A look at surveillance and some creative ways of avoiding it as well as some thoughts on two humanoids released in the past fortnight.
1. World
We all know we are being surveilled. That’s not a new topic. But I do think there has been a little more discussion around it of late. Particularly with the closing of Amazon Fresh’s final 19 stores. For those of you who haven’t been to one, you walk in, take what you want from the shelves and then walk out tapping your phone to pay without scanning a single item, because - well - cameras have watched your every move so they know what you've picked up. These have been around since 2021, but never took off because knowing you are being watched is just weird.
When it comes to wanting to avoid detection the UK now ranks #8 worldwide for VPN adoption. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) for those who don’t know is like a secure, private tunnel for your internet connection, hiding your true location and identity online. Offline with the improvements in facial recognition, things are a little bit more difficult. But that hasn't stopped people exploring ways for people to hack the system:
Creative technologist Lex Fefegha was exploring this back in 2019 and created the InvisibleMask. A cap that projected an invisible light array onto the face that confuse computer vision models in facial recognition systems and make the face unidentifiable.
Laura Bowker, founder of the Unseen posted some explorations she had done using makeup for the same reason. The instagram post sharing the results went viral and she followed up attempting successfully to avoid her iPhone recognising her face. I think it’s a pretty cool look.
But probably my favourite, is this knitwear by Cap_able Design that instead of hiding the face, fools the camera into thinking the person isn’t even human using bold animal prints and exaggerated shapes.
2. Innovation
Talking about being watched, how do you feel about NEO?
This ‘soft’ robot, designed by Californian based 1X Technologies, is designed to do your house chores while you sit back and relax. Albeit painfully slowly if you see some of the ‘in action’ videos and at 5ft 6 let’s hope you don’t store your plates at head height. Discussing this in the office the consensus was that we weren’t sure we’d want this unblinking chap wandering around the house at night though. Especially not when, according to the website “for complex tasks NEO doesn't know, an Expert from 1X can remotely supervise its actions.”
At least the design is somewhat more approachable than the latest to come from the Chinese company XPENG who revealed their next-generation humanoid robot, IRON (header image), this week. With movements so human like many people struggled to believe it was indeed machine, IRON is a sci-fi nerd with a robot kink’s wet dream complete with breasts and a leotard - clearly vitally important functional aspects of the design. Joking aside, the movement capabilities are absurdly impressive and show how just how advanced Chinese robotics companies are.
3. Morrama
Something a little more lo-fi. The latest project to come from the Morrama team is a the Hubbub voting bin. Created with environmental charity Hubbub, it’s as simple as it sounds. Put your trash in and the number goes up.
A lovely design built on a research project into human behaviour and nudging people to clean up after themselves. And not a camera in sight. More coming soon.
4. Inspiration
A few material (free) related things on over the next couple of weeks for those of you in London:
15-16th November (THIS WEEKEND): Green Grads at Yorkton Workshops
Green Grads return to Yorktop workshops with a fresh wave of material innovation, from waste-wool electronics to waste-as-fuel appliances.
1-3 Yorkton Street, London E2 8NH, on Saturday (11am-7pm) and Sunday (11am-6pm)
2nd December: Material Futures, Material Propositions
Morrama has a close relationship with the Material Futures course at CSM University of the Arts London and next month they are hosting their WIP show. A first chance to glimpse some of the weird, wonderful and super innovative material ideas from this years cohort.
Eventbrite link here, might see you there.
Thats it for today.
If you want to join the conversations, email us to 4things@morrama.com.
My '4 things' will be back at the end of next week.
Jo, and the Team x
