device art, useless functions, speculative product design
"The Generative Adversarial Network" is a series of products that pay homage to the gadgets that we all buy, own and love: the latest smartphone, wearable, IoT enabled home-automating wiretap. Democratization of technology and information has not been the means of liberation and empowermentas it could have been. As described and discussed by the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, these developments have beencoopted to become mostly a means of commercial exploitation. These manipulation processes have moved from mass media to the internet and to the smart devices that are pervasive in our lives. Even when we don’t want them, it is impractical to function in society without owning and operating them. Adding insult to injury, notonly are we exchanging ourprivacy, freedom and the health of our planet to devices that bring us convenience and comfort, but also doingit to have access to useless features, many of which create new problems for us—so that we will need or want the next “innovation.”