Starting with the view that humans’ relationship with materials is connected to our (dysfunctional) relationship with the land and its plants and animals, these studies explored ways that materials could express their origins, exposing and creating new narratives of use and production.

←At first, the explorations are strictly material. Later, interactive technology and media are brought into the communication equation. The knowledge gained from these five “design as research” projects, provided the impetus to create the prototype Switch Critters.

Design as Research 1: Making for Thinking

Using four materials, felt, leather, wood and cotton, these experiments served to set the framework of thinking about materials in terms of their origins. The structure was a game of “rock, paper, scissors” with the four materials, assuming that they played the roles of their original plant or animals. Using two materials at a time — stacking, cutting, recombining — the exercise forced the designer to think of all of the possible relationships of these materials to each other, to the environment and to people. The thoughts that emerged involved phenomena like “digesting,” “docking,” “protection,” and many more unexpected relationships.

The second round (with red backgrounds) subverts the assumption of the first. The arrangements didn't assume any constraints of nature or literal connections to the materials’ origins. Quickly associating the forms with descriptions, resulted in terms of mutant qualities, life force or playful mixed-up creatures.

The dominant themes from the “red set” became another round of models — the mutants. These are combinations of living and dead — the “life force” of sprouts and seeds against the modularity of the materials.

Design as Research 2: Narrative in Form

Un-making
In the first of these explorations, the materials were “unmade,” in an attempt to see how many stages of production could be physically uncovered. Cotton and felt production is additive, building up from amorphous fluffs to substantial sheets of material. Wood and Leather production is mostly subtractive, trimming down a bulk structure to useable dimensions. With these two materials, where there was nothing to unmake, sections were chosen that showed the raw edges.

Spines
The second exploration tried to use body structure to give shape to the animal materials of felt and leather. The little creature that grew out of this experiment became the Webcam Critter.

Design as Research 3: Felt + Light + Movement = Quirky Designed Animism

The aim was to transform a sheet of common gray utilitarian felt by building an interactive experience around it. Bringing attention to and building on its animal qualities, its physical fuzziness became a welcoming interface and its knowledge of night and day and its intention to let light through became behavior traits.

When someone moved the ball along its strip and pauses over a certain spot, blue LED lights set into the top housing illuminated the surface of the felt. The action of moving the ball until it was in the perfect spot had a very animal-like quality. It’s as if the person was scratching around and finally found the itch. Once over the sensitive spot, squeezing the ball activated the shade to open and, if it was dark out, turned on a backlight.

In an exhibition, people were drawn to the felt: most wanted to touch it even before they understood that it was animated. This reinforced the hope that within the unusual interface was an animated, intentional materiality, evoking a nature that people could relate to even without completely understand it.

Design as Research 4: Reading Video with Touch

This project used a handheld felt and leather Critter to “feel” video feeds. The Critter, a product of the “spine” study, was not a recognizable form but had some lifelike characteristics, and was in fact created with a piece of leather the shape of a hide. Alluding to our culture’s removed acceptance of slaughter, an interest in hunting and warring, and also its compulsive love of cute cuddly animals, the Webcam Critter wiggled when the Panda at the San Diego Zoo moved around on the “PandaCam.”

The first attempt at translating streaming media into an actuated behavior, the Webcam Critter provided important insights: There was a welcome mystery to the experience. People removed the Critter from its connection to the webcam and embraced it as a curious object of concentration and adoration. They also thought of many other uses for a Critter: to bring news of a distant friend, to feel the blowing of leaves and grass, to know if their pet is okay.

Design as Research 5: Actuating materials

Expanding on the success of the animated felt shade and Webcam Critter, many iterations were carried out with different materials, forms and actuating technologies. This page shows some images of the process of evolving the use of materials into actuated interfaces. The idea of mutant objects, as integrations of the natural and artificial, surfaced here again with models juxtaposing synthetic rubber with felt... rawhide with evident circuitry.