1 Figure 1. OWL device self-portraits Doing things backwards: The OWL project interviews Danielle Wilde Monash University Art & Design CSIRO Materials Science & Engineering d@daniellewilde.com Kristina Andersen STEIM Studio for Electro Instrumental Music kristina@tinything.com ABSTRACT The OWL project is inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law of Technology Prediction: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Clarke, 1984) It consists of a series of open and speculative body-devices designed without a pre-defined function and tested as design 'probes' in order to ascertain what exact functionality they might have. While the initial forms emerge from an investigation of the body, their functionality are determined through use. The project fuses fine art and contemporary design processes to arrive at ambiguous outcomes whose functionality is being ascertained 'after the fact' through interviews, or 'probing'. While not necessarily anti-design, the methodology contrasts dramatically with traditional design processes, where the purpose and broad functionality of 'that which is being designed' is usually known in advance. This proposal is to open up the OWL process, to interview or ‘probe’ members of the OZCHI community in a semi-formal conference setting. The aim is to ascertain what kind of ‘magical functionality’ such a setting might afford and to plumb the willingness of this particular community to imagine through their bodies in movement. It is also to expose our methodology to the scrutiny of the OZCHI community, and to gain deeper insight into whether our system affords strongly engaged moments of co-creation and collaborative imagining of that which does not yet exist Author Keywords Making strange, magical thinking, participatory design, body worn devices, enchantment, ambiguity, body objects, sculptural process, desires ACM Classification Keywords H5.2 Information interfaces and presentation: User Interfaces: User-centred design and Prototyping INTRODUCTION The OWL project emerged out of a desire to discover what might happen if we let people use their embodied experience and imagination to assist us in the creation of unknown technologies. We hoped that doing so would allow us to leapfrog ordinarily incremental technology development and propose speculative devices that suggest large technology shifts. Thinking in terms of scenarios of use makes it difficult to make radical conceptual leaps. We ask if Arthur C. Clark's rule holds an important key. Might magic and desire facilitate such leaps? Instead of beginning with a design brief or a particular set of technologies, we created a small series of upholstered fabric dummies that could operate like ‘placebos’ (Dunne & Raby, 1999). These objects were designed to be worn on the body in such a way that they would challenge the wearer and might provoke or support a strong emotional reaction. The objects are exposed and evaluated through a fitting and interviewing process that is designed to encourage and record elements of lateral thinking and subconscious associations. Our intention was to begin with devices that complete and are completed by the body, to arrive at a space that invites contemplation about that body in turn. Working from this premise, with a contemplative and open relationship to the body, we have ended up with objects that invite the same, from the other direction, from the people who are experiencing the objects as they wear them. The entire process seems to mediate a reflective space as it frames it. The objects are evocative, and the interview format seems to slow down the moment of perception, 'making strange' that moment of considering an object as a worn presence within each personal space. As makers there is something inherently pleasurable about not telling people what something does but rather OZCHI 2009, November 23-27, 2009, Melbourne, Australia. Copyright the author(s) and CHISIG Additional copies are available at the ACM Digital Library (http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm) or ordered from the CHISIG secretary (secretary@chisig.org) OZCHI 2009 Proceedings ISBN: x-xxxxx-xxx-x