Probe Movies

Skinsucka reveals a scenario where microbial powered autonomous micro-devices share our living spaces and eat household dirt. As slaves and servants have done for millennia before them, these microbots, powered by bacterial energy, perform tasks we deem mundane, repetitive or dangerous.

Tattoos and physical mutilation are amongst the oldest forms of personal expression and identity. Subcultures have used tattoos as a form of self representation; a visual language communicating personality and status. Philips Design examined the growing trend of extreme body adornment like tattoos, piercing, implants and scarring

Our world is sending us warning signals that we are disturbing its equilibrium. A drastic cut in our environmental impact is called for. This Probe explores how the solution is likely to come from biological processes, which are less energy-consuming and non-polluting. We need to go back to nature in order to move forward. The Microbial Home is a proposal for an integrated cyclical ecosystem where each function’s output is another’s input. In this project the home has been viewed as a biological machine to filter, process and recycle what we conventionally think of as waste – sewage, effluent, garbage, waste water. Creating a cyclical eco-system

This design probe takes a provocative and unconventional look at areas that could have a profound effect on the way we eat and source our food 15-20 years from now.

These investigations, like other probe projects, examine the possible consequences of various (long-range) social trends and ‘weak signals’ emerging from the margins of society. In the case of food, this involved tracking and interpreting issues like the shift in emphasis from curative to preventative medicine, the growth in popularity of organic produce, implications of genetic modification, land use patterns in growing what we eat, the threat of serious shortages, and rising food prices

Today, our habitat is very dependent on the international grid of energy &water. Energy crisis, clean water shortage, global warming and environmental pollution are worldwide problems. Understanding cities as dynamic and ever-evolving eco-systems can help us to formulate strategies for a sustainable urban future. This project is based on the the brief to develop sustainable housing for urban megalopolis in China in 2020.

The SKIN probe project examines the future integration of sensitive materials in the area of emotional sensing – the shift from ‘intelligent’ to ‘sensitive’ products and technologies.

As part of SKIN, we have developed a ‘Soft Technology’ outfit to identify the future for high tech materials and Electronic Textile Development in the area’s of skin and emotional sensing.

The dress show emotive technology and how the body and the near environment can use pattern and color change to interact and predict the emotional state.

Metamorphosis explores how we have become separated from the natural world, both in terms of our surroundings and how we perceive and manage our time. While seasons and time awaken powerful instinctive responses in us, the spaces in which we currently live and work do not reflect the changes outside to allow these effects to take place. Metamorphosis demonstrates how we have become detached from nature and the effect it has on our sensory experience and lifestyle.