Jealous Furniture
ITP Projects - Network Objects. Spring 2008

 

Playing with the Real versus Virtual, Jealous Furniture criticize the time we spent nowadays in front of a computer, connected to the “Virtual World” instead of enjoying the pleasure of “reality”. Two objects, a lamp and a bookshelf, adapted ” jealous” behaviors, calling or attention or disturbing you.

The objects are aware of your connectivity to the virtual space ( internet) since they are sniffing and analyzing the "data" that you send over TCP/ IP connections. They measure what you are doing in the virtual space and based their reactions according to specific actions. The lamp shakes and dim lights if we spend to much time online, measuring how long we are connected. The bookshelf throws books to the floor if noticing that we are just scanning websites, criticizing that nowadays we don't read anymore but we scan data from website to website without absorbing and understanding it's meaning. It was interesting in shifting the point of view and play with objects that take a critical role, gain agency and personality, and persuade us to take action and change our behavior.