1.
AniThings: Animism and
Heterogeneous Multiplicity
Philip van Allen
Art Center College of Design
Joshua McVeigh-Schultz
University of Southern California

2.
Since 2005 I’ve been teaching a class called The New Ecology of Things which explores
Ubicomp and Animism. Many of the projects, like those shown here, use animistic cues to
imply an inner-life, intention, and personality. And in particular, they explore how notions
of animism can play out in a ubicomp setting where there are many autonomous systems.
*
Andrew
Nagata’s
Internet
of
Tumbleweeds
-­‐
playful
communica<ve
systems
*
Link
Huang’s
Wishing
Machine
-­‐
mythical
alter-­‐like
device
*
Jed
Berk’s
Autonomous
Light
Air
Vehicles
-­‐
networked
blimps
*
Bora
Shin’s
Curious
Mailbox
-­‐
monitors
and
reacts
to
your
email

3.
So
at
USC,
I
work
in
the
Mobile
and
Environmental
Media
Lab
where
we
think
about
objects and environments as entities that see the world through sensors. And we take the
lifelog concept, which is usually associated with humans, and apply it to things. And we
utilize storytelling as a way of shaping the relationship between objects and humans.

4.
Before we get into describing our AniThings design fiction, a little theoretical context. We
share ground with the interactionism movement in AI, and have affinities with approaches like
affective computing and sociable robots-- like Kismet, shown here. In particular, we’re
interested in leveraging the human capacity to make mental models.
And we find that animism is a nice short hand to invoke a user’s mental model, putting them
in touch with a system's designed intentions, affordances, status, history, and reliability.
BUT...
We’re not interested in human-like simulations. Instead we favor animistic models that feel
familiar but still distinctly other. Unlike anthropomorphic design, animistic design can
leverage components that are comparatively, simple (even “dumb”) while at the same time,
more provocative, diverse, and stimulating.
We draw inspiration here from Brenda Laurel’s writing on ‘designed animism’ - which our
work adapts and extends into a methodological framework.

5.
Technological
Solutionism
Divergent
Thinking
As further context, Evgeny Morozov very recently called out the perils of Technological
Solutionism, where Silicon Valley sees everything as a nail, and the hammer is “There’s an app
for that.” We’re interested in something different.
Instead of solving a specific goal or task, the aim here is to facilitate divergent thinking,
creative inquiry, and open-ended explorations. Donald Schön describes this reflective practice
as an open-ended process of problem-setting rather than problem-solving.

6.
Design Fiction: AniThings
An Ecology of Six Tangible,
Interactive Objects with
Distinct Personalities
To investigate our ideas of animism, we created a speculative design fiction called AniThings.

7.
The AniThings are ecology of six tangible, interactive objects with distinct personalities, as
you can see diagramed here.

8.
Needy
Seeks attention from people
and other AniThings
In our fictional scenario, we depict Stella, a product designer, who is brainstorming potential
new medical devices. The AniThings live in her studio and draw on a range of digital material
including Stella’s personal collections and the Web.
The objects daydream, find references they’re interested in, do research on request, as well
as collect and share their findings with each other and the designer through text, visuals,
video, sound and networks.
This is the core of the Heterogeneous Multiplicity. Each device behaves autonomously, with a
distinct personality and approach, seemingly having its own intentions, history, interests, and
moods. For example, in the upper left, you see the “NEEDY” AniThing, which always seeks a
lot of attention.

9.
Dwells on existing user information,
methodical, focused, sometimes dreamy
Nostalgic
Here, the Nostalgic has found a magazine in Stella’s collection with an article on Tron, and
the other objects have taken notice. Nostalgic dwells on existing user info, and is methodical,
focused, and sometimes dreamy.

10.
Proud of finding new information, fast,
manic, short attention span
Neophile
Here, the Neophile is exploring the movie Tron, having picked it up from the Nostalgic. The
Neophile’s personality is fast, manic, with a short attention span.
So you can see here that we’ve taken the animism concept and applied it across multiple,
heterogenous objects that are independent, yet communicate and act within an ecology.
To think this through, we created a series of simple videos that explored our ideas through a
design fiction approach. We’ll show a couple next.

11.
See video at http://vimeo.com/26461671
[beginning] Stella walks into here studio to find that the AniThings have been at work.
[At end] Now that Stella has been inspired, she’s ready to move on to a more targeted phase
of design where she works with the AniThings in doing specific research on wearables.

12.
See video at http://vimeo.com/26465860
So, now that Stella has some design ideas in the next part of the scenario she goes on to work
in collaboration with another designer and the AniThings.
Stella draws on the AniThings provocative, diverse, and stimulating range of perspectives. So
by interacting with this animistic and serendipitous chorus of voices and actions, Stella starts
to build serendipitous connections linking Tron, wearables, and the context of healthcare.
Beside design, some potential contexts for this include Exploring Big Data, House Hunting,
and Learning Contexts. This concept of Heterogeneous multiplicity fits the messy and
divergent creative process that occupies a significant part of our lives.

13.
In terms of the interactive context, what the video helped us understand is that there is an
important area of innovation in the way that the different personas become spatially
embodied.
So what I mean is, Stella and the objects shift not only their attention but the orientation of
their bodies as the context unfolds. And as Stella rejects, queries, imagines, and investigates
- all of these interactions play out in physical space with Stella, herself, a key part of the
active AniThings ecology.
And this physicality becomes another layer of life within Stella’s mind, it’s as if
“nostalgicness” as an entity is alive and it’s sitting is over there.

14.
AniThings
Animism:
leverages mental models
Heterogeneous Multiplicity:
beyond proscription
fosters divergent thinking
Next steps:
working prototypes
So in conclusion, a few points we want to make
Animism offers the chance to create digital ecologies that stimulate human intelligence and
creativity rather than emulate or replace it.
Heterogeneous Multiplicity offers a new methodology for designers to create beyond the
frameworks of strict rationality, usability, and proscriptive experience design.
Through animistic metaphors, designers can embrace and facilitate people’s intelligence and
imagination. Here, predefined outcomes are subsumed and instead designers create systems
where productive, open-ended exploration is foregrounded.
Next steps: What we’ve shown today is a speculative design fiction. But we want to emphasize
that a core aspect of the animism methodology (as seen in the projects we showed at the
beginning) involves building (and making discoveries through) working prototypes, and that’s
the next step of this project.

15.
Thank you
Philip van Allen
Art Center College of Design
Media Design Practices
Department
vanallen@artcenter.edu
@philvanallen
Joshua McVeigh-Schultz
University of Southern
California, School of Cinematic
Arts, Media Arts and Practice
jrmcveig@usc.edu
@joshuams
Research Assistants:
Brooklyn Brown
Hye Mi Kim
Daniel Lara
Thanks to Sean White
at Nokia Research for
partially funding this
research
Thank you