Home is Where the Droids Are explores the proliferation and domestication of autonomous objects.
Robots have settled down to the tastes, cultures, and comforts of home. Trading its shiny industrial luster in favor of floral drapes and white tile, the droning of motors for the clangor of silverware and glasses. How did they get here? Who let them into our homes? Are they tamed?
The project explores the potential utility, ornament, and companionship that domestic robots bring to us and our future relationships with them. In a playful speculation, it suggests a future cohabitation where autonomous objects live among us beside our pets and plants, adapting to the rules of domestic life, consumer culture, and the volatility of taste and fashion. Presented in Studio A is a menagerie of objects offering a glimpse into a day in the life of these droids as they adjust to the routines of indoor living. We invite viewers to observe a living room in which the furniture is very much alive and to take a second look into our own generally optimistic, occasionally hostile-but essentially unrequited-love with technology.