Here's another project about disgust (see Lynn Lim's Leveraging Ick). Katrin Baumgarten's Aesthetics of Disgust includes a set of light switches that react in nauseating ways, from prickling hairs to oozing mucous. See the video above for a sample.
The objects were made to bring attention to banal moments in our everyday environment; what might make a light switch both repellant and attractive?
This work consists of multiple designs of an everyday object, each time based on a different approach to disgust, and to examine the provoked reactions. It consists of a wall installation of 14 switches transformed in a disgusting way. Every time a switch is pressed, a virtual light-bulb on a screen is lighting up as a feedback for the test-person. Through its simplicity and its everyday occurrence, the interaction with a switch has been marginalised into subconscious behaviour. We do not recognize its existence anymore, although this elementary form of interaction is a basic part of our life and controls our use of energy. I want to show that people are indeed both repelled and fascinated by the disgusting transformation of the switches.
Katrin's made a few other objects that also utilize disgust: Disgusted Objects (think surface that get goosebumps) and Intimate Touch Communication (pseudo-sexual, remote interactions with strangers). See them all here.
More after the jump.
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