Smart Home – Sweet Home?

The digital home of the future between hype and panic

“Smart Home – Sweet Home? is an exhibition by the Salzburg Chamber of Labour and Ars Electronica Solutions on the subject of Smart Home. Beginning in October 2019, in Salzburg and the district offices of the Chamber of Labor in Zell am See, Bischofshofen, Tamsweg and Hallein, the effects of the ever-increasing digitalization on our everyday lives will be examined for one year. The smart home of the future promises more living and quality of life, more security and leisure time. On the other hand, there is the fear of the loss of privacy, the “glass household” and dependence on energy and Internet service providers.

Projects such as the “Out of Control” exhibition in Vienna have already been realised with the Chamber of Labour. The focus here and there is on dealing with privacy and the ever-increasing flood of data generated.

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In five exhibition areas, different aspects of Smart Home technologies are discussed and deepened by informative, interactive installations. From the interactive surveillance camera in the entrance area to the smart refrigerator and the “mind-reading pizza oven” in the kitchen to the smart bathroom mirror and the living room lamp with voice control, visitors can experience various topics and technologies that are an ever growing part in our everyday life. Texts that can only be read with the appropriate red-cyan 3D glasses and augmented reality animations bring the exhibition contents to life and illustrate the possibilities, but also the risks, of smart technology in the household.

Mindreader PizzaAn eye tracking system, installed under a screen at chest height, evaluates the eye movements of the person sitting in front of it. This information is used in the “mindreader pizza” installation to determine the desired ingredients for the individual pizza within a few seconds. The screen shows symbols of various typical pizza toppings such as tomato slices, tuna, ham, bacon, corn, olives, etc. The system assumes that the view unconsciously lingers a little longer on the favourite ingredients than on those that you don’t like. Perhaps the home of the future already knows what we want to eat before we know it ourselves?

Smart bathroom mirrorIn the sanitary area hangs a mirror that “comes to life” as soon as you step on the scales on the floor. When the mirror is activated, information such as the date, the current weather, a news feed with the latest headlines and of course the weight of the person standing on the scales appear through the mirror glass. In conjunction with fitness trackers, an appointment calendar and a personalized selection of news sources, the digital home provides us with all the relevant information while we are brushing our teeth.

Switch and rule with Alexa
In the living room there is a small robot called Vector. He has a connection to Alexa, the voice-controlled, internet-based, intelligent assistant of the US-American company Amazon.com.

Future Smart HomeThe much-discussed digitalization has simplified and accelerated existing processes in the industrialized world. This has created new opportunities and challenges for our daily use of technology. The devices are becoming ever more powerful, they generate an ever growing amount of digital data and the software for processing this data is becoming increasigly intelligent. How do we feel thinking of a future in which our own home will automate more and more activities and make decisions for us? Face and emotion recognition by means of a 3D stereo camera automatically captures the mood of the visitors and visualises the results on a screen. The generated image can then be printed on the title page of a give away folder to take home.

PROJECT CREDITSTeam Solutions: Michael Mondria, Stefan Dorn, Gerald Priewasser-Höller, Patrick Müller, My Trinh Müller-Gardiner, Andreas Pramböck, Dominik Trichlin, Thomas Viehböck, Markus Wipplinger

Team Arbeiterkammer Salzburg: Angela Riegler, Cornelia Schmidjel, Claudia Bohl, Bettina Gruber, Tobias Hinterseer, Christian Obermoser

Team Extern: Florian Cossee, Klaus Dieterstorfer, Garamantis

Foto Credits: AK/Schulz, AES/My Trinh Müller-Gardiner

The exhibition “Smart Home – Sweet Home?” is accompanied by a varied supporting programme such as exciting workshops, lectures and discussions.

Details concerning the program you can download here!