Week 8
Self initiated project
Self initiated project
EMPATHY FOR INANIMATE OBJECTS
EMPATHY FOR INANIMATE OBJECTS
During the upcoming two weeks I will be working on a self directed project. I would like to focus this project on empathy for inanimate objects.

My inspiration for this subject started with a podcast I have been listening to; everything is alive. In this podcast an actor is given a role of an object, for example Ana the elevator. The 'elevator' gets interviewed for around 20 to 30 minutes. The next time I got into an elevator I thought about Ana's feelings and acknowledged the elevator a little bit more than just a simple object. It intrigued me that the human brain can have empathy for anything, by just giving it a voice or maybe a face.

So I would like to start this project off with this question;

EVERYTHING IS ALIVE PODCAST
WHERE IS THE LINE BETWEEN HAVING EMPATHY FOR INANIMATE OBJECTS AND HAVING NONE ?
For inspiration I tried to read some articles about empathy for inanimate objects. I found an article about an experiment done in the states where they let a robot beg the user not to turn them off. The only task in the experiment was to turn the robot off. The people conducting the experiment had a hard time doing so.

https://theamericanscholar.org/empathy-for-inanimate-objects/
While getting coffee Anna and I started small talking about the self directed project. We wondered if we could work together due to our perfect teamwork during the mapping. We started discussing our facinations and immediatly found out we both had one about empathy and objects. The deal was done and we decided to work together!

As soon as we could start we started brainstorming on how to actually make a plan out of this. We wanted to experiment how objects create empathy. We made a few points what we could change per object

- texture
- color
- sound
- movement
- shape
THE FIRST STEPS
With the first brainstorm done we had to find out what kind of object we will use. We tried to look for an object that has no use. After some thinking I figured it was way too hard of thinking of a useless product.. because all products are made with a certain type of use. This is why we decided to start and make boxes. Boxes with different textures, colors, movements, shapes. We bought some MDF en lasercut a bunch of boxes!
These were made with the tool ; makerscase. To make the pieces fit tight together we changed the kerf to 1.5
Firstly we decided to go to the Albert Cuyp markt and buy a bunch of textures/materials as inspiration and useable for our boxes. We found a lot of it in leftover 1 euro boxes. Some where a little more expensive, such as the pink and furry one.
7
We decided to make seven different versions of the cubes. We wanted to experiment how people will react and relate to these different kind of cubes. We chose these seven structures/materials because they are so different from eachother.
PINK FUR
STRAWS
KIDS BALL TOY
GREEN SMUDGE
GREY FABRIC
MIRROR PAPER
BROWN FUR
To test these boxes we made a little sheet of questions and asked our classmates to fill these in. Below a picture of the questionnaire.
It was very interesting to read these filled in questionnaires,
we noticed that they did feel like the box was some kind of
being or person! With these results we decided with which of
the boxes we will continue to work. We decided to take the pink
furry one, the green box and the shiny box.
results
With the test results we made these little maps per box, which explains the personality per box submitted by our classmates.
Testing sounds
We tried to introduce the texture boxes with sounds by using multiple sources of sound. We started off by using the soundboard. I created a different type of box, by putting holes in one of our old boxes and connecting it to another box (making it bigger). The soundbox fitted perfectly. Anna put some sounds on it and our first try worked out pretty well!


For the other sounds we basically took a lot of (random) materials out of the makerslab and tried them out in the boxes. We tried different types of nails, got our hands on some beats and my favourite; tried to stuff water in there! It was a hell of a project to make this watertight box... We lasercut six sides for a cube and hotglued them together.
It was nasty hard to do and Anna and I
both ended up with some nice burns...
3 finals
We decided to work out three boxes as a final result of the tests we did, we made these three times the size of the boxes. If we had more time we woul’dve done a testing round with movement aswell.. or with music or any other thing ( we could have worked on this project for another 20 weeks in my opinion).
People were mostly wondering what was inside the box and what was making the sound. With the soundboard it was kinda obvious to everyone that a soundboard was used because of the copper foil.
The water amazed everyone and they really wanted to know how we did it (in the end I found some plastic boxes Rick used before and we felt very dumb for not using them in the first place.
SHINY BOX
This one is the mystery box to us. We worked with the shiny paper we have also used in the first round of boxes. We wanted to put the water box in there but appearently in decided to leak so we used Rick's boxes which gave a similar effect. When looking through scrap material at the makerslab we found a mirror and decided to put this in the box and make a hole in it too. It gave a really cool effect, like a mystery just what we wanted to achieve. Anna really wanted light to shine into the box and we tried to achieve it with putting holes in the top but it didn't work out pretty well so we decided to skip it.
MYSTERY

MYSTIC

UNISEX

BEAUTIFUL
FURRY BOX
Our big furry box her texture (you see how even I am giving this box a pronoun which makes it something I feel empathy for??) wasn't much different than the initial furry box. At home I had an arduino laying around and I attached a servo motor to it, which did a very basic movement. Anna and I figured out some kind of mechanism we could put under the fur so it looks like its breathing. We wanted to put a soundboard inside aswell to make breathing sounds but we decided to put those on the exhibit sheet.
GREEN BOX
EXHIBIT
We decided to exhibit our entire proces. On the first sheet we put our first seven boxes with a summary of their personalities.
The different sounds we tried out
Basically the servo motor is connected to a toothpick and on those we put some rectangle mdf pieces which would turn. We (again) used a loooot of hotglue to make this stick. To put the mechanism a little higher up so it would work, we used some styrofoam.
CUDDLE

TOUCH ITTT

JUST LIKE MY PET
Here it is again! Our famous gross green box (Moritz hated it the most). This one was a hard one again, the green stuff was hard to stick to the surface and we used a lot of hot glue to try and fix that problem. We also decided to mix up a bit of the grey fabric as their personalities matched. For the sound we also wanted to use the soundboard so we did that for the end exhibit.

I have burned my finger very painfully with this one, so Anna was very kind to finish it :)
Our three boxes connected to the soundboard. The first one was allowed to be picked up and looked up. The furry second one made breathing and purring sounds when the copper was touched and was breathing. Our famous green one made grunting sounds when you touched the copperfoil. Everyone was allowed to touch it but nobody really felt the need for that.
DONT TOUCH IT

STAY AWAY FROM THIS ONE..

ITS SUCH A MESS
As an addition to our exhibit we made a little
plotter to see if people still thought the same
about our boxes! We cut out a simple circle out of
mdf and the same size out of paper and glued it on.

We also cut out some squares and put the different
textures on it. On the back of the squares there
were little pieces of tape so everyone could
plot the three boxes on the plotter!
Once again I noticed how well Anna and I work well together. I would love to work with her again in the future. During this project we were on the same line the whole time. Where I don't know what to do, Anna will fill in those gaps and the other way around.
I was really delighted with the end results of the project, it was even better than I imagined.