The Ex-Com (External Communication) couch is one of several robotic couches which can allow different people in remote locations to communicate with each other through the physical piece of furniture.
With affordable, easy to assemble instructions, our goal is to make a global community of communicative couches. The couches serve as the physical medium for bringing strategies of communicative awareness into the physical world.
Concept
The focus of this project is how interactive architecture can serve as a means for designing and building environments that address human communications in entirely new ways. In the same way that one might see a username appear in instant messaging (IM) software on a computer and know that a person in sitting at their computer, applications in the physical environment can bring this understanding out into the real world. Specifically, in creating architectural objects that can physically adapt and change shapes to translate human networks of remote communication. The couch will allow visitors to understand when those in another community are also sitting on their couch. Each individual who sits on the couch will be given a signature motion that communicates the seat they are sitting on and the geographic location of the couch they are on.
This project builds upon the great work of the Remote Home project by Tobi Schneidler and other members of SmartStudio by 1) being much more hairy 2) becoming spatial 3) being simple and affordable enough to create a global community fo such furniture.
