It Breathes, 20XX.

I developed this installation idea in the Critical Design Seminar by DelaO Design Studio. The seminar started with the thought of ‘something that we passionately disagree with and would love for people to be aware of’ and ended up in a deep analysis of language, nature, and how we relate to the world around us.

Throughout the lectures I read for the project, I stumbled upon this question: ‘When a car is working well, what incentive is there to learn its complex internal functioning?’. And for me, the answer was ‘to care.’ Caring makes us notice and learn, enabling us to analyze processes we would otherwise know nothing about.

I wanted to change the way we care about what surrounds us by giving alive-like attributes to inanimate objects without falling into a fantasy trope. I then remembered one time that I was getting into a coffee shop and seeing a dog sleeping by the entrance. I accidentally stepped on the dog’s tail when I walked through the door. I jumped and started to say to the dog that I was very sorry. The owner looked at me, jiggled, and gave me a smile. I was baffled by the situation, so I turned back to the dog and realized that it was one of those artificial dogs whose belly moves up and down to appear to be ‘breathing.’

Breathing recalls a soothing motion; a deep breath: Inhaling & exhaling. The feeling when we lay down with someone and feel the body breathing. But what else can we say about this movement? What about a sigh? What if it goes faster? Heavy breathing or hyperventilation. Gasps when someone is crying —which might as well be of happiness, as for sorrow—. What if —knowing that it breathes— it suddenly stops?

The central concept for this installation is to use the contextual language of breathing as means to awake care towards inanimate/human-made objects (In this case, the floors, walls, and ceilings we build). Providing a space to encourage reflection and discussion around the language of nature. To rekindle our relationship with the meaning of nature and further develop critical issues related to this concept.