Production for my ITP thesis project is well underway! I will be posting details later this week.

I think it is safe to say that for most of us, our relationship with technology is a love-hate affair. Tech gadgets that start out as luxuries quickly become must-have necessities. I have become hooked on invention, ingenuity, and innovative products over the past few weeks while doing research for my thesis at ITP. The question I keep asking myself is whether these problem-solving products actually make the world a better place?

Woomba
Woomba is a small disc-like object that takes care of all of your feminine-hygiene needs. Activate Woomba and it does the rest. Woomba’s built in sensors can tell when you’re not at your freshest and that’s when Woomba goes to work. Its gentle but powerful onboard cleaning agents assure results every time. (Developed by Saturday Night Live)

Talking Tissue Box
Each time you reach for a tissue from the Ah-Choo Talking Tissue Box, it imitates your illness with one of six sneezing and coughing sounds. They say laughter is the best medicine so with the Sneezing Tissue Box you’ll be better than new in no time. (Developed by Baron Bob)

LED Menorah
An updated take on the traditional hanukkiyah, the nine-armed Hanukkah candelabrum. Two candles are lit on the first night of Hanukkah (one “real” candle plus the lighter candle, or shamash), three on the second night, right up to nine on the eighth night. (Developed by Evil Mad Science)

Zen Dog
De-stress Your Dog with Music and Touch. Tap into the power of music to calm your dog and learn the art of gentle massage to improve your pal’s mental and physical well-being. (Developed by Janet Marlow)

Sportbinox
Sportbinox are hands free binoculars that offer an optional am/fm radio to help follow the game, or just listen to relaxing music while enjoying nature. (Developed by Sportbinox)

Ion Steamer
Apparently, blasting your face with steam is good for your skin. Who knew? Even better than normal steam is the fancy-pants steam this Panasonic Nano-Care Ion Steamer pumps out. They claim it “creates ion steam particles that are extremely small, thereby enabling the moisturizing steam to deeply penetrate the outer layers of a user’s skin.” (Developed by Panasonic)

The Journey to Wild Divine Biofeedback
The Journey to Wild Divine is the first “inner-active” computer adventure that combines ancient breathing and meditation with modern biofeedback technology for total mind-body wellness. Progress through the realm using the power of your thoughts, feelings, breath and awareness. The Journey to Wild Divine is not just a game, it’s a tool to reduce stress and improve physical and mental health. (Developed by Wild Divine Project)

People have always loved watching screens. The video screen has surged where people love this window onto a whole new world of possibility and opportunity. We are increasingly feeling this attraction with screens. Over the past decade we have seen the emergence of more and more screens with serious multimedia capabilities. Today, we use screens for informing, communicating, entertaining, and connecting. The following are ten of my favorite interactive video art projects that I believe make strong emotional connections with people using screens.

1. Potent Objects
Potent Objects playfully examines the way we ascribe emotion to inanimate technologies. The work parallels current research in ‘affective computing,’ in which the capability of sensing and conveying emotion is built into computing devices. (Work by Camille Utterback)

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A collection of images that will help inspire the design of my thesis project at ITP. Gathered from a wide array of sources, some of the artists’ and designers’ works assembled into my thesis mood board include Han Hoogerbrugge, Rafaeal Rozendall, Morgan Guegan, paperad, Redman, Slick Rick, and Craig Robinson.

You can view each individual image from my mood board on my Flickr page, over here.