Fantastic Smartphones – a series of interactive installations developed by students in Bachelor Media & Interaction Design at ECAL, investigating in a critical and offbeat way our relationship with smartphones and the way they influence our daily behavior.
Behind the derision-filled title Fantastic Smartphones, alternative accessories, interactive installations and machine performances highlight the excesses relating to our use of these devices. By imagining innovative ways of interacting with our smartphones or by delegating our repetitive actions to machines, this exhibition takes a critical look at a society that has become addicted to an object that seems to have become indispensable: the “smart” phone.
Is this object, which was initially perceived as an extension, still a source of pleasure or has it become a source of alienation? Bachelor Media & Interaction Design students provide answers to this question through a series of installations that address different aspects of this issue in an original and immersive way. Visitors will be able to discover how to save time when using a dating app; cheat on their personal health data through bots; illustrate the time lost away from their phone; attend a discussion between two smartphones; scroll to infinity in a mesmerizing way; discover neologisms relating to new digital behaviors; free themselves from digital addictions; or witness the strange choreography of a robotic arm that takes pictures of itself with a selfie stick.
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A Screentime Connoisseur’s Lexicon
Antony Demierre (CH), Basil Dénéréaz (CH), Nora Fatehi (CH), Paul Fritz (CH), Sébastien Galera Larios (CH), Rayane Jemaa (CH), Dorian Jovanovic (CH), Valentine Leimgruber (CH), Valerio Meschi (CH), Ignacio Pérez (CL), Michael Pica (CH), Jorge Reis (CH), Malik Sobgoui (CH)
A Screentime Connoisseur’s Lexicon studies some of this behavior through a series of neologisms that enable us to better understand certain addictions, means of resistance and social biases.
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Adam & Eve
Nora Fatehi (CH), Michael Pica (CH), Jorge Reis (CH)
Adam & Eve revisits part of the famous story of the creation of Man and Woman according to biblical sources. A triptych of vertical screens stages the discussions that God, Eve and the Serpent might have had at the time of the birth of original sin.
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Anti-Stress Case
Kylan Luginbühl (CH), Aurélien Pellegrini (CH)
Do you ever feel stressed by your smartphone? The Anti-Stress Case helps you deal with it. You can switch between various modules with pleasant tactile sensations. The more you play with the case, the less you will be annoyed by the notifications.
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Biobots
Aurélien Pellegrini (CH), Bastien Claessens (CH)
Biobots criticizes the policy of large multinationals that collect and trade personal data through smartphones that relate to their customers’ health. Selling this information to some institutions would have serious consequences.
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Desktop Notification Center
Pablo Bellon (CH), Ivan Chestopaloff (CH)
Desktop Notification Center is a collection of two desktop accessories that provide notifications in the work environment in a way that avoids unnecessary disturbance and stress. Notifications are classified in three categories: Important (calls), Not Urgent (messages), and Futile (social media).
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Kinetic Scroll
Pablo Bellon (CH), Kylan Luginbühl (CH), Yaël Sidler (CH)
Kinetic Scroll is a matrix of smartphones equipped with mechanisms that enable them to scroll endlessly. It echoes the social networks pages through which we sometimes scroll for hours. Scrolling endlessly, but what for?
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LIA-Leave It Alone
Bastien Classens (CH), Léonard Guyot (CH)
LIA is a smartphone dock that discourages you from constantly checking your phone while working. With its inclined edges, it is impossible to remove the phone from its dock without reason: only receiving priority notifications will make the phone accessible again.
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Meanwhile
Léonard Guyot (CH), Maya Bellier (FR), Paul Lëon (CH)
Meanwhile invites us to consider our relationship with time by inciting us to separate ourselves from our smartphone for a short while.
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Mistarget
Antoine Barras (CH), Guillaume Giraud (CH)
Is your phone spying on you? Mistarget is here to tell you. A lot of people seem to be wondering whether their phone is listening to them for commercial reasons. Some of them even test their phones. We offer technology that automates the test.
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Selfie Robot
Basil Dénéréaz (CH), Sébastien Galera Larios (CH), Rayane Jemaa (CH), Ignacio Pérez (CH)
Selfie Robot is a machine performance featuring a robotic arm equipped with a smartphone and a selfie stick taking pictures of itself with different face filters.
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Smartphone Symbiosis
Antoine Barras (CH), Maya Bellier (FR), Pablo Bellon (CH), Ivan Chestopaloff (CH), Bastien Classens (CH), Guillaume Giraud (CH), Léonard Guyot (CH), Evan Kelly (CH), Lisa Kishtoo (FR), Paul Lëon (CH), Kylan Luginbühl (CH), Aurélien Pellegrini (CH), Yaël Sidler (CH), Diane Thouvenin (FR)
Smartphone Symbiosis tackles how we interact with the data flows to which smartphones give us access. This research through design aims at imagining objects and interfaces, allowing a detachment from the smartphone or stimulating a more balanced and focused interaction with some of its functionalities in desired situations.
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Taptaptap
Lisa Kishtoo (FR), Bastien Mouthon (CH), Diane Thouvenin (FR)
Taptaptap exploits this feature to enable two machines to chat using only predictive text input. What kind of discussions can emerge from a dialogue standardized by algorithms?
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TicTocLock
Paul Lëon (CH), Diane Thouvenin (FR)
TicTocLock aims to reinstate a gesture for the unlocking that helps the users take back control over their smartphone activity by physically visualizing their usage time.
About
Featuring regularly among the world’s top ten universities of art and design, ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne is constantly challenging itself to offer its students solutions to contemporary problems while remaining forward-looking. The Bachelor Media & Interaction Design program is part of this philosophy through its approach to new technologies and their application in the design field. Prospective, pragmatic and experimental, this formation is intended for students with a solid visual culture eager to find out more about advanced technology.
Credits
Heads of Project: Vincent Jacquier, Pauline Saglio;
Teachers: Alain Bellet, Thibault Brevet (AATB), Jesse Howard, Vincent Jacquier, Eric Morzier (SIGMASIX), Florian Pittet (SIGMASIX), Pauline Saglio, Tibor Udvari, Roel Wouters (Moniker);
Assistants: Pietro Alberti, Lison Christe, Martin Hertig, Paul Lëon, Laura Nieder, Callum Ross
