Neoteny.
2018
Concept and Research by Hui Sim Chandesign thesis is available upon request.
Adorning the wearer’s head, Neoteny is part piece of jewellery, part wearable. The project uses the body of the designer as a site upon which to experiment with possibilities of enhancing memories by referencing body movements with olfactory stimuli.
The sense of self underpinning our experience of reality is a radically embodied process. As we move through and negotiate the world, our muscle activity consistently changes and localises us in our current surroundings.
Neoteny, as an amplification device, uses bio-sensing to detect muscle activity levels to trigger the blending and delivery of personalised scents to the wearer. This has the effect of encouraging associative cross-sensory connections and acts as a memory reinforcement and retention paradigm.
As our everyday lives become ever more sedentary and muscle activity and scope is minimised, the richness of this experience is threatened. By introducing unusual cross-sensory correlations and creating synesthetic connections across muscle movement and olfaction, Neoteny explores how experience can be diversified and enriched, allowing memories to be more deeply reinforced to assist everyday performance. In part critique of the contemporary tension between biopower and noopower, the design project acts as a case study which plays out in and on the body of the designer to explore interpersonal and intrapersonal environmental mediation.
The design process included a series of self explorations on haptic feedbacks on the body of the designer [Designing Neoteny], and a series of aromatherapy scents experiments [Engineering Neoteny] alongside the master thesis to investigate how do smells amplify our autobiographical memories.
Neoteny further suggests potentials for symbiotic relationships between wearer and wearable, and aims to provoke a debate about current notions of transhumanism.
AWARDS
Distinction
MArch Design for Performance and Interaction
The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, UK [2019]
Shortlisted
Research Images as Art
UCL Doctoral School, London, UK [2019]
EXHIBITIONS & PERFORMANCE
Living Lab
Group Exhibition
Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria [2018]
Film Exhibition
Bartlett Fifteen Show
The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, UK [2018]
POSTOPIA
Ugly Duck Gallery, London, UK [2019]
#followme performance
in collaboration with Valeriya Vakutina
POSTOPIA
Ugly Duck Gallery, London, UK [2019]
IALab Catapult Show
Interactive Architecture Lab, UK [2019]
Drivers of Change
Group Exhibition
Arup, London, UK [2019]
KLAF
Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival, Malaysia [2019]
PUBLICATIONS
Living Lab
Group Exhibition
Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria [2018]
Art Hole Magazine, UK [2020]
PROJECT DEVELOPED AT
