The Design Research Lab is a network of people, organisations, and non-human agents engaged at the intersection of technologies, materials, and social practices. Our aim is to design socially and ecologically sustainable tools, spaces, and knowledge that support people’s participation in a digital society – based on common principles of inclusiveness and respect for the planet. This puts the basic democratic right to take part in the digital sphere into practice. We start our research from individual lifeworlds and the needs of minoritized groups, beyond consumer majorities.
We are an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers, tech-enthusiasts and critical thinkers from Berlin University of the Arts, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, as well as Einsteincenter Digital Future (ECDF).
The Undercover is a record and playback device for audio messages. Only the persons who know how to fold the quilt properly, can tell it her own hidden secrets, or make it repeat them. The technique of assembling small fabric patches to large blankets by creating complex patterns was perfected in rural North America. Even back then, Quilts that hung outside to dry were supposedly used to reveal secret shelters to fugitive slaves.
The patchwork pattern of the Undercover indicates how the patches on the upside should be folded towards each other to make the quilt work. Sewn-in magnets make the electronic contact. According to the folding, the quilt records one of eight sound samples or replays it. The folding and crumpling of the fabric is in this case the interaction that exploits the fabric qualities at best. The coding of the usage into the patchwork pattern reinterprets the patchwork technique in a functional way. And of course you can still have picnic on it.