Into the Blind

In a world of perfectly functional and synchronized platforms, technology is at the same time a collective fantasy and a physical battlefield of social forces sublimated in protocols.

Into the Blind dives into everyday positioning towards the indispensable tools that shape our movement yet remain fundamentally mysterious on the example of one of the most hermetic systems - GPS. Through a speculative design approach, I developed a series of modified GPS software prototypes with diverse principles of navigation, in order to inquire into everyday habitual interacting with technology as the guiding hand.

The models:

Model 100 offers taxi drivers the possibility of earning money by taking longer routes, while it still presenting itself as a regular navigation software to the customer

Model 200 offers routes for avoiding police

Model 300 looks for routes of less electromagnetic frequency

Using the primary rule of interface design – giving the user the feeling of having control, the features of the models go from fulfilling practical (model 100) to abstract (model 300) requests for convoluted routes, as a contemporary detournment.

Choosing the “less common path”, in other words, adjusting the meaning of optimal route, the modified software explores how technological determinism gets (un)consciously inscribed in code, based in the paradigm of efficiency in algorithm design.