Phone Wrecker, 2016

Shown at STATE: Festival of Emotion, Kühlhaus, Berlin, 2016

Anticipation is a dynamic, transitional state of emotion that manifests when we expect a certain outcome to happen. The intensity of anticipation—which may be combined with hope, excitement, apprehension, or fear—correlates strongly with how much we care about the impact of a particular outcome.

We, the designers put our own phones in potentially dangerous situations, highlighting the emotional attachment most of us have for these delicate, yet powerful devices that intimately involve themselves in our everyday life.

These machines were designed to elicit and evoke a emotional response that focuses on our connection most of us have with our phones. Some participants wanted to smash the phones, others wouldn't turn the crank, some tentatively removed pebbles to see the result. All of these responses show and emphatic, and frustrated relationship we humans have with these devices—some hate their devotion to their phone, others have a fondness to them and wish no harm comes to them.

Of course no harm actually came to the phones...

With Linh Pham and Robert Marshall