an information deliverer

an information deliverer | exhibition at borås art museum november/december 2001

Overview
The Information Deliverer was made for an exhibition at Borås Art Museum. It is one of our design experiments with combining textiles and computational technology. It is also an investigation of computational technology as design material (see also our work with slow technolgy).

The exhibition opened November 21st, and closed Decemeber 16th, 2001.

Process
In this project, we have used elementary acts of information technology use as a starting point. Information-handling acts such as opening, writing and reading information, have been re-interpreted using textile artefacts, i.e., we have sketched various ways in which a textile artefact can manifest a given information-handling act. Doing this, we have also tried to amplify the expressions of these basic acts of use, enlarging them to a point where expression comes to dominate practical functionality, rather than the other way around.

The results are a kind of "abstract information appliances", i.e., things designed on basis of some elementary form of use, but where the expressions of use, rather than functionality in a more practical and concrete sense, are in focus. This method is described in Hallnäs and Redström, Abstract Information Appliances; Methodological Exercises in Conceptual Design of Computational Things, to be presented at DIS2002: Designing Interactive Systems.

People
The exhibition was developed by:
Lars Hallnäs, Linda Melin and Johan Redström, PLAY research studio, Interactive Institute.

The installation was realised by:
Staffan Björk, Lars Hallnäs, Rebecka Hansson, Peter Ljungstrand, Linda Melin and Johan Redström, PLAY research studio, Interactive Institute.

Special thanks to:
Catrin Gustavsson, to Borås Art Museum and to the Swedish School of Textiles, Borås.

Funding:
The Information Deliverer has been realised within the ePeople-project funded by the Swedish Transport and Communications Research Board.