Unfamiliar Convenient / Vytautas Jankauskas and Claire Glanois

Unfamiliar Convenient is a research-creation endeavor that aims to shed light on the frictions between the two often coupled definitions, the internet of things, and the smart home. The project emphasizes on how the user-centeredness and corporate pragmatism of the latter often undermines the possibilities behind the former. Modus operandi of internet of things speculates how things, when connected, may leverage digital processes, communications, inputs and outputs, in order to develop their own languages and behaviors that would not be primarily oriented towards serving or mimicking humans. Reviving the domestic space as an experimental site for non-normative relationships between various entities inhabiting it, Unfamiliar Convenient attempts to at least remotely suggest smartified everyday devices as emerging species. The first case study consists of a voice assistant (turned agent), that defines home by what it hears offline and scrapes online, and a spiritual vacuum cleaner interpreting its surroundings through encounters with spatial configurations. Through their journey, the two clumsy cartographers co-construct own semantic architectures of a home, despite being constantly confronted by the volatility of the territory they explore and limited in their tools for understanding it. Bringing open-ended exploration to domestic smart objects and encouraging less hierarchical relationships within our most intimate spaces is hoped to foster a critical gaze, attentive care and new perspectives towards co-existence with our more-than-human surroundings, including but not limited to things we make. 

Bios: Claire Glanois is a Dr. in mathematics, working as a postdoctoral researcher at the IT University, Copenhagen. Her current research is concerned with artificial intelligence, from automated decision-making to artificial life, and open-ended evolution. Vytautas Jankauskas is an artist and designer intrigued by the visual and sociocultural dissonances brought about or amplified through consumer technologies.