MALENTANGLEMENT: MALENTANGLED OBJECTS
These images are borne out of a collaboration between a designer, Theo Humphries, and a photographer, Jo Charlesworth.
Malentangled Torch
The nostril is an orifice that has long been overlooked by design. Think of any other infundibular crevice in your body, likely a great many objects have been designed to nestle there: headphones, dentures, respirators, sex-toys, etc. Here we address the potential of the neglected nostril.
Malentangled Socket
Malentangled Washing Up
Malentangled Plugs
For many people electricity is quotidian magic.
Malentangled Audi iPhone Holder
Despite the automotive industry's inveterate clinging to the audio-cassette for far longer than domestic sound systems did, the seemingly inevitable happened... Digital replaced analogue, capacity replaced congestedness, dynamic track selection replaced fixed narrative, new replaced old... The final insult: a phone jammed into a tape deck in an act of technoetic sodomy: fuck the obsolete.
About Malentangled Objects
By playfully colliding theories of incongruity into ideas of human-thing entanglement, through a design practice, this research scopes a new theory of malentanglement – an exploratory account of a moment when a deviation from an expected order of things illuminates one’s tacit engagement with designed artefacts and the inhabited ‘designed world’.
The intention is to design/make/find/orchestrate a collection of design artefacts that illustrate and embody notions of malentanglement ...or maybe you might find these images funny because we’re a couple of idiots and this is a completely fucking pointless project?
About Theo Humphries MA (RCA) FHEA
Theo is a designer, artist, and senior lecturer at Cardiff School of Art & Design, part of Cardiff Metropolitan University.
Theo works in an interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary manner. His academic interests are in humour and irony in design; critical, adversarial, and tactical design; design fictions; and design philosophy.
As a designer, Theo's clients have included Sony, Nokia, Ragdoll, and Mattel.
As an artist, Theo is Crapestry – check out #crapestry on Instagram.
Please see theohumphries.com for publications, exhibitions, and other projects...
About Jo Charlesworth
Jo is a photographer and television cameraman with over a decade of experience. He mainly works for the BBC, but also has other clients including NBC, ESPN, and Channel 4.
Jo works predominantly in natural history television (including three Attenborough series), but has covered subjects from The Olympic Games to Comic Strip Presents...
Awards for Jo's work include a BAFTA, 2 EMMYs, and a Golden Panda (whatever the hell that is...)
Theo Humphries, the author of this website, has asserted his right to post all text/images herein under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Material that is not the property of Theo Humphries has been identified as such, and may be exempt from Creative Commons.
