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Lauren McCarthy's 'Conversacube' Stymies Stilted Speech

by Matthew Zuras on October 13, 2010 at 12:45 PM

'conversacube' by lauren mccarthy
Here's designer Lauren McCarthy's Conversacube, a cheeky exercise in parody. The little box -- fitted with infrared sensors, microphones and an Arduino processor -- discourages stilted conversation by supplying you with cues like "compliment" and "admit," to keep the words flowing. McCarthy's website provides some self-aware ad copy for the device: "Do away with uncomfortable conversation. Conversacube is a conversation aid device that will prompt you what to say and do and guide everyone toward smooth, comfortable conversation every time." Check out a mock commercial for the cube after the break.

So, technology is stifling our ability to communicate on a HUMAN level! Of course, there's something backwardly anti-futurist in McCarthy's reading of the state of Western conversation -- thinking that, as more and more people become more and more plugged into the digital network, the substantive quality of our communication somehow diminishes.


The device's M.O. reminds us of Camille Paglia's screed against Lady Gaga in The Sunday Times last month, in which she wrote that Gaga's legion of twee fans "communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga's flat affect doesn't bother them because they're not attuned to facial expressions...marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty."

Like Paglia, the Conversacube suggests that we live in a world of technologically facilitated "emotional poverty," and that we are reliant on devices to give us meaningful (or at least apparently meaningful) things to say to one another, ironically serving as an antidote to its own poison. McCarthy admits as much on her site, writing that the cube is "critical of our dependence on technology and choreographed social routines." She asks, "Are we consciously aware of the future we're building with all of our technological innovation and 'progress'?"

We're of the opinion that the majority of written and spoken language is purely functional, and that only a fraction of it all constitutes poetic, meaningful, soul-lifting sentiment that should be protected as a record of its generation. Of course, we don't care to see "i'm on the toilet lolz" coming through your Twitter feed, but we also don't think that a large share of olde-tymey missives contained much more than mundane observations about the quality of the grain stores or other quotidian moments from pre-modern life. Has the substance of our conversation, either written or spoken, really changed that much? Or is it just delivered faster?

Tags: arduino, art, behavior, CamillePaglia, commentary, concept, conversation, design, LaurenMccarthy, satire, SocialNetworking, top

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