Develop a Case Study on ‘Haunted [Smart] Homes’

tl;dr: Do some research and find an existing creative work that relates to this module. Review examples from Spooky Tech module first. Identify and report on an example (research project, artistic installation, design project, etc.) related to the themes of the module: haunting and hacking the smart home, etc. The focus here is on discovering a product or project that you didn't previously know about and represents an interesting approach, method or strategy that can inspire our work in this module.

Learning Objectives

In addition to the standard case study objectives, here we specifically hope to:

• To become familiar with the world of tangible and ubiquitous computing by uncovering the work of influential researchers, artists, creative practioners, designers;
• To identify reference projects in the space of unsettling, magical or animistic technology that are relevant to your own interests and the themes of the proejct;
• To develop a receiptivity to critical production, critical design and critical making; and
• To learn how others in the field approach questions of spooky/explainable technology through production of computational objects.

Selecting the work(s)

You’re asked to develop a case study of creative work that relates to the themes of this module.

Your case study should focus on a dissection of and reflection of a single reference project

You can also take a broad approach to your case study and investigate work across domains:

• Technical: Ubiquitous, Tangible, or Embedded Computing and Interaction;
• Artistic: Provocative or expressive works (artworks, exhibitions or performances)
• Speculative: Critical Design, Engineering or Making; Design Fiction and Futures;

Regardless, it should be a case study you find personally interesting, appealing, etc and should review work you haven’t encountered before.

What to write up:

Use the format of cases in the Spooky Technology book as a guide to this exercise - the format, organization and layout is a good cue to what you’ll do:

• Give credit and acknowledge authors and creators with a clear title, attribution, year and link to the original project.
• Provide a clear summary of the work and why we should pay attention to it; do this in your own words.
• Offer an illustrative image or video that helps us understand what the work is or how it operates.
• Finish with a provocation, question or reflection on the work (a pull quote from the creator/author that gets us thinking might also work)

Follow the guidelines for posting a case study to Slack. Include in your post about 150-250 words in which you discuss:

1. Briefly introduce your case study in a couple of sentences).
2. Describe why you selected this case study (what is interesting, inspirational, innovative, etc. about it)
3. Unpack any example projects in terms of the how it was made (execution, tools, technologies) and why it was made (context, intent, concept)
4. Describe why the projects are significant or exciting
5. If appropriate: Critique projects - what are their shortcomings; what concerns do you have, etc.
6. Draw relationships between projects: What inspired or informed it? How does it compare to other work? Why is it influential and what has it influenced?

The post should contain supporting materials (video, audio, data, code, documents that will help serve as augmentation of the project narrative and represent the case study to your peers. You should provide at minimum one cover/masthead image at the top of the project and you should import from online sources (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.).

Example formats for a case study are provided in the main case study information