Body Sounds - Critical Design Prototyping

Project developed for the Critical Design Prototyping Elective Module - Communication Design & Media (BA), Design & Business KEA

2017, Copenhagen, Denmark

Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being. - Blaise Pascal

Critical design is about bringing together concepts that discuss about the world from a critical perspective, using design thinking and research methods and tools. In my approach for this project I used the guitar as an artefact, placed in a context where the human body becomes the secondary artefact. A guitar is a musical instrument that has as components the strings attached to a body. 

The materials used to build a guitar are usually wood, metal, iron and plastic. The critical perspective on this object is activated when I introduce the concept of Transhumanism, juxtaposing these two artefacts. Transhumanism is using technology and science to enhance and modify the human body, and holds the belief that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations. Starting my design process with this idea in mind, and combining these elements and concepts together, I generated a new concept, that encapsulates the critical perspective on our world, regarding the way we are doing things as society, and the way we build and modify our reality and environment. This brings into the discussion the sustainability aspects of our economic, political and cultural world. I would like to call this new concept: Reversed Transhumanism – when the human body adds to technology, and the human body becomes the raw material for the objects that we build, use, and consume. 

Some wonder questions:

1.   How the human body can become a medium through which music is created?

2.  How technology can be used to modify the human body so it becomes a musical instrument?

3.  How the culture can embrace the idea that technology can actually enhance the human body to do things that is not supposed to do?

4.  How a world build on the idea of “Reversed Transhumanism” could look like?

5.  What is the current perspective on using the human body as raw material or resource to build our objects or fuel our machines?

6.  Would people in the future donate their dead body to be used as raw material to build or fuel the world?

7.  What is the religious perspective on using the human body as resource to build our objects (musical instruments)?

8.  How would a human resource storage system look like?

9.  How would a production system look like?

10. What objects would people build with human materials?

11.  What parts of the body would be the first to be ethically accepted as resources to be used for building objects?

12.  How the health of a human body can influence the quality, price and industry where is used?

13.   Is there a market for an afterlife of a body?

14.   Will be a black market for human bodies?

In order to address these questions, several domains and areas need to be consulted and researched. Areas such as science, technology, ethics, religion, cultural beliefs, anthropology, economics and politics, ecology and nature studies are important to be addressed when approaching the subject of Body materiality and Reversed Transhumanism.

However, what I chose to do is to explore various ways on how one can create an object that has the potential to question the idea of using the human body as the body for a music instrument, and as a resource to build it. The first approach was to build a prototype of a guitar that has a modified shape of the body into a human hand and arm. For this, I drew the shape of the hand and laser-cut it in a 3 mm thick wood plate. I attached wires to each finger tip, and I brought it across the arm to receive the shape of a guitar. The strings are made of metal wires, therefore they don’t make any musical sound, but for the fact that this stands only for a sketch, this aspect is not an issue to be considered.

In order to make a fusion with the human body, I created an object that looks like a piece of jewellery and attached it to the arm. The piece is made of 5 rings that goes on each finger, which are attached to the metal wires, and further attached to a golden bracelet placed on the arm. This way, the arm becomes the body of the guitar, and the strings could be adjusted and tensioned by the movement of the arm.

A third prototype I worked on is exploring the concept of Reversed Transhumanism, using human parts to build the guitar. The body of the guitar resembles a classic guitar, but it integrates a profile of a female on its side. The strings has been replaced with hair-extensions, reminding the viewer of the human presence. The juxtaposition of the two elements – the guitar shape and the human hair – brings in the question: what if our objects are made of human materials? The functionality of the guitar as a musical instrument disappears at this stage, and the object receives an infra-ordinary value.

The prototypes are conceived as sketches, trying to bring into the viewer’s awareness the idea of the human body as a replacement for the usual materials that we use to build the objects around us. The world and the reality we live in today is built on a paradigm that lays down the idea that humans are in the centre of this totality, therefore it is our right to use the environment and the nature in our own benefit. This project questions this idea, and pushes the comfortable boundaries of how we perceive the relationships we have with the environment and with our own bodies, bringing into our minds the question: What if we live in world where the human body becomes raw material, resources and fuel for our objects and machines? How do we create a sustainable world by “giving back to the nature”, giving our bodies back to the socio-economic system?