Wisp Labs 2022
As a collaborative effort, we wanted to examine how frustration with technological errors can often lead to mirrored societal states of ‘not working’ - rest, retreat, and relaxation - or our very own human rebooting.
To start, I designed and printed six variations on error states. Most of the images are from real life occurrences - session bundles failing ‘normally’ and private accounts. However, some images operate in a state of fantasy, like having red zero alerts on our apps, something we will never see in real life as it is deemed ‘bad’ user experience.
Team members:
Sarah MacKinnon
Alex Herboche
Daniela Zorba
Anna Waerum Hansen
Anna Maria Lamprinopoulou
Wilma Larum
Wisp Labs Team
It was important to me to have a human creation to demonstrate that these digital symbols were designed organically by someone’s hands, and not simply by the computer itself. Like the loading symbol, this embroidery will forever be “in progress.”
A bed was placed in the center of the space for a place of human refuge, relaxation and rebooting - the ultimate symbol of ‘not working’ that also reflects the ‘nowhere-ness’ of the digital space.
A seating area for relaxing while viewing framed (real) error pages for Facebook, Amazon, and Google, reminiscent of TV and screens, but static and unable to be engaged with. I purposely selected the URLs I knew would not work - as in the case of Facebook: www.facebook.com/will-meta-be-as-broken-as-facebook
A film component was also created and projected of ‘blob-like’ woman exploring the space while AI created text envelops her from unseen sources. Overwhelmed, she retreats to the bed, like us all.
Credits: Daniela Zorba (Filming, Editing), Anna Maria Lamprinopoulou (Actor), Wilma Larum (Digital art) Alex Herboche and Anna Waerum Hansen (Concept)
An interactive sound component created by Anna Waerum Hansen allowed visitors to mix 8 different recordings of people doing ‘nothing’ (taking a shower, reading, walking to the train, etc.) to create rich symphonies of time spent ‘not working.’
We created an Arduino robot to randomly roll toilet paper over the film projection as a memory of a very private human moment being brought into the world of the technical. It appears to be broken in its function, although the creation of the robot was very much a success thanks to the help of the Wisp Labs Team.
