Skin Sucka

Skinsucka is a design provocation, which explores and questions our attitudes to consumerism, robotics and bio-technology in a timeframe of 10 to 20 years from now. This film draws attention to hyper consumerism that blinds us to the exploitative forces that make it possible to produce a garment in Asia, ship it halfway around the world to a high street in Europe, for less than the cost of junk food'.

Skinsucka reveals a scenario where microbial powered autonomous micro-devices share our living spaces and eat household dirt. As slaves and servants have done for millennia before them, these microbots, powered by bacterial energy, perform tasks we deem mundane, repetitive or dangerous.

'Skinsuckas' clean the skin, removing the vestiges of make up and providing the remedies to combat the excesses of the night before They swarm over the body extruding metabolized household dirt, dressing the body in a daily ritual of real time, customized manufacture - yesterday's discarded clothing ready for recycling."

This design provocation suggests that robots will continue to perform the servile, worker roles that have previously been carried out in sweatshops, in an ever-increasing intimacy between humans and machines, as our technology evolves from electro-mechanical artifact to biological, living appliance. It challenges us to consider the ethical issues of where we source the products we consume, the processes that have been employed to produce them and the social and environmental impact of our consumption.

Skinsucka was a collaboration between Clive van Heerden, Jack Mama and Studio XO's Fashion Director Nancy Tilbury together with Bart Hess- Director of Photography, Peter Gal - Product Design and Harm Rensink - Materiality Design and Development. The soundtrack was created by Scanner. The model is Pomme van Hoof.

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