Smartphone Peripheral Companions

So much of contemporary culture and interactions is taking place through interfaces; interfaces are part of cultural expression and participation. Therefore, questioning the impact of the mechanisms underlying current smartphone interfaces is also a societal interest.
The research team conducted a number of reflections around a broad vision of the issues related to the use of smartphones and the data flows that pass through them. In order to also collect contributions from smartphone users, they set up an online participatory platform, voluntarily moving away from the usual form of the scientific questionnaire.
By imagining, designing and prototyping new objects or apparatuses, this project aims to offer proposals for re-appropriation, re-extraction of certain features locked in the smartphone, thereby allowing a different, more customizable access to data or functions. Consequently, fostering a shift from the glowing rectangle to a more detached and focused interaction, away from the screen.
The main results of the project include a series of 5 to 10 objects offering alternative access to some data transiting through the smartphone. These semi-functional prototypes are documented and presented as images and films on the project website as well as made available for exhibition. A kit of tools and instructions to reproduce some of them, together with an ever-growing, participative collection of anonymous testimonies from smartphone is also accessible online.