Object Mediated Interactions
About
Tutors: Claude Dutson & Amina Abbas-Nazari
Object Mediated Interactions explores the hidden lives of objects. This refers both to the digital lives of physical objects but also to the life of inert, analogue objects. Objects that don’t appear to have much going on - but occupy a rich contextual, social, symbolic, aesthetic and psychological territory in popular culture, politics, and the environment. OMI investigates the flows in which objects are produced, sold, advertised, experienced, used and misused.
In 2021/22, OMI has responded to contemporary conditions that have been intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic where work and play have become intertwined, and where users are both gamers and workers.
The projects here explore the unseen labour of influencers and night workers, the serious games of machine-learning, the cultural life of artificial intelligence, speculating on playful interactions, and activism to even the playing field of communication - digital and analogue.