Project Description

#3179

Peek-A-Boo

Today's parents struggle to provide their families with sufficient income, the time that they spend with their loved ones becomes shorter and shorter. As they leave their loved ones behind grows a necessity to regain contact with them.

As a high end technology enters our babiesí room, it allows parents to play with their babies from a far.

This project, done with the support of Hitachi Design Center Europe, Milan, Italy, addresses a variety of issues that arise, when surveillance enters our most intimate domain: the home.
Some of the questions are:

Will families gain emotional Security with the use of this kind of systems?
What will it do to the delicate family relationship?
Can it enhance familyís structure by increasing the ability to interact with loved ones?
Will it make the most intimate relationships shallow or will it be just another tool that the parents use?
Will these novel abilities to interact within the family become a substitute for proper parental supervision?

As has been shown in this working prototype, parents could see, hear, talk and play with their babies by manipulating electromechanical toys from a great distance, using the internet. Parents can be at work and use their computers and internet connection to interact with their babies. They can activate visual, auditory and motion stimuli. As they blink lights or move the mobile they can see their baby reacts to it. They can hear him and talk to him.

People how used the system responded with either rejection and loathe to what they perceived to be the attempt to replace normal relationship or with gratification to see that there is a tool which can be use to enhance parental abilities.