Affective Geometry: Time as a Tactile Language

Shagane Kamoevna Barsegian Launey California College of Art

1111 Eighth Street San Francisco CA 94107-2247

+1 503 740 6722 slauney@cca.edu

Jackie Chia-Hsun Lee MIT Media Lab

20 Ames St. E15-443D Cambridge, MA 02139

+1 617 452 5627 jackylee@media.mit.edu

1 Introduction Geometry is an invisible element of human nature. This paper authors that time contrives emotions in human mind. In response we developed a concept of Affective Geometry. Time referencing has been essential to human activities. Watches have been our mobile companions for punctuality though this seems to be changing. We have summoned emerging behavior in relation to how people tell time thus making watches peripheral and antiquated. Affective Geometry is an active, intimate and affective, time telling device that compels time to be tactile, conscious and wearable language. Machine time is taught to confer with body time in situations of arousal and stress, while hours and minutes are continuously felt through buttons that push, pulse or tickle.

2 In-between Machine Time & Body Time Typically, time is an important constraint of daily life. In [1], Alan Lightman illustrates two types of time- body time and machine time- that influence us to think and do emotionally. We are discomforted when body and machine time collide. How does time drive emotion? Why is it rigid and unchangeable? In The Standardization of Time: A Sociohistorical Perspective[2], Eviatar Zerubavel elucidates that the origins of how we reference time were brought by the rise of networks such as the post office, railroad, later factories and telephony. These systems required a synchronized referencing framework understood at a collective. The plurality of local times in US cities was reformed to standard-time by the General Time Convention in 1881. Standard-time advanced internationally, enabling quick time calculations, timeliness, and organization. Adjustment to standard time, smaller technology, increased mobility, and pace of life have accustomed people to wearing watches on daily basis. One would think this holds true today. We conducted an informal design research on time wearing and captured new methods of time referencing among people. The twenty interviews revealed that only two people were wearing watches. The majority was using media devices: phones and computers that perform many functions and as a side feature display time. Closer examination of these practices, demonstrates that access to information on time has dramatically changed since time is visible if a) we are in front of the computer b) we locate the phone in our pocket or our bag.

3 Geometry as a Language Affective Geometry seeks to control time acting as torture. It lets body time set the behavior of machine time. The device reads wearer’s skin conductance levels. If the arousal level is high, the machine time - the watch, shuts down till the arousal level returns to normal. The design is forcing functions of self-observation, continuously reversing the role of time from an aggravator to healer. Affective Geometry creates accessible, expressive, and privately felt time located anywhere on the body. Twenty-four buttons are divided with consideration to what can be realistically felt and distinguished, as shown in figure 1. Inactive buttons

create suction with skin, which holds the object in place. The active buttons are arranged to constitute a language for understanding time. All buttons are assigned to particular times, face the surface of the skin, move up and down. By making time active, intimate and accessible, Affective Geometry allows awareness of time without physical movement, alters social etiquette of looking for time, confronts human discomfort with it and opens a playful domain for interaction.

Figure 1. Affective Geometry prototype on the arm

4 Discussion We present Affective Geometry as an alternative way of being aware of time and revising emotions to how we think about it. This conscious device administers attention to the intricacies of the body and palpable interactions. Sigmund Freud manifests in the Uncanny that fear is desire. Applying this thought composition to fear of time, insinuates that we desire more time, infinite time, to be free of the mortal pinch for time. [Freud 2003 edition] The Story of Time, by Kristen Lippincott recounts the work of Anna and Richard Wagner who took a series of photographs, A German Christmas 1900 – 1945. The two documented the holiday from the first year of marriage to the year that Anna died. [Lippincott 2000] Couple’s features degrade through years. Their body time drifts in direction of mortality as on the opposite side of each portrait is the camera, and its offspring the photograph, both immortal and ignorant to fear or desire of time. Immortal machines parade uncanny tension through suspending a mortal body in a frame of time.

References [1] Lightman, A. 1994. Einstein’s Dreams. New York: Random

House Inc. [2] Zerubavel, E. 1982. The Standardization of Time: A

Sociohistorical perspective, The American Journal of Sociology, 88, 1, 1-23.

[3] Freud, S. 2003 edition. Uncanny Penguin Classics [4] Lippincott, K. 2000. The Story of Time. London: Merrell Holberton