Manipulating one’s height is nothing new. For example, in Lewis Caroll’s Wonderland you could grow taller, simply by eating a small cake with the words `EAT ME’ marked in currants. High heels and platforms have been the fashion world’s way of offering us a little elevation. But what about a solution that gives extra height just when you need it?
This is something Adi Marom - a good friend of mine, an artist and a designer from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts in NYU - has been busy working on.
Inspired by her own personal experience as the shortest kid in class (which at a young age really means the shortest kid in the world), Adi has explored the possibility of making height an interactive variable that can be modified in real-time, in order to reshape interactions between people.
The result: a project entitled SHORT ++ featuring a pair of mechanical/robotic lift shoes, activated by an iPhone app. In her promo video (using Randy Newman’s ‘Short People’ track), Adi demonstrates a variety of daily situations where being able to make yourself taller can come in very handy: from the convenience of reaching the top shelf in your kitchen, to the confidence boost of being able to look a 6ft 3 guy on the side-walk directly in the eye. What makes Adi’s invention robotic shoes unique, is that at the press of a touch screen you’re brought gently back to earth again. So, thanks to SHORT ++, being short may soon be just a state of mind.
SHORT++ from Adi Marom on Vimeo.
That’s a great example of SIT’s Attribute Dependency, in which a new relationship was created between two variables of a product.
So from now on Randy Newman will have to change his song, cause’ short people finally have a reason a live..