
Contagious Affectivity – The Management of Emotion in Late Capitalist Design

References
• First International Conference on Design and Emotion (Delft University of Technology) (1999)
• The Design and Emotion Society (founded in 1999)
• PrEmo (Product Emotion Measurement)

Definitions (Betti Markento 2010)
• Affect / Emotion

• Affect: “is what gives us the capacity to discern and make judgements for our survival (Norman 2004) […] Affect and experience are used interchangeably, underlying the fact that any product experience is inherently affective (Desmet and Hekkert 2007)”
• Emotion: “is ‘the conscious experience of affect, complete with attribution of its cause and identification of its object’ (Norman 2004, 11).”

• Affect

• “engage body and mind, reason and passions. They have to do with ‘both our power to affect the world around us and our power to be affected by it’ (Hardt, 2007 ix).”
• “while affections are states of the body (effect of a body upon an other), affects are variations of the power of the body (effects of a body upon a duration) (Spinoza).”
• “is ‘the trace of one body upon another’ (DELEUZE 1988, 138)” and “affects are also the ensuing variations in power from one state to another. […] power and affectivity are strictly linked. Power is ‘what opens up the capacity for being affected to the greatest number of things’ (DELEUZE 1988, 71).”
• “are‘the modification of the body by which the power of action of the body is increased or diminished, aided or restrained’ (Spinoza EIIIDef3: 83).”
• “while emotion is a subjective, qualified, ‘the socio-linguistic fixing’ (Massumi 2002, 28) of a personal experience, affect is instead unqualified, note recognizable or measurable.”

• Feelings / Emotion (Ahmed, Antonio Damasio)

• “Emotions play out in the theatre of the body, feelings play out in the theatre of the mind (Antonio Damasio 2003, 28). While emotions are actions or movements, feelings are always hidden”

Bibliography
• Norman, D. (2004) Emotional Design. New York, Basic Books
• Desmet, P.M.A. and Hekkert, O. (2007) Framework of product experience. International Journal of Design, 1(1), 57-66
• Hardt, M. (2007) “Foreword: what affects are good for”, in Clough P. The Affective Turn. Theorizing the Social. Durham & London, Duke University Press, ix-xiii
• Deleuze, G. (1988) Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco, City Lights Books
• (Spinoza EIIIDef3: 83) ??
• Massumi, B (2002) Parables for the Virtual. Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham & London, Duke University Press
• Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press
• Damasion, A. (2003) Looking for Spinoza. Joy Sorrow and the Feeling Brain. London Heinemann

Key words
• constitution of subjectivity
• Emotion-driven design
• intensities and affect
• Core affect theory
• Subjective feelings, behavioural reactions, expressive and psychological reactions
• Emotion, feeling, affects, passions, affections