Discursive Design
Emotus
The Plausible Future of Our Emotions
The study of relationship between emotions and certain chemicals has allowed us to alter feelings by controlling the amount of chemicals in our body. Besides acting as mood enhancer through food and supplements, one of the significant applications of this in medicalisation is antidepressants. Antidepressants are widely used in depression treatment but people are increasingly using them loosely and doctors over-prescribing them. Where must the line be drawn? As a plausible stretch of this issue happening, this project aims to invite discussion over how legitimate and reasonable controlling emotions is. Should we give precise, manipulative control over something natural?
Emotus is a pair of devices that allows users easy control of the amount of emotion-related chemicals in their body, namely oxytocin, adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine. Simply press the add and minus buttons on the hand-held controller, the devices transmit the corresponding chemicals through the transdermal stimulator attached to the neck and remove depressive feelings and users will be given the choices of feeling calm, or excited, or loved whenever and wherever they want to.
Mar 2019
Special Thanks to: Senior Lecturer Donn Koh
