>RESENSING THE CONSTANT
>Instructor:Ava Aghakouchak
>Instructor:Ava Aghakouchak
One of the most important evolutionary traits of any living organism, is the ability to adapt to environmental conditions and living circumstances. This adaptive trait is the reason behind the Human’s unconscious sensing mechanism or the “feeling at home” sensation, which acts contrary to the attention oriented sensing when visiting a new place.
The workshop process was to move past unconscious sensing and try to reawaken senses when at home to better evaluate the spaces we live in. Wearables will be the main tool of investigation for studying how and to what extent different sensory modalities contribute to the formation of our living spaces. The design and making of these perception-bending, environment-transforming interfaces will allow the participants to explore the cross-sensory connections of the events, which take place at one’s home; how we perceive and recall events by binding two or more different sensory modalities, like the “soft sound” of the leaves outside the window of our bedrooms.
By reviewing the most recent neuroscientific studies on sensorial and perceptual processes, the workshop crossed over traditional definitions of what a home is, and put forward proposals for these types of spaces focusing on the sensation of inhabiting them. This will also allow speculation for what the future of human sensing and sensing devices might be and reveal the radical potential of the body-technology symbiosis in the not too distant future.
__________________
__________________
Ava Aghakouchak is an architectural/interaction designer, researcher and educator based in London. Ava is currently a PhD candidate at Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she carries out her research on the effects of active wearables on perceptual states and behavioral performances.
Ava has been a member of the Interactive Architecture Lab, UCL, since her graduate studies in 2015 and she now acts as a thesis supervisor on the course of Design for Performance and Interaction. She has also been engaged with teaching Architectural Design (BArch) at the University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury, and leading multiple workshops focusing on wearable design, physical computation and speculative design.
Her graduate work titled Sarotis has been highlighted by Domus as one of the top design projects of 2016 and awarded the Silver medal during the New York Design Awards 2018. Ava’s work has been exhibited and reviewed globally in venues such as the Royal College of Arts and King’s College (London), BodyHack Con (Texas), Resonate Media Arts Festival (Belgrade), Onassis Cultural Center (Athens) and a part of the opening performances for Harper’s Bazaar 150thanniversary gala (Shanghai).
