That light switch is disgusting!

posted Jul 15th 2010 10:07am by
filed under: misc hacks

[Katrin Baumgarten] has fourteen switches that are made to gross you out. From a button that retreats into its hole as your finger approaches, to a mysterious goo-oozing faceplate, to a hairy housing that gets aroused as your try to flip it on, the intrigue is enough to get you to try out the next creepy node in the network. There’s a clip of several different switches after the break and if that’s not enough she’s got more on her Vimeo channel.



18 Responses to That light switch is disgusting!

  • amishx64 says:
    July 15, 2010 at 10:18 am

    Funny as hell. I wouldn’t put one in my home tho.

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  • Arthur hall says:
    July 15, 2010 at 10:28 am

    Ugh, did it have to be white goo? Couldn’t it of been green or blue or something?

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  • Tech B. says:
    July 15, 2010 at 10:30 am

    I’d like to know what that ooz is. I’m not a chem person; ideas anyone?

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  • Doug says:
    July 15, 2010 at 10:52 am

    Tartar sauce?

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  • andrew says:
    July 15, 2010 at 11:14 am

    ew.

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  • Bit Mage says:
    July 15, 2010 at 11:21 am

    Didn’t you say there would be an embedded video at the end of this article?

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  • Jake says:
    July 15, 2010 at 11:22 am

    HAHAHA, This is AWESOME!!!

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  • Jonathan Lackman says:
    July 15, 2010 at 11:26 am

    Wow, I’d want to wear gloves just to use some of these switches. Funny idea to focus on though!

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  • jjrh says:
    July 15, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    Power companies must love the idea of a gross light switch you don’t want to turn off.

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  • yuppicide says:
    July 15, 2010 at 2:59 pm

    I looked through the videos, but only found 3 switches.. the rest were duplicates of the same.. hair, white goo, and one that moves back.

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  • John says:
    July 15, 2010 at 3:38 pm

    The truly disgusting thing is that when an artist does some freshman electronics assembly and writes a bunch of BS about “interaction”, it ends up on hackaday.

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  • Trukkle says:
    July 15, 2010 at 5:26 pm

    As mentioned by yuppicide, only three switches videoed despite them being labelled 1-6

    Shame the artist didn’t hide or camouflage the IR rangers and holes. I fully expect that they’d claim it’s because anticipation is a large part of disgust, and seeing something unusual on a switch causes you to distrust it, but some on, have some pride in your work.

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  • mjrippe says:
    July 15, 2010 at 7:26 pm

    Having created electronics for other people’s art installations, I would say this is pretty good work if she did it herself. Often artists are too preoccupied with concepts and don’t pay as much attention to the [technical] execution. I have seen some pretty poor “hacks” when it comes to artists building their own structures/mechanisms/etc. and I thought this project was pretty neat and well done. I would have liked more “hair” on the hairy switch though ;-)

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  • elektrophreak says:
    July 15, 2010 at 11:28 pm

    this is great :)

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  • Mikey says:
    July 16, 2010 at 10:54 am

    Kind of dumb… it looks like there is a sensor on each switch, in a real installation, it would stand out like a sore thumb.

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  • NatureTM says:
    July 16, 2010 at 2:09 pm

    Very entertaining!

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  • sigtermer says:
    July 17, 2010 at 7:51 am

    that hairy switch is probably one of the most disturbing piece of electronics I’ve come across on this site. it’s even surpasses the condom tester..

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  • Gordo says:
    July 18, 2010 at 6:44 pm

    hahahaha, the hairy one was… hahahaha

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