E 1 The Museum of Modern Art in New York is often referred to as MoMA. It opened in 1929.
Revital Cohen (b. 1981) is an Israeli designer based in London. Since studying Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London, she has frequently collaborated with scientists, animal breeders and the British National Health Service.
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Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects was an exhibition that closed in November 2011 at New York’s MoMA. The exhibition displayed objects that involved direct interactions, such as interfaces and information systems, as well as projects that established an emotional, sensual, or intellectual connection with their users.
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In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a process by which egg cells are fertilized by sperm outside of the body: in vitro. The first successful birth of a “test tube baby”, Louise Brown, took place in 1978. In 2010 the British physiologist Robert G. Edwards (b. 1925), who developed the treatment, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
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5 The oral contraceptive pill, often referred to as “the pill” was first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1960 and is currently used by more than 100 million women worldwide.
The intrauterine device (IUD) is a form of birth control that is inserted in the uterus to prevent pregnancy. The earliest form of an IUD was introduced by the German gynecologist Ernst Gräfenberg in 1929, entitled “Gräfenberg’s ring”.
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arlier this year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York1 acquired a peculiar object for its design and architecture collection. Made from glass, resin and nickel-plated brass – and looking like a cross between an elaborate horological apparatus and a complex sex toy – it is called Artificial Biological Clock and was created in 2008 by Israeli interaction designer Revital Cohen2. As the name suggests, it’s prosthesis for a specific instinct: the urge to procreate.
“I was interested in how technology affects women’s biological clocks,” says Cohen from her London studio. “Advances in technology don’t only affect us socially and culturally, but also biologically. They change the way our bodies act – and because of the pressure on women nowadays not to think about themselves as women, the concept of fertility and how fragile and short it is doesn’t enter many people’s minds until it’s too late.” The Artificial Biological Clock assists women in remembering the ideal time to have a baby. Each month a white ball drops from the machine, completing a metaphorical menstrual cycle and presenting a reminder of the irreversible nature of time. But as well as providing a visual representation of one’s biological clock, the device is electronically connected to your bank, your therapist and your doctor. When feedback from all three is deemed to be optimal, the machine lets you know that now is a good time.
“It’s not very complicated,” says Cohen. “It’s just another internet service really.” And the notification doesn’t come kicking and screaming, the machine simply releases a bubble, demonstrating both the ephemeral state of fertility and the concept of the “perfect time”. As Cohen puts it: “I wanted it to be subtle.” However, there is just one Artificial Biological Clock in existence, and Cohen doesn’t intend to make any more. She sees the object as a physical question, a conceptual object. “I don’t make commercial things,” she says. “For what I want to achieve, just one is enough.”
The clock has been on continuous display in exhibitions around the world since Cohen made it for her graduation project in interaction design at the Royal College of Art in London, and it has now come to rest in the New York institution, where it was included in the recent exhibition Talk To Me3.
If Artificial Biological Clock is a record of early 21st-century attitudes to fertility and childbearing in the Western world – where modern reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilisation4 makes it increasingly difficult to form a realistic view of how long a woman may put off having children – the archives of the Wellcome Library in London record the attitudes to childbearing in times past. They also offer some explanation as to how our current attitudes have manifested themselves.
Here, the histories of the contraceptive pill5, IUDs6, injectables7 and implants8 are told through the annals of medical history and through the collections of physicians dedicated to the cause. The unique archive holds research documents, newspaper clippings and, more interestingly, leaflets accompanying various contraceptive methods and devices. Through these duo-tone pamphlets, it is clear to see how contraceptives have changed the landscapes of both parenting and womanhood. In the 1960s, the era during which most of today’s
174 Disegno. DESIGN & FERTILITY