UPHONE
Speculative design | Reflection on excessive consumption
Group project: Martina Pozzoni | Lucas de jong | Dennis Gecaj | Xingyu Yang 2018.07
My work Concept generating. Modelling. Video editing
INTRODUCTION
UPHONE is a project aiming to motivate people to reflect on excessive consumption of electronics. It describes a scenario where people are running out of cobalt (an element used to produce smart phone) and have to turn to human blood for extraction. The project enables people to reflect the issue by experiencing the scenario.
SCENARIO
UPhone vending machines sell donated blood in millions
As more and more people are willing to purchase donated blood for their phone production at the UPhone factories at the Rotterdam harbor, more and more donators at the Erasmus University are pushed to produced and give more and more blood to saturate demand. The vending machines at the harbor area will produce Uphone with materials delivered across the world and the blood.
Choose your own blood or others’ ?
Every purchase comes with a cost. What many people do not know, is what circumtances the donators have to go through every day and the pressure of the demand that forces them to risk their lives for blood donation. Although the UPhone vending machines as required by law do offer self blood donation directly at the machines, only a small amount of people actually use their own blood for the production. The Major of Rotterdam is giving a press conference next Monday and will decide whether UPhone vending machines and the factory in Rotterdam can still operate without penalties and preventing the horrendous circumstances for blood donors.
Trade with blood and get your Uphone