Gender · Female
Online Designation(s) · Cati Vaucelle
Function · Researcher + inventor, technology and design.
Vaucelle studied economics, mathematics, fine arts, photography, multimedia, computational linguistics, psychology, computer sciences, technology, and product design! She currently is a PhD student and a research assistant at the MIT Media Laboratory, in Hiroshi Ishi’s Tangible Media group.
Vaucelle plays simulation, strategy and role playing games.
Her 63 warrior-engineer WoW character, 2007
Kit · A MacBookPro laptop with internet access, a camera and an iPod. Vaucelle DOESN’T own/use/carry a cell phone! She is exclusively on Trillian and Skype.
Vaucelle wants to design her own gear: a folded laptop with a projector integrated so that she can retro-project from it on a folded white mat or onto any surface. She would like the keyboard and the track-pad to be detachable. She envisions a laptop lighter than a cell phone.
In the city, she travels ultra light (3 keys, a Subway card, a credit card, a student ID card, and few bucks) but she is also an incredible collector: from MP3 to CD and records, comic books, movies, toys… For Vaucelle, objects have a history, hence a deep significance: “I collect and revisit toys that are charged with a period.”
Cati Vaucelle, A toy found in a demolished hotel in Paris, 1998. “If only objects could talk!” she says.
Mission · She explores, designs and implements mutable interfaces to uncover the coexistence of the digital with the physical. This work differs from current considerations of digital and tangible representation. In her work, she allows the digital and the physical to exist independently from each other, and to co-exist in a way that informs one another. This has implications for fields as diverse as architecture, fashion and health care treatment, three areas in which she is currently developing applications.
In terms of projects with a straightforward link to mobilities, Vaucelle created Moving Pictures, a project that involves the use of small, light, ergonomic and transportable cameras. Children could record visual and sound memories using coins to later mix them together, and explore their own narratives.
Children and Moving Pictures, Dublin workshop, 2004. A child recording an instant of everyday life.
As another example, her seamless sensory interventions for the treatment of mental and neurological disorders. Vaucelle researches haptics as the key to bringing treatment into the social sphere through wearable devices, and providing new ways to mediate between the patient and the therapist both in and outside of therapy.
Mobility · Vaucelle implements software and hardware when developing new technology, in addition to conducting research on currently available technologies. In either case, she traverses scientific fields. She is mobile physically and mentally and extremely mobile digitally: she loves to try out/hack/extend the newest digital tool.
Cati vaucelle, Hurt Me, concept model, 2006. In Hurt Me she combined her background in psychology to her explorations in haptics.
In transit, she loves to remove her shoes. It feels good. She hates having to remove the computer from her bag. Vaucelle wishes that by closing her eyes she would instantly turn on the computing capabilities of her computer and drive her computer. She also thinks that being regularly disconnected from a computer for a minimum of a week is refreshing! It is important to realize that we come from natural elements, and feeling the strength of nature is grounding…
On the road from San Francisco to San Diego, CA, 2003
Vaucelle lived in France, USA, and Ireland. She spent long periods of time in Sweden, Brazil, and Canada. She visited many other countries, and among them, Senegal!
Cati in her Parisian suburbs, 2000
Mobile philosophy · According to Vaucelle, teleportation should be the next mode of transportation! Not that she doesn’t love to take the train and ride her bicycle. To be mobile is to have access to any requested services at any given time. Yet, being digitally mobile does not necessarily imply loosing the physical interactions with persons and objects. The digital mobility enables her to freely navigate between being a machine and a physical human being.
Connect: cati [at] media [dot] mit [dot] edu · http://architectradure.blogspot.com/
“Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”
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Sonny Holtorf says:
It’s loads of fun. I do wish people would just leave comments so we can all have fun together! I simply have got to find a way for them to speak up! =)
March 20th, 2010 at 2:14 am