Postscreen

A pro­ject made in re­sponse to a Dezeen x Samsung de­sign com­pe­ti­tion for new uses of Samsung’s QLED pan­els. The screens are dis­tinc­tive in that they of­fer an ‘ambient’ mode al­low­ing them to blend into the sur­round­ings of the room when not in use as a TV. Rather than a glossy black sur­face, you see the tex­ture of your wall, and the light­ing of the screen is sub­tly ad­justed au­to­mat­i­cally to match am­bi­ent light in the room. The screen also fea­tures a sen­sor to de­tect when peo­ple are nearby. The de­sign com­pe­ti­tion called for these fea­tures to be ex­ploited.

Postscreen was one of 15 in­ter­na­tional short­listed en­tries, and re­ceived a cash prize. I put it to­gether over a week­end, and was in­spired by ear­lier work on Family Traces.

Postscreen is meant for the ad-hoc or­gan­i­sa­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs of a house­hold. We don’t look to the finely-cu­rated fam­ily al­bum or home dec­o­ra­tion as a model, but rather the clut­tered and messy fridge door, holding me­men­tos, re­minders and notes. We look to the bench­top in an en­try­way, over­flow­ing with the bits and pieces of our com­ing and go­ings. A scrawled up shop­ping list. A left-be­hind stuffed toy. These are the mun­dane, yet rich traces of fam­ily life.

Postscreen is not de­signed for the in­di­vid­ual, but for liv­ing to­gether with oth­ers. Pressures on home and fam­ily, such as co-par­ent­ing, commuting and late work hours would seem to be ris­ing. Postscreen can’t solve these chal­lenges but could hope­fully make them more bear­able. It’s a way of con­nect­ing peo­ple with the home, en­richen­ing it as a place of in­ti­macy and sig­nif­i­cance, even if you can’t be there.

Family mem­bers use their phone to post pho­tos and mes­sage to their Postscreen where ever they are. It’s not meant to be some­thing to fuss over —  there’s min­i­mal con­fig­u­ra­tion or op­tions for posts, and they au­to­mat­i­cally dis­ap­pear from the screen.

What dis­tin­guishes Postscreen is that it is not ‘data’ like weather, news and fi­nances. What ap­pears is in­ti­mate, per­sonal —  by the home, for the home. It’s also not a ‘gallery’, or ‘best of’. Postscreen is tem­po­ral. Posts can be loose and rough and al­lowed to fade away. What ap­pears is re­lated to the here and now. Postscreen is de­signed to be neu­tral in how it is used and al­low the house­hold to de­velop their own meaning and prac­tices. Just as a fam­ily fig­ures over time how their fridge door should be used — what is ‘fridge wor­thy’ and so on.

Credits

• Child: Daiga Ellaby / Unsplash
• Vegetable bas­ket: Leonie Wise / Unsplash
• Vegetable mar­ket: Lukas Budimaier / Unsplash
• Craft: Rawpixel / Unsplash
• Train jour­ney: Usamah Khan / Unsplash
• Rooms: Samsung press