Playing Nine to Five : Ways of exploring our present relations with objects through playfulness

Abstract: Playing Nine to Five is a project that aims to raise awareness of the presence of objects in everyday situations. We often surround ourselves with objects. Some of them we touch and use everyday, and some of them we barely notice until they stop working. But are we always aware of our relations with them, or have we slightly taken them for granted? While our life quality has moved forward and our living pace has sped up, we tend to lose more of our attentions and sensitivities to things around us. During the design process, I used office space as a canvas to discuss and challenge our daily norms, where objects exist mainly as tools. I looked into our ‘unconscious behavior’ with objects, such as habits or recurring actions. In our everyday lives, these repetitions and rhythmic movements with objects are often being unnoticed or considered as ‘normal’.  In this project, I worked with two office objects, a pen and a clock. Respectively, they represent different ways of exploring our present relations with objects. Pen is an object we use and carry with almost everyday. It is personal and close to our body. Clock, on the other hand, is an object that we barley touch, but constantly look at or search for. It shows the information of time. Both proposals are designed to bring attention to what we are using, when, and how, to create space for discussion and reflection. The purpose of this project is to tweak the way we interact with objects and explore our relations with objects through playfulness and curiosity. I see this project as an ongoing exploration and a potential development in the future.