Explanation Sling - Tells your story for you...

Anyone with a broken limb and a cast must get a bit tired of telling their story over and over again, so here's something to ease the pain: slings with any number of illustrations that tell the story for you. (They also might help in making up a better story than what really happened!) What's interesting to me is that these slings might end up working in two opposite ways: eliminating the need for an explanation, or begging further explanation. And it probably depends on which explanation you're wearing! Almost enough to make you want to break your arm? Nah, but still pretty cool.
[via Gizmodo]

1 comment:

stanrun said...

Very interesting. To take the art of self-expression in a normally unwanted circumstance further, I heard Allan Chochinov speak at the Compostmodern this past weekend. (http://www.core77.com/blog/events/compostmodern_09_allan_chochinovs_10step_program_12697.asp)

Allan had worked with his students (at the SVA MFA Design as Author program) to dent a difficult design problem: redesigning the prosthetic arm. What fascinated me was that they really reframed some of their solutions to have emotional impact as often (or perhaps more often) as have functional impact.

Part of this may be the influence of Aimee Mullins - an athlete and artist that was an amputee at age one. But she visited with the students and explained her philosophy of how she saw the space between where her leg ended and the ground began as potential. See some more info from her talk at Serious Play 2008: (http://www2.artcenter.edu/designconference/speakers.php#mullins) and (http://www.core77.com/blog/events/serious_play_2008_bruce_mccall_aimee_mullins_and_your_moment_of_john_oliver_9764.asp)


I don't have the actual pictures to show you from the class projects, but I can promise they were inspiring. From books to cookie cutters, model-esque fashion accessories to functional bags and "palms" that could help flip change from one hand to the other... it makes you proud for what design can be.