The idea of smart home, where one can adjust his or her dwelling with an instant voice commend or with a press of a button, sounded so very promising. And with the booming of domestic technologies, the idea has become an easily achievable reality with Internet of Things: Amazon echo, Philips Hue, Google Home, Samsung Smart Fridge, etc.

Yet one’s home used to be a safe harbor, a place of thorough familiarity and comfort. Today a large percentage of our home appliances are like enigma machines. Autonomously, they light up, beep and constantly they track the waves in the air, attempting to pinpoint a length and frequency that resemble “Siri/Alexa/Google/Turn off the light/Turn up the volume/Warm/Cold…”

For this Café des Sciences lecture, continuing the trend with digital art and technology discussions, we have invited the Head of Research and Creation at the Chronus Art Center Lab – Vytautas Jankauskas to present his fascination with domestic and home technologies.

 

“Somestic Media” is an installation comprised of three home appliances, an alarm clock, a TV set, and a radio. The trio are connected objects, purposely trapped within the boundaries of conventional media of the past century.

Each of them pulls, processes and displays specific data from a major social network. However, the three iconic devices are deprived of two-way interaction with the user, indispensable in the Internet age, due to their limited nature. These limits allow to isolate, amplify and expose the obscure and presumably frictionless communication processes, orchestrated by complex social media algorithms.

 

Event Rundown

 

18:00-18:30               Registration

18:30-18:35                Welcome Speech
by Dr. Felix Moesner, Science Consul & CEO, Swissnex in China

18:35-19:15                 Presentation
by Vytautas Jankauskas, Head of Research and Creation at the Chronus Art Center Lab

19:15-19:35                 Q&A Session

19:35-20:30               Networking Reception