Research
Affect Lab is the research foundation I co-founded with Ekaterina Yudin in 2011.
Figuring out human emotions is fraught with challenges. It is a deeply complex, nuanced and varied landscape to navigate. No more so than in the mobile and web worlds. But opportunities exist to reflect on everyday emotion, gather rich insights, and better understand the landscape of people’s expressions of emotion in the digital world.
Affect Lab is a research studio measuring, investigating and building experiments with digital expressions of emotion. We aim to playfully facilitate awareness, debate and reflection on people’s emotions to highlight their impact on behaviour and everyday life.
Affect Lab’s projects are positioned at the intersection of digital research, social entrepreneurship and design. Read more about Affect Lab projects on our website: www.affectlab.org
PHD research
My PhD research begins in September 2012, supervised by Dr Sarah Kember at Goldsmiths University, Media and Communications department.
Masters Research
The line between man and computer is no longer drawn at the ability to think but the capacity to feel. With a recent focus on emotion in human-computer interaction, research has extended past the cognitive to understand new aspects of human experience. My masters thesis, completed in 2011 at the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Geert Lovink, explored the affective turn of mobile phones using ethnographic methods.
The focus was not limited to the mobile’s role in mediating emotion or as an object of affection due to its contents, but points to it as a stand-alone affective actor. This research explored the notion that mobiles are not simply inert objects that only respond to our whims and wants – they too have a presence. They move us in the same way that people can “move” each other – they are energetic participants in our assembly of human and non humans. As a result, users rarely view mobiles as mere technological devices but rather as natural beings, ones that have expressions – derived from the presence they create.
My thesis research aimed to show that mobiles transfer affect, emit or radiate an aura that generates anxiety, pleasure or calm in people or places. Our relationships with them, often characterised by paradoxes and ambivalence, is shifting away from the realm of mobile culture to become part of human nature.
This blog forms part of my ongoing documentation of the interesting social behaviours that mobile phones inspire. I am nothing short of fascinated by the changes we are witnessing as part of our interaction with this agile technology.
To download a copy of my thesis please click here.
