Machines for believing is an ongoing research project that sets to investigate beliefs, the people whom believe, why and what they believe, and the reasons people want to others to believe them.
This research sits and upholds what I view as a necessary facet of design that is not necessarily always served; the questioning of human needs and practices. I see belief systems like any other, they are created by humans, and so we need to understand them in a design context, not so that we can fabricate more or less believable systems but so that we can understand the human need to believe, the way we fabricate beliefs, how we believe them, and the reasons people want others to believe them.
“…nothing is clear, all is chaos, [..] all man has is his lucidity and his definite knowledge of the walls surrounding him”
-Albert Camus, ‘The myth of sisyphus’.
Our perceptions of the world, and the meanings we form shape the patterns that we live by. Our process of learning about the world is mediated by perceived authoritative figures, thus our lives are structured by commonly held perceptions and culturally taught practices. Our knowledge is not based on actual physical experiences, but story telling, hear-say, and rumour.
We must actively dismiss all culturally taught practices and learned perceptions. We need to form our own meanings. Our life-long goal is to establish a set of meanings that makes the most sense to us through our questioning and resulting experiences.
You are being deceived. Knowledge is controlled. Experiment. Take nothing for granted. Question everything.
My current path of research concerns human beliefs, a study of learned perceptions, and the human condition of the need to believe. This research is manifested through the use of machines and performances that act to challenge commonly held beliefs and perceptions, the aim of these objects and performances is to understand the world we live in through insatiable questioning.
This film summarises my years path of research, starting with textual research, moving into the experiments, and prototypes I made, and concluding with a set of outcomes, interviews and evaluations.
The film is 15 minutes long. If you would like a DVD copy please email me: Contact
Machines for believing in
Machines for believing is an ongoing research project that sets to investigate beliefs, the people whom believe, why and what they believe, and the reasons people want to others to believe them.
This research sits and upholds what I view as a necessary facet of design that is not necessarily always served; the questioning of human needs and practices. I see belief systems like any other, they are created by humans, and so we need to understand them in a design context, not so that we can fabricate more or less believable systems but so that we can understand the human need to believe, the way we fabricate beliefs, how we believe them, and the reasons people want others to believe them.
“…nothing is clear, all is chaos, [..] all man has is his lucidity and his definite knowledge of the walls surrounding him”
-Albert Camus, ‘The myth of sisyphus’.
Our perceptions of the world, and the meanings we form shape the patterns that we live by. Our process of learning about the world is mediated by perceived authoritative figures, thus our lives are structured by commonly held perceptions and culturally taught practices. Our knowledge is not based on actual physical experiences, but story telling, hear-say, and rumour.
We must actively dismiss all culturally taught practices and learned perceptions. We need to form our own meanings. Our life-long goal is to establish a set of meanings that makes the most sense to us through our questioning and resulting experiences.
You are being deceived. Knowledge is controlled. Experiment. Take nothing for granted. Question everything.
My current path of research concerns human beliefs, a study of learned perceptions, and the human condition of the need to believe. This research is manifested through the use of machines and performances that act to challenge commonly held beliefs and perceptions, the aim of these objects and performances is to understand the world we live in through insatiable questioning.
This film summarises my years path of research, starting with textual research, moving into the experiments, and prototypes I made, and concluding with a set of outcomes, interviews and evaluations.
The film is 15 minutes long. If you would like a DVD copy please email me: Contact