Extimacy! "Wear your heart on the sleeve?" Why not the sofa or the curtains?

Image credit: Caroline Yan Zheng

Affective computing is increasingly capable to quantify human emotional cues and endow machines with ‘emotional intelligence’. Robotic materials responsive and adaptive to human emotional cues could be made into artefacts on the body, in the space and as part of ambience. Would you like this ‘extimacy’? What would you like them to do if your jewellery, your furniture and your curtains could do something when we feel bad?

Rigid robots don’t evoke sensual imagination but soft robotics do. The workshop invites participants to join the debate on extimacy (the term created by Jacques Lacan). Come play with soft robotics prototypes and build tangible stories in groups. The outcome will be displayed during the festival.

Link to artist profile.

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