This is a summary of my (Gaspard Bos’) work done at the Unstable Design Lab in the month of July 2018 as a practice-based researcher and residence. I sought to do a project abroad in an inspiring space, with inspiring people, where I could work with interactive, connected and intelligent tech on social/societal issues that are my drive as a designer. I was happy to have been given the opportunity to work with smart textiles on the topic of parenthood at the lab and build on the research and work that has already been done there.
The project I developed is called Pathfinders: Felt Experience versus Embodied Statistics. Pathfinders invites participants to experience and play with anxieties that our present day risk society projects upon prospective parents. Conceptualized as a designerly form of autobiographical storytelling, the experience is intended to prompt reflection and conversation on gender stereotypes, societal expectations that are reflected within and reinforced by statistics on health and parenthood. The piece is part of a broader collection of design objects and technologies that tell personal stories about the felt experience of becoming parents in a world of increasingly sophisticated techniques for quantifying risk, intervention, and genetic modification. The work was completed in collaboration with the Unstable Design Lab and used the groups experience in designing smart wearable technologies to produce an experience that is not only about becoming parents, but brings the participant into an embodied and felt experience of navigating the choices facing prospective parents.