Giving Materials a Voice
Hannah Regier
Art Center College of Design
Pasadena, California
regier@artcenter.edu
ABSTRACT
My thesis work involves incorporating physical materials
into communication design systems. As part of this work,
I have been using embedded interactions to explore creating
behaviors, attitudes, and personalities that convey the spirit
and living origins of materials such as leather, cloth, wood
and felt. With the help of custom authoring software [5] (a
flash-based interface), interactive objects and spaces become
a tool for the designer to explore the rich narrative
potentials that exist between physical materials and
humans.
Keywords
Material narratives, design process, communication design,
tangible interfaces
INTRODUCTION
In Spring 2006 I began work creating interactive
environments with natural materials. The first materials I
worked with were bamboo and felt. Thinking through what
the appropriate interactions would be for these natural
materials, I began to see that their sensor activated
movements evoked attitude and personality on the behalf of
the materials and created something that people related to.
I decided to try to focus the communication so that the
materials could seem to both be themselves—in this case
industrially produced felt—and also carry traits of their
living origins.
This paper presents the felt interface, which was exhibited
in an open studio event in August 2006, and was
used/experienced by approximately 80 individuals.
DESIGN RESEARCH PROCESS
This project is conceptual design research looking into the
possibilities of new meaning creation as a result of human
interaction with materials.
Much work with materials as communication devices has
been done in the fields of art, product design and
architecture. For example, Diller and Scofidio’s extensive
research project The American Lawn [2] scrutinizes
people’s relationships with grass. In their work and
research, architects Herzog and de Meuron [5] have focused
on the spiritual associations of stones. And Hella Jongerius
[4] has combined thread and other materials with ceramics
as a commentary on decoration and function.
The above works explore the communication value of
material encounters. I am looking to expand this idea into
the realm of material interactions, where there is the
potential for feedback and a correlation between form and
behavior.
What I mean by this is usefully clarified in the paper
“Aesthetic Interaction — a Pragmatist’s Aesthetics of
Interactive Systems.” Petersen, et al, describe a practice of
Aesthetic Interaction [3], which focuses on the evocative
qualities of an interaction rather than emotional reactions or
the appearance of objects as key points of attraction in
interaction. Existing in this framework, my felt interface
concentrates on material as intrinsic to form and aesthetic
interaction as a channel of communication.
As communication design, this work focuses not only on
the functional properties of materials, but also on their
power as signifiers [1]. This project uses the material’s
qualities and form, combined with the object’s behavior
and human interaction to create an evocative
communication design system.
The research questions I have posed are:
• How do/can materials communicate and evoke stories
of their living origins?
• What are the human relationships to the touch, image,
and spirit of natural materials?
• How can cultural myths and perceptions of materials
be used and subverted?
A FELT INTERFACE
With felt, I created an interface that reacted to both human
interaction and ambient light levels—a smart shade of
sorts. The main material I worked with was a piece of
5/16” thick, 3 feet high, 5 feet long, 100% wool, industrial
felt.
My aim was to transform this common gray utilitarian felt
by bringing attention to and building on its animal
qualities: using it’s physical fuzziness as a welcoming
interface and instilling in it a knowledge of night and day
and an intention to perform a task—in this case to let light
through.