Interact with your coffee cup inner monologue
Interactive installation
Presented at:
Festival Recto VRso de Laval Virtual (2024),
Colloque Drôles d’Objets Symposia (2023)
ENS Paris-Saclay (2023)
In collaboration with Frédéric Bevilacqua, Anthonin Gourichon
Acknowledgements: Jean Hostache and Gregor Daronian for the video improvisations, photo credit Anthonin Gourichon
VOIR l’ensemble des Capsules vidéos
A connected anti-object?
Tsukumo-café is a coffee cup connected... to its interiority, to its soul, which appeared at the age of one hundred years, as in the Japanese tradition of tsukumogami-emaki. It has no precise function other than to serve you a cup of coffee... unless you listen to its inner monologue and perhaps connect it to your own.
While connected objects constantly draw us towards an external world - real or virtual - the paradox proposed in the Tsukumo-café installation is to invest a poetic and symbiotic experience with an object with a mysterious and singular language.
A living object?
A symbolic stake lies in the consideration of the nature of the cup object. The dramaturgy is based on the idea that it is a being in its own right, to be heard and listened to, rather than an "animated" or "enchanted" interactive object. This quasi-animalistic perspective on vitalization allows us to question more directly the role (or lack of role) of objects in our daily lives, in our human and non-human relationships.
In this installation and device, I therefore question the principle of interaction with objects too exclusively tied to question-and-answer exchanges (as is classically the case with connected objects such as Alexa or other commercial avatars). Instead, I propose to explore the notion of inner dialogue as a driving force for interaction.
The "cup-being" of a cup of coffee?
This raises a series of questions: what language can it speak? what senses does it have? what relationship to the world does its cup body offer it, i.e. what is its "Umwelt" (according to Jakob Johann von Uexküll's concept)? As pets develop neuroses, does the mug also become impregnated with certain neuroses as it becomes more and more familiar with neurotic mammals such as humans? To what extent does it imbibe the human languages that inhabit its coffee psyche? Has she heard of Bruno Latour's Parliament of Things, and what does she think of it? And how can we perceive the manifestations of a coffee-cup endophasia at work?
Installation descriptions
Several devices have been developed:
Device 1
in collaboration with Frédéric Bevilacqua
The interaction consists of drinking a cup of coffee. As you drink, the cup's self-talk unfolds and evolves, based on voices and environmental sounds. I consider that it feels these gestures.
A wireless motion sensor (accelerometers/gyroscopes) is embedded in the cup. A Max/MSP patch generates the text interactively.
Articles de presse (Ouest France, Blog Laval Virtual) about the installation during the Festival Recto VRso of Laval Virtual (2024).
Device 2
in collaboration with Anthonin Gourichon
The spec-actor is invited to come into contact with the object.
I consider here that the cup feels the touch. To achieve this, capacitive sensors are used, which are inscribed in the cup. I created copper embroidery, inspired by the Kintsugi technique and the art of porcelain gilding. I then designed a sound space based on sounds recorded with the cup.
Other dispositifs, prototypes et videos:
Caffeomancy allows us to read the future in coffee grounds. But can we listen to the past in these old cups? What memories have they retained? What words have marked them, which they continue to contain in their coffee psyches?
A piezo microphone amplifies the sounds created by the gestures and movements of the cup.
Video improvisation on the endophasia of an antique mug, with actors Gregor Daronian and Jean Hostache.
