Jonathon Keats: Roadable Synapse

In 2015, Jonathon Keats received a grant to explore how wearable technology could enhance, diminish, or alter the identity of its wearer. The artist worked with Lab advisor John Suh and his team from Hyundai Motor to extend his ideas about wearables into the automotive realm. Titled “Roadable Synapse”, the project’s first iteration underwent more than two years of research and development before it was realized in the summer of 2017, when it was installed on a Hyundai IONIQ vehicle for presentation.

Keats began his research for the project by posing the question: “Will the future of transportation be driverless?” Keats eschewed the automotive industry’s fascination with the self-driving car, and instead went in the opposite direction. He followed a line of thought, suggesting that our identification with vehicles would only intensify over time, his rationale being that like with smartphones, we might come to see cars as a cognitive and emotional extension of ourselves. Like a piece of jewelry, they might become physically and mentally attached to us, resulting in a united human-machine hybrid.

“Roadable Synapse” originated from Keats’ earlier project “Superego Suits” which the artist proposed for his Art + Technology Lab engagement in 2015-2016. The superego suit concept emerged while he was working in a neuroscience lab at the École Polytechnique in France, where scientists were studying how we use interoception—the internal awareness of bodily functions like a heartbeat and breathing—to retain our sense of self. In a series of lab experiments, researchers also revealed that subjects' selfhood could be manipulated by tweaking their perceptions of their own vital signs. It was through this that Keats began to consider how wearables could become embedded in our lives in such a way as to fundamentally alter our sense of self.