User:Pascalle/UTC

UNRAVEL THE MEME

After our brainstrom we came to the conclusion that everything our meme's had in common was that they all had a warped sense of reality. The meme's all share the fact that people are obsessed and so observed that it changes their reality. Their priorities are according to their alternate reality, which is no longer in harmony with societies reality. Then again, isnt reality a matter of perspection?

Never before Has our reality been as questioned

and as debated as in our society today.

Through sharing experience and culture,

Our reality is being redefined and shaped everyday

- Pascalle de Jager

---

INFRA-ORDINARY

Design/make/craft one or more objects, spaces (or both) that address changes in physical and/or social behaviour in public and private space due to digital devices. The final design must be based on findings from your initial research and should relate to a clearly articulated perspective. Examples of possible perspectives are: critical, speculative, practical, visionary or other.

INTIAL BRAINSTORM

• People have certain rituals that have come form the digital
• Brainwave disruption
• Body adapting to technology?
• Google dokter

---

RESEARCH

After first receiving the assignment, I started to research the habits we have developed due to our digital culture, I thought it would be interesting to analyze daily customs and see which digital patterns would emerge, that might have gone on noticed. By means of field research I went out and observed Observations

Field Observations

• I found that often more female’s than male’s are on their phone’s when alone then male’s were.
• People of all ages listen to music on public transportation.
• On short trips in public transportation from about 10 to 40min about 70% is on a electronic device, either a laptop, tablet or phone. Whereas on trips longer than 40min, more people were either reading, taking a nap or just looking out the window. This surprised me because I would assume it would be the other way around.
• Most people take their phone with them to the toilet. Which is actually a little strange to me, because this is a private moment, but your taking your portal to the internet with you.
• When people are together, they are more likely to be on their phone all together. It’s almost contagious, as soon as one person starts, people are inclined to do the same.
• A person’s body languages can tell if someone is on their phone.
• Turning your phone over, when someone really wants to pay attention
• My brother seems to have a more opposable thumb. We think this is due to his obsessive videogame playing on the Nintendo, Xbox, Playstation and computer.
• Body adoptions to technology

MINDMAP

I made a mindmap with the information I had gathered. With this mind map I was able to formulate a research question for myself.

---

Is the technology adapted to us? Or are we evolving to adapt to it?

I have always been fascinated by my brother’s more opposable thumb. The possibility that it could be a result from digital culture, was something we, as brother and sister always speculated about. My brother has been captivated with electronic from a young age. I remember him playing Playstation for at least four hours every day, either together with me, friends or alone. I never noticed his thumb was different than mine until I was about 13. When I asked my brother what had happened, he didn’t even realize his thumb was different than ours. His thumb is more flexible and is able to reach a keys on the keyboard that are further apart. All this helped him when he was gaming and now with his job as a robot programmer.- I started to research if there were more people like my brother that have this strange hook thumb. Was he the only one? Is it genetic? Why doesn’t anybody else have it in my family? Is it a common known thing?

Tim's Gamer thumb

---

EVOLUTION

We have been evolving due to our technology since the earliest cave people, simply by making tools and cooking our food. The technology had one purpose, helping us survive. Tools are a aid to species to otherwise challenging environments. By cooking the our food, we made it softer and easier for our bodies to chew and digest the food. Thus we no longer needed big strong jaws to chew raw subsistence , and as a result led to a mutation that reduced the size of our ancestors’ jaws, which gave them the capacity for speech and freed up space in their skulls for bigger, more advanced brains. According to author Richard Wrangham of Catching Fire. Assuming this is true, one might say that because humans use to most tools, it is logical to assume that we as a species have gone through the most radical changes.My brother and I come from the same gene pool, yet he had significantly more contact with the digital culture than I did growing up. I want to cast a mold of his thumb to preserve this curve of evolution in time.

“Evolution is not a process that allows us to predict what will happen in the future. We can see what happened in the past only. To do that, we would need to know what was causing some individuals to leave more surviving descendants than others, and to be sure that that selection pressure would be maintained for hundreds or thousands of generations, and know what the genetic and phenotypic basis for the variance underlying these differences was. We don't and really can't know any of those things, so all I can say is that we should come back in a million years and see what happened!” —paleoanthropologist Carol V. Ward of the University of Missouri

It is in our human nature to innovate and create. We will always try to find ways of compensating for the things we perceive as “deficiencies”. Create, adapt, create adapt, we could not evolve without these two key elements. Over the past 50 years we are increasingly relying on technology, even the most basic things such as finding your way to a friend’s house or knowing which bus to take. If we rely on technology for simple needs, is it that far of a stretch to think that technology influences our evolution?

