Grounded is a series of interactive installations that were made for the Recent Possibilities show at Collab in New York City, June 2019.
All four of Grounded's pieces revolve around the standard three prong power socket and plug found in North America. The materiality is changed in such a way as to generally encourage the audience to touch, rub, brush and generally play with these forms. Abstracted modes of interaction with our sources of power hope to prompt a new awareness of an often overlooked symbol that permeates our modern lives, our relationships with them and a curiosity around what lies behind them.
Three of the four interfaces for Grounded rely on capacative touch sensing. Metal prongs that emerge from fake grass, pieces of copper tape emerging from back lit concrete power sockets, and wire mesh and black foil both molded as hands, all serve as tangible interfaces to create sound and light.
The fourth interface uses wireless plugs to complete a circuit that is made with copper tape. By putting in this "dummy plug" you complete the circuit for the micro controller to play a sound, and by withdrawing it you break the circuit.
Touching of these circuits, either directly through hands or indirectly through disembodied power plugs, creates light, sound, or both. LEDs can be triggered by touching a sculpture of a hand. Animations on a screen are triggered and sounds are played by brushing your hand in fake grass. Tones and shapes are created by tracing fingers along copper strips. Small, stripped speakers respond when plugs shorn of their wires are inserted into deconstructed sockets.
The subject of Grounded is the plug and socket pair used for power in our everyday lives. The combination of its ubiquity and invisibility fascinated me, and I was struck by the stubborness in its enduring form when compared to the rapidly cycling obselescence of the devices that draw power from it.
My research during my time at ITP's Residency lead me towards repurposing discared wires of all different kinds for the use of creative physical computing purposes. This was part ecological, reusing what would otherwise be discarded pieces of rubber, plastic, and metal. It was also utilitarian, being able to use commercial grade cabling and connections for little to no cost.
Some kinds of jacks and plugs had different benefits. Obsolete connectors were more likely to be thrown out, and can have many pins inside of a single cable. Audio jacks and plugs are common components and are easy to find and use. However, while digging through old bins of cables I would instinctually avoid power cables.
I was raised with an understanding that you don't "play" with power sockets, that a frayed power cord was trouble at least and potentially lethal at worst. On a visceral level, the idea of playing with these forms (safely) was enticing. However, upon changing my perspective through play, I found myself notcing the plugs everywhere. More or less any room I would want to spend time in had one of these anthropomorphized faces looking at my from the corner. I began thinking about my relationship to them, how I regarded them and what was possible through their use.
This sentiment dovetailed with my desire to create computing interfaces and interactions with a satisfying tangiblility. We don't associate digital interaction with fuziness or hairiness, and the surfaces of our buttons and switches are totally without grain, grit, or natural markings. Combining this ethos with my questioning of our most ubiquitous symbol of interacting with literal power resulted in the Grounded installation series.
My hope with these pieces is to entice questions in the mind of the audience in regards to power. What is forced to change, and what is permitted to endure? How do we really interact with power? How is it abstracted from us? How is it connected to things we can't see? What is allowed? What are potential future forms, and how would they work?
In creating a system of play with the materiality, symbolism, and purpose of the power jack and socket, I hope to open a line of previously unconsidered questioning in the mind of the viewer.