Objects are getting too smart

Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting is right, London based designers and artists of Troika have fabulous ideas.

They have developed pieces reflecting the fact that objects around us are getting increasingly "intelligent."

The Electroprobe allows you to listen to electronic objects while they are talking and dreaming.

The piece picks up the electromagnetic radiation of objects and amplifies them into sound. The new soundscape entice the user to re-evaluate his electronic surrounding.

But the developing intelligence of objects may one day lead to darker impulse: greed, jealousy, greed and revenge could happen electronically (reminds me end of Bruce Sterling speech on "spimes").

Their TV Predator is jealous of the attention that the TV set gets, so this picture frame attacks the tv and prevent it from working properly, by changing the channels, muting the sound, or turning it on at night with full volume, changing the colours, etc.

The founders of Troika met at the Royal College of Arts in London where I bet they attended the lecture of Fiona Raby and read the fascinating book she wrote with Anthony Dunne, "Design Noir: the secret life of electronic objects."
(on Amazon.)