Workship

‘Prayer Machine’, a Goldsmiths project with Apple, I asked questions around the existential role of work in our everyday lives through a delegation of work guide exploring how altering how we work through randomization could lead to increased creativity.

We are a bunch of designers in a post-pandemic world working on ways to reduce screen dependency for every little task in our daily lives. We want to bring randomness to decision-making, to be against the very established system that is based on algorithms and personal data. It is an alternative but universal system against the screens.

It is a set of wheels with 12 numbers on each. Users putting this into use have their own booklet of tasks or words assigned to each digit based what they want to use the wheel for. It could range from being a creative tool for a designer to a confused customer at a restaurant to make decisions for him, a dancer’s tool to choreograph his performance, or a musician tool to come up with new melodies, a bored person could use it to decide what he wants to do next. This way we are engaged with the process of Making/Doing more and existing in the physical environment than going back to the screens over and over.

The wheel brings a sense of excitement by being a physical object that offers a tactile experience and replacing a loading circle on the screen with real-time processing.

We want to give the power of decision-making to an alternate system and see whether it works as well. That understands us better and doesn’t try to steal our personal information. It commands us instead of putting us in an “illusion” of giving us options and never getting anything done. They are commandments, not commands.

There are possibilities that our designed system can be used to build creative communities, or for educational purposes to fully release people’s creative potential. This is a shared ritual belief.