Looking Outwards 08

Hyphen-Labs is an international team of women of color working at the intersection of technology, art, science, and the future. Through their global vision and unique perspectives, they are driven to create meaningful and engaging ways to explore emotional, human-centered, and speculative design. In the process they challenge conventions and stimulate conversations, placing collective needs and experiences at the center of evolving narratives. It was interesting for me to learn that Hyphen-Labs experiments in immersive, computationally-driven, large scale installations that combine conceptual art, design, and science. Because I was able to discuss about virtual reality from my other design course too, this team’s work caught my attention. I admire that they listen to their co-collaborators and use emerging technology in their recent projects, highlighting themes of privacy and surveillance through the lens of speculative design, objects, neuroscience, architecture, and virtual reality.

I especially liked their NSAF project because it wasn’t just about 3D but included everything like product design, virtual reality (VR), and social-psychological/cognitive impact/biometric/fMRI research. This was a project that showed me how different parts of the design can collaborate together. When creating this, they were inspired by the lack of multidimensional representations of black women in technology.