Title: Expression Dispatcher (2009)
By: Gerard Rallo
Link: http://www.ideesabsurdes.net/wordpress/?cat=19
On my Flickr: on my Flickr

Concept:
Leave our facial expressivity responsibility (appearance of emotional reactions) in the hands of self-image experts (following us with a smiley remote).
Description:
Many decisions made in our everyday lives are influenced by expert advice, from hairstyles to insurance policies. Yet, millions of decisions are made on a daily basis and instantly expressed through our own facial expressions without any preconceived external reassurance. We continuously strive to project a desired physical self image of ourselves, sometimes requiring most of our cognitive resources, and paradoxically, this daily challenge has a big impact on our lives.

Expressions Dispatcher is designed to help people in their quest for expressiveness.
In using the device we can shift expressive responsibility and place it in the hands of an expert. This life coach will follow the wearer, analysing the context they are in, and digitally take control as to how the wearer should be perceived.

Opinion:
It’s not the main concept that interests me (the fact that an expert controls our facial expressions) but the use of the smiley as main facial expression tool. Using the smiley – a hack to the poor emotional expressivity of textual digital communication, the symbol of the flattened/compressed signal of that medium – as replacement of a human face in live communication simplifies it into only 20 different possibilities. At the opposite of my theme of work here the provocative aim is also to simplify live communication where my search is to make evolve the digital communication closer to some tangible/human feeling.

Title: Adaptive Keyboard (2010)
By: Microsoft
Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/appliedsciences/content/projects/uist.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/appliedsciences/content/projects/AdaptiveHardware.aspx
All the microsoft research projects
Image: on my Flickr

Concept:
A keyboard with dynamic keys, changing of appearance and function (not necessary letters)
Description:
What’s an Adaptive Keyboard? It is a research prototype developed by Microsoft Hardware to explore how combining display and input capabilities in a keyboard can allow users to be more productive. The keyboard incorporates a large, touch-sensitive display strip at the top. In addition, the display continues underneath the keys, allowing the legends to be modified in real time. This lets you do things like change the character set to a different language or display command icons.

Opinion:
A very interesting prototype to make keyboards a new nonverbal tool of communication with other symbols than letters without to change the traditional context of use of the keyboard device

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojusRO38Tdc]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0MEhKk9xg4]

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.