Politics of Power – Automato (PRC)

Cultures, ethics and ideologies are embedded more or less intentionally in products and networks by designers, engineers, and other stakeholders along the way. The more products become autonomous and potentially “black-boxed“, the more these designed biases will influence and shape our lives without creating the interfaces to understand, agree or correct. So what ideology of a product could be turned, instead, into a choice for an end consumer? what if product could be designed to be transparently biased?

Politics of Power is an exploration of these questions on a micro-scale by using a simple ubiquitous product, the multi-plug. Three multi-plugs – Model D, M and T – are designed to look and behave based on different power structures, using ideologies to “segment’ the products. By connecting a set of lights or other small appliances to the plugs, the end consumer can experience the hidden politics of networks in an everyday life products in form of an electrical system.

automato.farm is design research studio based in Shanghai.We build real-fictional artefacts and experiences, as a thinking and design research tool, to explore the implications of new technologies in our everyday lives.Our work has been exhibited and presented internationally and was awarded by Core77, InteractionAwards, Robot Film Festival and Internet Of Things Award.

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