“The premier argument for metahistorical intervention is that the status quo will kill us.”...and, about climate change, deforestation, resistant plagues, exhaustion of fossil fuels... etc.: “...these are all slow crises cheerfully generated by people rationally pursuing their short term interests, from within a metahistorical framework they have yet to mentally transcend.”
Why make a simple task like turning on the lights more challenging?
Because there is a need for a cultural, or as Bruce Sterling would say, a “metahistorical,” intervention. The environmental crisis isn’t likely to be addressed unless people are confronted to rethink how our infrastructures work. Sure we need to use electricity, but being confronted to imagine the electrical “ecosystem” is a dilemma that requires some reworking of reality. At the root of the project as an intervention lies the desire to think humans can tune in to technological ecologies and build some kind of intuition that allows us to respond in an indigenous way, maintaining a balance and self regulating within the bounds of sustainable energy creation and acceptable pollution levels.
Using objects like Switch Critters to monitor conditions in techno-ecologies is akin to using the Woodsman’s Weatherstick to predict a snowstorm: there is an element of folk wisdom, animism, and mystery; all rooted in some deeper law of physics.
Situating abstract organic objects with odd and variable behaviors in the midst of mundane daily switching activities creates a puzzling situation. Switch Critters complicate and add life to systems that are taken for granted, such as electricity and transportation. These systems are usually interfaced with through their utilitarian, industrial mechanisms — wall switches, computer control panels and keys. The simple, dry interfaces mask the larger scope of the myriad processes of production. With Switch Critters, there is potential for new narratives of use and understanding around technological systems: ones that extend beyond the human manufactured byways into the world of nature that is their origin.
The tentacles of the Anemone Switch Critter retract when touched “on.” Sometimes it will hide for longer than other times. But always, when it emerges again, the light will go off. →Read more about the interactions in the Straight Story sections of the films on the front page …
Bruno Munari wrote about his “Useless Machines:”
“Some people held that they were extremely useful, in fact, because they produce spiritual consumer goods (images, aesthetic sensibility, education of taste, kinetic information and so on).”
In the spirit of Munari, Switch Critters are not simply difficult light switches, but playful, hopeful vessels of spiritual consumer goods.