Buttons
When control disappears into the interface
Buttons begins with a familiar promise: press here and something will happen. By tracing that promise from mechanical switches to virtual controls, the project asks how interfaces train trust—and what changes when the system behind the command can no longer be seen.
The Question Behind the Work
Before control became seamless, it had weight, distance and resistance.
A mechanical button gives the body a clear sequence: pressure, movement, response. That sequence feels like agency. As buttons became electrical, remote and finally virtual, the visible mechanism receded while the promise of control remained.
The project follows this gap between what an interface lets us feel and what a technical system actually does. Its central tension is not whether buttons are useful, but how convenience reorganizes responsibility, dependence and trust.
Following the Research
A short history of pressing, feedback and trust
The archive places keys, switches, cameras, remote controls and touchscreens on one material timeline. What changes is not only shape, but the relationship between action and consequence.
The Mechanical Promise
Early mechanisms made causality tangible. Resistance and movement allowed the hand to read the system through touch.
Control at a Distance
Electrical buttons and remote controls separated the command from the action, expanding agency while making the chain of operation less visible.
The Vanishing Button
Touchscreens turned stable objects into shifting signs. The interface became lighter just as the infrastructure behind it became more complex.
From an Idea to a Form
How can an interface make control feel unstable?
Two speculative installations reverse the familiar arrangement. One surrounds a robot with an excessive field of controls; another uses a wearable mechanism to let one participant move another person’s body.
The proposals translate an abstract question into a bodily one. A viewer can no longer stand outside the system and simply judge it: every action makes the transfer of control perceptible.
The easier control appears, the harder the system behind it becomes to see.
The Work
Why It Matters
Why this project matters
Buttons matters because it treats an ordinary interface as a social agreement. When feedback becomes frictionless and the mechanism disappears, responsibility does not disappear with it. It simply becomes harder to locate.