Bionic Chair Technology takes over ever more functions from our body, and we are heading for a future where we hardly need to activate our bodies anymore. We compensate this growing lack of exercise by going to the gym. Moving our bodies has become a choice, a lifestyle. Inspired by dancers of the Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, Govert Flint concluded that full-body movement is positively related to feelings of joy. The dancers showed him movements that actually can and should be used every day. He took the most static and dominant activity of people nowadays, being seated, and for this activity Govert designed an exoskeleton chair allowing the body to move completely freely, and in doing so controlling a mouse cursor. For example, kicking a leg results in a mouse click. With the Bionic Chair we use our bodies again for what they are meant to do. Only a full-body exercise enables technology to do something. In this work, the man-machine relationship is reversed – or is it equalised?
GOVERT FLINT, DESIGN STUDIO ENRICHERS THE NETHERLANDS | 2014 | 6+ FACTS Programmer Tonn van Bussel Research in collaboration with Scapino Ballet Rotterdam
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Blind Self Portrait Can we trust technology? The rapid advance of Artificial Intelligence raises more and more questions about our relationship with computers and machines. In 2020, the computer model GPT-3 became available for general use. GPT-3 can have conversations, write poetry, fiction and essays, it can program and compose. And it can reflect on the future and the meaning of life. We are impressed by everything computers are capable of, but the time-honoured fear that humanity will be taken over by machines is feeling more and more real. In their work Blind Self Portrait, Kyle McDonald and Matt Mets challenge us to trust technology. The visitor is invited to take place next to a machine that will draw their portrait. Visitors hold the pen, and the machine controls their hand while drawing the portrait. It is a collaboration between man and machine... or is it? If you do not completely surrender to the machine, the portrait is doomed to fail and giving away complete control evokes a real feeling of anxiety. The result is a selfportrait created with the viewer’s hand and the machine’s ‘mind’. But who is the owner of the portrait? Who can sign it?
KYLE MCDONALD, MATT METS UNITED STATES | 2012 | 6+ FACTS Producer Keira Heu-Jwyn Chan
