Ever looked at the sea reflecting moonlight? How can it be inviting and romantic at times yet frightening at others? Inspired by this contrast, Claire the Lune explores a smart material which moves aggressively like a sea at storm when it doesn’t receive attention, but turns into a calm ocean once receiving the desired attention.

In contrast to most interactions, where the user explores the artefact and has the dominant role, the force and dominance of Claire de Lune explore what it is like when the material explores you. Just as with an ocean, you are not the one in control. This project focused on the development of a smart material and which behaviour it could have. In the past it was often that the static materiality of products was what determined whether an object was inhibiting or inviting [1]. But with the coming of smart materials, there is a whole area of new changes for designers to create interactive materials that convey the behaviour of the product. As Manzini (1989) puts it, the question around materials has changed from “What is it?” towards “What does it do?” [2]. Inspired by this challenge, Claire de Lune was developed. For the development of Claire de Lune, an explorative process was followed, starting from the material. This can be seen in the video beneath and in the last picture on this page.

• Team Selim Haase | Freek Olivier | Rosa van Koningsbruggen
• [1] Stienstra, J.T., Bruns Alonso, M., Wensveen, S.A.G., & Kuenen, C.S. (2012). How to design for transformation of behavior through interactive materiality. In Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human - Computer Interac¬tion: Making Sense Through Design (pp. 21 - 30). ACM.
  [2] Manzini, E. (1989). The Material of Invention: Materials and Design. Cambridge, USA: The MIT Press.