The tinsel-o-matic represents what I call an artifact of understanding - a result of a participatory design process that has had it´s focus towards a dialogical reader-text interaction to acomplish what Gadamer calls a fusion of horizons. Fusion of horizons ascends when the limited horizon of the text and the limited horizon of the reader generates a new, intermediary creation attributed to either of them. The tinsel-o-matic is programmed to react to contact and to symbolically represent it. The meanings captured in the objects of the different collectors and reinforced by their relationship to those objects, revealed that the nature of the objects and their appropriation was intrinsic to human experience and the artifacts’ ability to evoke memory or emotions. From this observation, the design process of the artifact/machine was informed and found its focus in operating on human experience, rather than investigating material qualities and properties alone. In this specific case, the artifact is designed to operate as a telephone answering machine, yet differs in the fact that it can’t record messages and it doesn’t look like an answering machine. Instead of recording messages it cracks Christmas-ornaments, and these ornaments become evidence of someone’s attempt at contact. Practical it works by hanging on the wall. When triggered by a call the machine starts to operate letting four signals through then dropping a crystal ball in the bore down to the “launching pad”. The machine then gives a short recorded message whereupon the mechanism shoves the positioned crystal ball out, making it fall to the ground and crack.
tinsel-o-matic quicktime
