PROJECTS NEED CRITICAL SOMETIMES BE LIGHT SOME JOY, AND

HAVE YOU EVER DONE THE TEST, IT’S ALL BEEN FINE, THEN IT’S GONE IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION ON THE DAY?

Definitely! It would be great if you could test for years and years, but that’s not possible.

In every test, so many new things are happening that you can’t take everything into account, especially in a public space.

"

PROJECTS DON’T ALWAYS NEED TO BE SUPER CRITICAL AND HEAVY. SOMETIMES IT CAN

AND JUST BRING

SOME SURPRISE, AND BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER.

DUODISCO

Score points by finding your dance partner. Who will win this dancing game?

Photos : | | Anita Bharos

LIKE YOUR GOOD NEIGHBOURS PROJECT?

Yes, that was a big project for our studio, affect lab.

It was based in three neighbourhoods, two in the Netherlands, one in the UK. Our topic here was WhatsApp Neighbourhood Watch groups. These are incredibly popular. You even have street signs with, “Watch out! This neighbourhood is watched by WhatsApp.” In fact, the street signs, were one of the triggers that attracted our interest.

But these groups can induce a certain amount of paranoia if people are constantly texting each other to say, “There’s someone walking down the street who looks suspicious!”

So, you have to ask, why is that person suspicious? There could be a degree of social or racial profiling involved. The neighbours in these groups decide who belongs in that neighbourhood and who doesn’t belong.

Adding to this, you have new technology like smart doorbell cameras, which mean that, even when you’re at work, you can still watch your neighbourhood through your camera.

THAT DOESN’T SOUND PARTICULARLY HEALTHY!

We did a lot of research about the impact of this technology in the neighbourhoods where it’s used. For example, in New York, where these doorbells are crazy popular.

This research resulted in a neighbourhood performance, where we would invite people to join a fictional WhatsApp group. They would watch the group on their walk, and they would meet some of the neighbours. But we also worked with live actors on the streets.

The stories they followed were fictional, but based on real stories from that neighbourhood. We really tried to involve the neighbours in the creation process too. And we really tested this project a lot. But when we were doing the actual performance, lots of unplanned things happen. Like people calling the police because there’s a person they don’t know, looking suspicious on their street!

The neighbours all started to interact and one even asked, “Hey, I hear you talking about this WhatsApp group, can I join?” Then some kids playing on the street saw actors walking about and they started to follow them. The actors all worked in ‘improv’ so they included the kids in the story.

It was really interesting to see these people joining the performance. Everyone had a complete different experience.

DO YOU FILM THESE PROJECTS? OR ARE THEY COMPLETELY EPHEMERAL?

We have been very careful with that, because it’s easy to interfere with experience.

So, we don’t film too much of the experience itself. But we filmed the responses that people had once the event was finished. Together, that made a really nice video. It’s on the affectlab website.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO THIS LINE OF WORK?

I studied communication and interaction design. When I was a student, there wasn’t an interactive design course yet available at art academies. So, I started out at a Technology Academy. That meant there was more of a technology focus.

After graduating I started to work in technology labs and startups as an interaction designer, but I was really interested in how technology influences the daily lives of people.

I was very much a tech enthusiast. But I also saw the troubling side of it. And working in a startup culture, you see things happening in terms of privacy and ethical issues, that really do make you wonder… But you are part of it, you know, you joined a team. So, you’re part of that culture.

Another big motivation to leave that scene was - and still is - the discrimination against women working in tech. Let’s just say, I was also a bit fed up with that. But it motivated me to start working more autonomously.

So I began to work as a freelance interactive designer, but I also started to work as an interactive artist. I still am a little bit in-between design and art in that sense.

AND HOW DID YOU COME TO SET UP AFFECT LAB?

On the Good Neighbours project, I worked with Dr. Natalie Dixon. She had just finished her PhD and was very interested in how to share her research in a meaningful way, with a bigger community.

It’s really valuable for me to collaborate with Dr. Natalie Dixon. Her way of working has a big research component, and mine does too. But being trained as a designer, I approach it completely differently. My research is more around design, while Natalie includes a huge theoretical background which is super inspiring. And we both have a big love for storytelling.

So, we started to collaborate as affect lab and it has been super interesting since. ‘A City Eating Itself in less than 10 minutes’ is our latest project.

ARE YOU COMMISSIONING THE WORK YOURSELVES? OR DOES THE INITIATIVE USUALLY COME FROM OUTSIDE?

Some are commissioned from outside, but most of the projects are self-initiated. We start a project once we see that something interesting or urgent is going on in a particular field, like flash delivery. Something where we feel a need to research more thoroughly, to share alternative perspectives or future speculations for us to understand what it really means and what the possible consequences might be.

In the case of the dark stores, we talked to people in these affected neighbourhoods and it became clear we needed to make people aware of the situation. So then we began to apply for grants, mainly in the Netherlands, sometimes in the EU.

AFFECT LAB HAS ACCUMULATED A LARGE GANG OF CREATIVE TECHNOLOGISTS AND ARTISTS. HOW HAVE YOU COME TO FIND ALL OF THEM?

We are actually a small core team, so we find a lot of value in collaboration with our network.

Natalie grew up in South Africa. So that explains the network in South Africa. In fact, the project about Neighbourhood Watch groups started in Johannesburg. We find it very valuable to look into different contexts.

YOU ATTEMPT TO CONNECT PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL WORLDS, WHILE FACEBOOK TRIES TO SUCK EVERYONE INTO THE METAVERSE. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT?

Facebook claim they are the founding fathers of the metaverse, but their approach is very much about efficiency and workspaces. If you look into how you represent people in their metaverse, it’s already quite limiting.

So, we decided, let’s see if we can make this more interesting. We collaborated with a developer - Babusi Nyoni - who was already working on this question of representation in the metaverse. In effect, he has started to build an alternative metaverse.

So, during Dutch Design Week, we threw a party called Metaverse Cha-Cha-Cha.

Together with Babusi, we created a virtual workshop where people could build their own avatar and then they could join the party. The party happened at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, but party-goers could also join online. This hybrid party is part of our 'Toolkit for the Inbetween' project.

The metaverse was then projected onto a wall at the party and your avatar could dance there, based on accelerometer data taken from your phone as you danced in the physical space.

From the same data, we could also understand the way people were moving. Whether they were moving the same, or if they were in sync. That would also connect people, bringing them together as dance partners. It was a very playful experience.

THERE’S A LOT OF MONEY BEHIND FACEBOOK’S VISION OF THE METAVERSE. WILL THAT BE THE DETERMINING FACTOR?

Of course, it’s not possible to compete with Facebook, who have a huge amount of capital behind them. But money is not always everything.

Maybe this is a bit of a dream, but some artistic projects are picked up as inspiration, they inspire different ways of looking at things, more interesting ways. That’s huge. The ability to change perspective.

There’s this big tech festival, South by Southwest, in Austin, Texas. I have visited that a couple of times with a project. And always, the first question I get is, “Oh, interesting, what’s your business model?”

So I would always have to explain how we work and that’s when I realised how different it is in the Netherlands. The European Union is investing in innovation and technology, but also in creative innovation and artistic innovation. That’s different from the US model, which is capitalism all the way.

Even so, I think it’s important to be present and to inspire different ways of thinking and new perspectives.