"Hey Flower": Critical Objects

“Hey Flower” is a project that I collaborated with Stacy and Sylvia for. Our project was confined by the following factors:

Topic: Technology (Surveillance)

Device: Juxtaposition

Mood: Amusement

Attribute: Organic

Since we had organic as our attribute, we decided to use a plant as our medium. We knew that we wanted the plant to respond as some kind of surveillance. Since surveillance is something that is carried out without the knowing of an individual, a plant as a household object also symbolizes the idea of tracking people without them knowing. We brainstormed the ways in which the plant could respond.

As a lot of voice detection systems like Siri, Alexa, Cortana etc use “HEY” as their hot word, while they are rumored to collect data, we decided to use “HEY” as our trigger word to make the plant respond to the word by turning towards the direction that it has been called out to. This would also resemble surveillance, as well as, get our idea across in relation to data privacy and surveillance rights.