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Transcendence


Interactive Installation | Experimental Design | Critical Practice
Kinetic installation Transcendence prospects the relationship between flesh and human condition through mirroring hand movements. This awe-evoking robotic hand occupies high interactivity and futuristic aesthetics, which helps it build connections with its audiences by hallucinating the attachment of a new limb. It offers the experience of empowerment through presenting the visualization of a mythologized modernity.

‘Transcendence’ is a redefined prosthesis, a cyberware sculpture, and a celebrating monument for imagining posthuman beings.

ROLE
Deputy Project Leader
Experience Designer
Technical Artist
(Materials + Moding + Assembling)

TIMELINE
2023/07-2023/09

TOOLS
Arduino
Rhino
CAD + Laser Cutting

Inspiration


People With Amputations Are Spectacles

People with visible disabilities inevitably face social stigma and discrimination, which eventually lead to mental issues such as low self-esteem, anxiety, and helplessness.

From the perspective of normal people, people with amputations are spectacles. The amputation marks their estrangement from the normal society. A prosthesis can make up for the physical disability, but cannot compensate for the psychological integrity. As a result, they are involuntarily marginalized and undermined.


Amputations Are Spectacles


Transnhumaism
While amputations is considered as spectacles, there’s apparently another trend and fantasy to transform the relationship between human flesh and human ability.

Transhumanism is an intellectual movement that advocates the use of technology in augmenting human capabilities and improving human conditions.

A stronger body is universally desired by all human beings, no matter disabled or not. It"s reasonably to speculate that body augmentation must gain its popularity in the future. One of the possible visions is that able-bodied people in nowadays may be considered as disabled compared to the enhanced beings.


Our Hypothesis

We want to find a way to overturn the stigma targeted on people with visible disabilities. Through adopting the idea of transhumanism, our approach locates on creating an experience that empowers human beings—— to make a statement that
     
PEOPLE WITH A PROSTHESIS IS
 NOT DISABLED
BUT
 ENHANCED.

 goals

  • overturn the prosthesis  stigma 
  • redefine disability as empowerment
  • embrace a vision of body augmentation



To do the trick...


Phantom  Limb Sensation
Phantom limb pain is common seen with patients shortly after an amputation. It might seem like an illusion to feel pain in an area of their body that no longer exists. But the pain is real.


Rubber Hand Illusion Experiment
To create the process of 'hallucinating', we reconducted the famous rubber hand experiement. This process helped us to learn that changing external conditions can help people build the connection about the attachment of a phantom limb.



Design Guidelines


We aim to design an alternative prosthesis, as an interactive installation with the ability to eliciting awe: a supplmentary, a replacement, and an enhancement.

  1. overturn the social stigma towards people with visible disabilities, while offering a new perspective that a person augmented with a prothesis is not disabled but enhanced.
  2. simulate the process of attachment and detachment, questioning the intricate relationship between flesh and human mind.  
  3. create a futuristic experience for audiences, manipulating a giant, more flexible, and more beautiful hand.




Gallery

Sketches
Coding



Team

GUO Bingchen (Project Leader): Interaction Design+ Industrial Structure + Modeling + Coding + Assembling
XIE Jingyi (Deputy Project Leader): Experience Design + Technical Art + Materials + Moding+ Assembling
LIU Yuxin (Project Member): Visual Design + Narrative Direction + Film Making
CHEN Hao (Project Member): Investigation + Concept Design + Narrative Direction
ZHANG Chuqing (Project Member): Investigation + Visual Design
FAN Yiming (Project Member): Investigation + Interaction



I design for experiences.
nelliesalley@2024