With the participation of Facebook and other modern social network, interpersonal relationship has nowadays become more and more complicated while itself is the least simple thing to understand. Many attempts has be made to simplify or just display or indicate what happens right in the relationship. InTouch is one of them, trying to show the intriguing mechanism of this abstract relationship.
With four square window-like light installed in a flat wooden box attached to wall, InTouch seeks to turn invisible yet never-the-easy-case relationship between man and man into visible and tangible. While its output is light and warmth, what makes it tricky is that these two outputs represent quite different thing. Each window-like unit represents a connected friend. Upon thinking of him or her, the user could poke the unit and created a realtime connection. Poking frequency would alter the colour of the unit from pale to bright, and on the other hand, Poked frequency, for that connected friend of user, would take control of the tangible temperature of the unit. Once the interaction pauses, the colour and the warmth will gradually decline from their high level (bright/warm) to low level (pale/cool).
Judging from 1st Paradigm, whose values, more often than not, inclines to be more physical and more about working cool, InTouch is quite okay with it touch-trigger mechanics and heating device hidden in the wooden box. InTouch has no intension to solve any specific problem taking place around and in our daily life. In terms of 2nd Paradigm, InTouch focus more on information processing.
With different information source collected as input, the incoherent relationship between LED light and warmth, seems to be the most interesting part. It breaks what beholders expect to perceive, the coherence between colour and warmth, which no doubt could be seen as an instinctive reaction of every single human being. And it is such quirky relationship that brings suspense and thus further thinking and reflections to people.
The metaphor of this incoherent relationship is undoubtedly of the 3rd Paradigm. Possibilities of coherence or incoherence of concord and discord calmly assesses a statement at the conflicted state of the relationship. These values hidden behind all the mechanism and usability concerns are the least things that will be overlooked in this paradigm. The complex interwoven state of interpersonal relationship is vividly described through the interaction. Once the never-even state being visualised through technology, stepping outside of the virtual world, where internet takes place, intruding in the physical world, it’s exaggerated to some extent that announce its existence loudly as a means of showing-off. Doing more than just a medium, InTouch, like no other even as such similar action as Facebook “Poke” function, becomes more aggressive and intrusive.
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