A Machine for Living In: Ubiquitous Sensing to Explore the Home as a Site of Intimate Life

Abstract

A Machine for Living In is a multi-layered digital media artwork using newly available computational and sensing tools to study the home as a site of intimate life. The project has two distinct phases: the construction and inhabitation of a functional smart home system, followed by an exhibition of processed data as a multi-part digital art installation. For ACM Designing Interactive Systems / Creativity and Cognition 2019, A Machine for Living In is installed as a multi-element piece in the gallery space consisting of a sensor narrative video, overhead camera video, and digital audio. All data were originally recorded in the artist's home over a period of weeks, and here are filtered through diverse processes of machine perception. In a process of joint human-machine authorship, this system produces a complex portrait of the home: as a space of language, intimacy, bodily practice, and quotidian narrative.