The Hungries are back! and are squatting Zazaziza! For those of you, dear imaginary readers, who perhaps have been living outside our minds for the past 2 years, the Hungries are a kinky family of self-recursive plush monsters obsessed with the concept of storage.
As it turns out, we happen to know the fine folks who designed them, real nice people. Check out the Hungries website at http://hungries.zazaziza.com.
Let’s consider this everyday situation: Laptop activates scary inflatable USB mouse (a) which makes elephant wreak havoc on central street (b) while human blogs the event to news service. Mobile RSS subscriber gets feed update. (c) Custom script in phone detects the word ‘elephant’ and sends WiFi message. WiFi-enabled kitchen blender containing miracle growth hormone receives message and turns itself on (d), distributing hormone around it. Palm tree next to blender rapidly grows to the point of having several ripe coconuts (e), one of which falls on laptop that sends email to another person (f), activating new segment of the process.
What is the world but a gigantic Rube Goldberg machine with the only peculiarity that its requisite futile purpose is yet unknown? The over-complicated mechanism is there, working ceaselessly every day, while its absurdity permeates every single entity, process and being contained in it; think of global warming, human relationships, sex, life…
Isn’t the life of each individual just a series of increasingly complex awkward steps toward a most simple conclusion—death? Perhaps schedules, deadlines, plans and goals are only massive self-delusional strategies, perhaps control is only an illusion. It seems there’s no escaping the Goldbergesque essence of everything. Are we all only pieces of a planetary Goldberg machine at the same time that we live our little Goldberg machine lives? In the end, does Goldberg always have the upper hand?
Victor Szilagyi, a consummated observer and enthusiast of Rube Goldberg phenomena, coined the expression “Because We Can” (BWC) while trying to come up with a name for an imaginary interaction design contraption that would contain every piece of buzzwordy technology available in the collective conscience of the interaction design establishment (think of an RFID-GPS–location aware–ambient-sustainable-ubiquitous–tele presence–smart object–mobile-networked–web 3.0–nanotech-biotech machine with many Arduinos, Wiring boards, lasers, Bluetooth signals and what not, created only, well, because we can.) As far as we know, such device was never built (at least purposely) however, we are sure that seedlings of the idea lie dormant in the minds of many interaction designers of Victor’s generation.
So, how does all this relate to Zazaziza?
Zazaziza, as countless other practitioners in the field, stubbornly strives to make the invisible unnecessarily visible (BWC.) Following this train of thought, how can we make evident what we believe is the inherent Goldbergianism of the world? what for? isn’t it evident already? would such a project lead to a global suicide pandemic? is it correct to say that a Goldberg machine trying to show the world the very essence of its banal workings, has a non-futile purpose? if so, could this project still be classified as a Goldberg machine?
So many questions, so little brains.
First post of the Zazaziza weblog. We’ll be posting here truckloads of information about the latest developments of the Zazaziza community, experiments, processes and recipes, concerning the fabulous world of interaction design, all this of course, for no good reason.