Not everyone gets to live in the same city, unfortunately. What’s worse, this even applies to friends who really wish they did. Possibilities are multiplied by proximity; intentionally or not, positively or otherwise, things naturally grow in the same direction when they’re near to one another. Granted, this is the greatest time in human history to not live in the same city, what with all the opportunities for sleepy phone calls and carefully crafted e-mails to let all the far away friends know they’re #1. But, what technology has never been able to duplicate is the sacred alone-but-together time.
My friend Nora and I found ourselves in this situation just recently. Not being the types to wallow in passivity, we took it upon ourselves to dabble in inventing our own technology to make expanses of geography easier to shoulder. The result is what we’re now referring to as the Telepathic Device.
Nora modeling the Yellow and White Telepathic Devices
The Telepathic DeviceDOESNOT allow the wearers to communicate with their minds in direct and secret conversation. For example, by using the Telepathic Device a subject could not say to another subject, “I wish we were hanging right now.” The Telepathic Device is much, much more nuanced than this. It operates in a more similar way to lying with your friend in a field, possibly a beach, or mountain top, and gazing at something very big and remaining very quiet. The Telepathic Device guides two thoughts in the same direction, allowing the users to grow and develop their own thoughts independently, while sharing an experience.
Finally, here are four examples of the Telepathic Device in action:
The Telepathic Device remains in beta testing. But, we feel as though we have struck a major breakthrough for Friendships around the world. We will continue our work on perfecting this important new discovery.
Flying over California, I noticed how much we humans love geometry. In a world of gradients, geometric shapes and pattern give us the comforting feeling that some sort of order exists in the universe–they’re kind of a visual equivalent of religion. When we look at them, they say “outside of these four right angles is the vastness of infinity and billowing chaos, but in here, in here I’m 100% square”. Out the plane window en route to Sirocco, there was this warm embrace waiting for my eyes:
Just look at that and tell me you aren’t in love
Coming into Sirocco, my first task was waiting for me: build a bed. When it came to beds, I and most people I know have been operating under the assumption that we sleep on whatever Swedish designers tell us to—would you like the RYKENE or the FLORÖ? In the SRL though, everything was built by hand, including my allotted space to sleep, which was a hardwood floor until I made it otherwise. Luckily the Labs are somewhere between a lumberyard and a preschool, with endless stacks of wood from old sets and rack over rack over rack filled with every mark making tool you could dream of. The tools were there; all I needed to do was build.
For the first time in my life, I was forced to build my space for sleep and privacy which felt like a small scale version of building my own house. And because a stapler has been the most industrial tool I’ve used over the past ten years, the sawing, measuring, drilling, and screwing I had in front of me made the road look that much longer.
I spent my few hours in the labs sketching what it was I would be sleeping on for the next month. There was no deadline or due date, but my current hardwood floor-bed brought an urgency to the process. In most art forms, you have the time to draw and erase, paint then paint over, add and remove—a process more of experimentation than planning. With no place to sleep, I had to scribble out some ideas as fast as possible so I could start making said scribbles into a structure.
My first few ideas were a bed in a box (felt too much like a coffin), bed on a box (fine, but just a bed on a box), bed with long legs (getting there), bed with legs and a mouth desk (still too open) , and bed with legs, desk, and fort fabric (perfect!). After the rough idea of my bed was sketched out, the building process was a lot simpler than I thought it would be. I’m still torn as to what my favorite part was, either the 8-year-old-fort-building feeling or going to the garment district with Martin to get my fabric.
I decided to follow my heart, and it took me to polka dots
All together:
Such a direct hand-to-mouth relationship was really exciting; having grown up in a world where actions are always ten to twenty degrees removed from their consequences (e.g. how a comedian can feed themselves without ever having seen a plant), building my bed felt like farming my own food. And while the actual construction was easier than I thought it was going to be, the direct manual labor that went into my bed made me feel like I earned a place to sleep for the first time—tonight I won’t be sleeping on a mattress and frame, I’ll be resting on sweat and determination.
So as you can see, my first week in the labs was hardly about beds. Bed building was really one task that embodied two different lessons. The first was straight from the heart of Sirocco, a lesson about personal agency and hidden imagination — learning to close your eyes and use your hands to make what you see under your lids. The second was about our need for definite lines and shapes; because in the end, my bed became another extension of this geometry we so love. Before, my bed was a sleeping bag dot in a prairie sized room in an infinite city.
But, by assembling together an assortment of hard and opaque objects, I now have my own geometry to crawl into that says “outside these angles is the vastness of 15 million people and billowing smog, but in here, in here we’re 100% dreams”. Until next week, I’ll be here, staring out my rectangle window.
ROLODEXXX
who declared you would be so expensive to buy in the store..
past the brink of obsolescence, you blindly sport a can’t-touch-me tag..
while your modern competition soars, you are weighted to the floor..
blame it on your disposition, says sontag..
you are but a glorified t-p holder; vex us no more.
NOW, what you’ve all been waiting for, the new and improved “SCHMOLODEX”!! Made from door trim, ring binders, and a dowel rod, it can EASILY accommodate contact information for hundreds of your most colorful friends. Place it on a desk, mount in on the wall, suspend it from the ceiling; ANY way you look at it, batteries aren’t included.. THAT’S RIGHT!! There’s not a single circuit to bend, no buttons to push, and nothing to rub… SOOOOO, sneak into a local construction site and build one TODAY!!
After careful observation and studies of naturally occuring Volcanos, I have come to the perfect conclusion on how to create, without failure, smoking volcanoes for movie magic.
With these illustrations, you will observe how to create volcanos which will smoke. Unlike the elementary way of creating an oozing volcano, using baking soda and vinegar, these will not leave a mess on your miniature underwater movie set.
1. From cardboard, cut out 3/4 of a circle. Create fold lines by slightly scoring the surface every five inches.
2. Assemble a quite geometric volcano by taping the two sides onto each other. Using plaster or joint compound, cover surface of volcano until it looks legitimate. Crevices, cracks, and pock marks are all key to success. After allowing a few days to dry, apply desired finish, paint, or sand.
3. Using your laboratories supplies, place beakers into the volcanos. Fill the beakers with luke-warm water. Using scientific gloves and safety goggles, break off small pieces of dry ice, with extreme caution, and place into beakers.
4. The chemical reaction which is now taking place is the carbon dioxide sublimating into a gas.
5. For a movie magic glow, place flame colored lights under volcano and watch the scientific fun begin!
