My sixth artist entry is David Jimison, also found on www.rhizome.org, is an inventor and artist who is interested in music, fashion, mobile technology, and computing technology and creates everyday helpful robots. His company, Fever Creative, does consulting work and commercial inventions has consulted for Time Warner, MTV and Library of Congress. His robots have been featured in publications like BBC and his inventions have won awards from Nokia, MTVU, Cisco, and Siemens. David is also a “Fellow” featured on www.eyebeam.com
One interesting invention that struck me as peculiar was his “Too Smart City” project. It is a set of three pieces of furniture, embedded with intelligence and robotic features. Within it is a bench that can lift and dumping a user if recognizes vagrancy, in other words dumping the homeless that try to sleep on it. Also included is a sign that addresses lawbreakers as they walk by and a trashcan that analyzes the trash and pitches it back at you if it is the wrong trash. These items are described as “intersections between the immediate physical needs of the people using them, and the complex rules and indirect reasons that govern their design.”
This is a really interesting piece of art for me because it two-faced in concept. At first glance, the pieces appear to be some brand new gadget that will enhance our lives, however it is created to be a sinical look at the “smart” world around us. It definitely touches on the idea that with technology comes restrictions and control. It is suddenly not the perfect scenario. There is also a tendency for our gadgets to actually work against us: computers crash, the automatic check out is actually slower than the human hand, etc.) I think that this is very well thought out digital piece.
All information taken from Rhizome Art Base and Eyebeam
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