Mechanical Helmet
for Smombies
Essence of Typography
- Social Chair
Trash Monsters
Come on, Heroes!
Snap Dream
About
CV
The Social Chair is an innovative furniture piece, blending aesthetic appeal with interactive design. It features layered acrylic panels with holes connected by wooden rods, forming a solid frame. When a user sits on the Social Chair, the organic string reacts dynamically. It sinks and rises organically, adjusting to the user's weight and movement. This chair depicts the act of comparing each other in modern society.
The Harvard Study of Adult Development, initiated in 1938, highlights the importance of social connections for happiness and health. Tracking 724 men over decades, it revealed that maintaining relationships leads to longer, happier lives, while isolation results in earlier death. In our comparison-driven society, this constant need to outdo others hinders forming healthy relationships, underscoring a societal issue where stress from comparison impedes our ability to connect with others.
The 'Social Chair' focuses on relativity, where its height changes depending on the unspecified number of people sitting next to it. However, the user cannot directly see who is sitting beside them but only perceives their own changing height as influenced by others. This constantly varying height, dependent on who sits next to you, demonstrates that the act of comparing oneself to others is highly relative and meaningless. Additionally, when left alone, the chair's height lowers to a somewhat uncomfortable level, symbolizing that as social creatures, humans cannot live alone, and thus, comparing ourselves to others and finding unhappiness in it is pointless.
When a person sits on the chair, lines are drawn according to the sitting height and begin to move fluidly. By measuring the sinking height of each user with an ultrasonic sensor and using the animation software Aftereffect, we created and animated an indicator projected onto the chair surface. It is displayed as waving lines which make the initially drawn heights meaningless as they are mixing altogether.