The link to full text, PDF Format :
Life_in_the_box.pdf
ABSTRACT:
The little space calls 'elevator' is so unique. It is the transit space that we have taken for grated in our daily life. It is the essential components of the urbanized society, which also help enabling the expansion of vertical city, like New York. However, this steel cage has always been unpleasant for human. The sense of awkwardness, tension and stress often signed within the elevators. “Life in the box” project is intended to explore these aspects of human behaviors in relations to the elevator. Through the concept of ‘building human Companionship’, the project aim to answer these questions;
- What is the relationship of human behaviors and emotions with closed space?
- Why does people closed themselves to others as the strangers in such place?
- Can design and technology help easing personal tension/stress/awkwardness and create the ‘instant’ communication and relationship?
- Can we change the experience of elevator riding?
The key strategy for the project is to establish the relationship/bond between the visitors and ‘the elevator pet’. We believe that the existence of the life-form in elevator would eventually promote interaction between strangers (or triangulation) as well as releasing stress in each riding section. By introducing the series of prototypes from the basic (non-digital) to digital, we have created the effective experiments on the elevator riders at Parsons, the New School for Design.
Many interest feedbacks have suggested the valid proves, that the concept of building human companionship with elevator pet could potentially be further developed into fully integrated digital installation. Questions still remain unanswered, due to the fact that each elevator has its own unique culture. The installation must be carefully implemented with the research on the particular rider behavioral pattern. It is simply because human is complicated and unpredictable.
Elevator Pet
Prototype : Elevator Invader!!
Prototype : My elevator friends
Prototype : Elevator Pet has born.
