I generally build purposeless machines.
The Evolver (click to see a video), unlike a toaster, is not made with any teleology in mind.
Toasters compel quite specific behaviours in people.
Coffee cups too.
There is a statistical scope of behaviour… where if you look at the behaviour of people interacting with toasters a general picture of what that behaviour is will emerge. As with coffee cups.
But context matters.
I have just placed my toaster in my lab with an old ipad where the bread goes to see if that – in time – might compel a different behaviour in me.. or some other (un)willing participants.
Now to my new Machine.
It was my son’s Barmitzvah and I promised a friend of mine that I would say a prayer for his son who passed away a few years ago from a genetic disease. I was bothered by the fact that my son was celebrating this milestone and my friend’s son whose birthday had just passed was never going to get to this milestone. So I wanted to acknowledge him during my son’s Barmitzvah, but I was so worried that I would forget and this is one thing I could not let myself forget. So I invented a machine to help me remember.
Like my other machines I tend to use machines / parts that have evolved for a specific purpose and then re-purpose them / trick them into a new teleology / purpose.
Here I took a PEG.
And plugged it into my breast pocket. A simple construction. Then I moved about the crowds at my son’s Barmitzvah and people asked me why I had the PEG in the pocket. That was the mechanism. I didn’t have to answer the question, I just had to be asked it. Then I would remember the thing I had to remember. That was the association.
Function of PEG is (x) in context (y): the the clothes line;
change the context to (z).. function: x ——->x’, where x’ is a new function.
