Electric Objects founder and CEO Jake Levine is working hard to bring art from the Internet into your home. Which makes sense considering there’s more art on the Internet than in every gallery and museum in the world.
Levine explains that so many of these incredible works of art are “trapped inside of devices like our phones, our tablets, our TVs, our laptops – devices designed for distraction, living between texts, tweets, football games and emails from work.”
Levine ambitiously raised $1.7 million in venture capital in order to hire his start up team. After testing over 100 prototypes last year Electric Objects launched a Kickstarter campaign giving everyone a chance to purchase the E01 device for $399 (it will eventually retail at $499). Pledgers to the Electric Objects project will receive a 23–inch, 1080p display with a white or black custom made frame and a wall mount. To keep glare to a minimum, the screen has no glass cover and contains a dual core processor with 2GB of RAM running a modified version of Android that launches a browser window to render images, animations and web-based visualizations. The device is estimated to consume around the same amount of electricity per day as the average light globe with no scorching screen…
Levine maintains, “There’s an entire generation of people who want to experience art in their homes, and feel a generational connection to work created for and by screens. This is a product for those people”.
The E01 device is also being pitched as an incredibly inexpensive way for people to gain access to a variety of classic and contemporary art. Upon launching Electric Objects will partner with the New York Public Library who will enable user subscriptions to packages of classical prints and paintings. Another collaboration will be with the Museum of the Moving Image and Betaworks GIF based start-ups such as Giphy and Digg.
Having formally worked for Betaworks Levine was one of the founding members on the resurrection of Digg.
Devine kicked off creation of the E01 device following inspiration Xerox Parc thinkers, who in the 1990’s predicted that the PC era would be followed by an era of calm technology.
Devine believes, “for the last 40 years computers have been about increasing our productivity or letting us play games. We’re building an ambient computer that contributes to your environment even if you don’t interact with it”.
“I think people are generally unhappy with a digital experience characterized by distraction, demands on our attention and anxiety. They’re looking for a kind of computer that doesn’t demand their attention, that lets them enjoy beautiful objects from the Internet without the pressure to interact, retweet, like, or favourite.”
It seems he was right.
The Electric Objects Kickstarter Campaign has garnered an incredible amount of support and enthusiasm. On day one the campaign gained more than 500 backers who with over 29 days to go had already contributed over $160,000. Today the project has raised $1.7 million.
Worth the investment?
Like the idea of “calm technology?”
Let us know in the comment section below…