After stumbling upon a Nintendo's form, where people were asking the same question. I was delighted and thrilled. So we weren't the only one's! Weird gamer thumbs! Other people wondering the same thing, One guy even asked if he was proof of evolution. The crafter in me craved to capture the pure shape of these thumbs and compare the shape.

• 

  Other cases, Playstation thumb is introduced

• 

---

NEXT

I wanted to make a small documentation of our current curve of evolution. By capturing the two different thumbs, for future generations to see. As a conversation piece. I also wanted to explore the form of the thumb as an object in itself and see how it would transform with different materials. How it would influence the form and the message / feeling.

I started by making a alginate mold of my brothers thumb. I have never before made an algeniate mold before and was happy to see how well the details were captured. I used polyester resin as well, to see how the form would respond to transparency. and the last one from foam, a light material. I made a mold as well of my own thumb as a comparison. Furthermore I casted a mold of a persons thumb who seems to be inbetween my brother and I. And finally I tried my hand at 3D sculpting, and created a speculative future thumb.

• 

  alginate mold of the thumb

• 
• 

  Freshly poured Arcylic one

• 

  Acrylic one gives a realistic look, and captures the details

• 
• 
• 

  Mold with Polyester Resin

• 

  The resin transforms the thumb, to a sculpture form

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

  Preperations for the second thumb mold

• 

  Second gamer thumb

• 
• 

  My Thumb in Acrylic One

• 
• 
• 
• 

  Future thumb

• 
• 

---

CONCLUSION

It is known that our body slowly but surely adapts to our surroundings. While doing some additional research on more gamer/ Playstation thumbs. I came across a comment far into the Nintendo form, it stated that thumbs which bend backwards at a large angle are called a “Hitchhikers thumb”. In 1953 Glass and Kistler proposed that the variation of the thumb was an autosomal (a non sex chromosome) and a recessive trait. However this had been proven false, as the thumb angle is perpetual and does not show evidence that is normally seen in recessive traits. The subject has no extensive research since then as to why the thumbs vary the way they do. Nonetheless this doesn’t discredit my research that the thumb vary due to evolutional cause. As it turns out, it is not neither one or the other but actually the thumb can fall into twelve different angle categories. No real scientific explanation has been stated as to why these angles vary, so evolution is a distinct possibility. Digital culture effects the evolution of our bodies, which we in turn influence with our technology. So adding a genetic perspective to it, we as a species evolve continuously, adapting to our surrounds is how we survived. We are surrounded by a digital culture that expects more capability not only mentally but physically.

So naturally, we adapt.

We are going into a new digital era, where we adapt our tools and our bodies become our tools. The pieces are a conversational piece.

---

INSPIRATION // LINKS

Ana Rajcevic: Animal the other side of evolution These sculptural pieces are made by Ana Rajcevice. She is graduated from the London College of Fashion and in 2012 received the Fashion MA Design award. Her Series Animal: the other side of evolution, feature a series of tusk, horns and spines seemly an extension of the human body. It is a unique visual interpretation of the animal anatomy. Building upon the existing human skeleton, the proportions seem almost natural and suggest according to the artist: “Strength, Power and sensuality”. They pieces are made from fibreglass, resin and silicone.

Nintendo Comment

• References:

[1]

*http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/are-we-evolving-tech-or-is-tech-evolving-us/

• http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-is-human-evolution-taking-us/
• Fortune, Stephen. "3D Print Creations: Ana Rajcevic." Dazed. N.p., Nov. 2013. Web. 04 Dec. 2014. <http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/17940/1/3d-print-creations-ana-rajcevic>.
• Christie, Bryan, and Kevin Shultz. Where Is Human Evolution Taking Us? Digital image. Scientific American. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, A DIVISION OF NATURE AMERICA, INC, 01 Sept. 2015. Web. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-is-human-evolution-taking-us/>.
• http://technologyofus.com/peppers-optimism/
• http://omim.org/entry/274200/Thumb, Distal Hyperextensibility/
• http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/jul/10/human-evolution-next-stages
• http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-humans-have-not-stopped-evolving/
• http://www.howtoflyahorse.com/without-technology-youd-be-dead-in-days/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumb#cite_note-13
• http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1950/
• http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/myththumb.html/
• http://www.nintendolife.com/forums/general_discussion/gamers_thumb?start=20/
• http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/predictions-experts-tackle-question-of-how-humans-will-evolve/?WT.mc_id=SA_printmag_2014-09