How did the Space Monkeys project come into being?
There were two basic motivations behind Space Monkeys, both of them negative. In standard school curricula there’s a heavy bias towards visual media in the teaching of design, and there’s also this implicit notion that technology is what manufacturers of technology tell you it is. So what I wanted to do was put together a project that would get kids thinking about designing with sound, and at the same time get them thinking about alternative applications of standard consumer technologies. Why exactly did you want to get the kids thinking about alternative applications of standard consumer technologies? It was entirely political. For the most part, kids are not being taught how to engage these technologies tactically. It’s bleak that in ten or twelve years of schooling the relationship to technology is only ever defined by a standardised repertoire of techniques. But these are the systems that are in place, and these techniques are being incorporated – actually registered in the sensory
