Precedent Research

Everbright for adults

A larger, high-tech version of the Everbrights we used as little kids. This larger Everbright is basically a giant toy equipped with lights that change color when you twist them and light up when you touch them. Everbright explained that they "just wanted to make something beautiful" and I would agree that even though this is a product mostly designated for the commercial industry, it also could function well in an art's context. The object itself has the potential to be quite beautiful and the idea that the the object can be controlled by touch has powerful connotations pertaining to human kind's relationship to machine. 

Volkswagen Stroller 

This stroller follows its owner around and automatically breaks when it senses it is within close proximity to another object. The project was inspired by a comment on Facebook that stated that strollers should have breaks to prevent accidents. Volkswagen responded to this remark by adopting this project and designing a stroller that not only breaks, but follows its owner using an adaptive cruise control sensor to measure the distance of the person or thing in front of it. This product is very useful and convenient for parents. It ensures that their stroller will always be close at hand and that it will never crash into anything should someone let it out of their sight. There's also an incredible joy to this project seeing as it's hilarious in its surrealism and mysticism. Seeing a stroller ghostly follow its owner is definitely not something I'm used to.

Conversation Snitch

A piece by new media artist Kyle McDonald. The device is an eavesdropping lamp that can easily screw into any light fixture. The lamp picks up on snippets of conversation from members of the general public and posts them to Twitter. The device itself is very simple--composed of a Raspberry Pi, an LED light source, and some type of mic amp. What is important about this project its context. McDonald took a simple fixture and used it to create an online anonymous community--a summary of the public's discussions and interests live tweeted on the internet.  

Ardusat

Kits designed to enable students and researchers to simulate real space experiments before sending their code to satellites in space. The kit comes with a large selection of sensors and is well documented, including prebuilt exercises. What's great about this project is that it is very accessible. It's relatively cheap and uses the basics of circuitry to envision new inventions for discovering information about space. Ardusat increases the number of people able to explore aspects of our solar system. It is not only a gadget used for discovery, but is in itself a platform. The more research, the better.