Keywords: Critical design, performance, sex technology, wifi connectivity, wearable

Category: Critical design
Location: Aarhus, Denmark
University: Aarhus University
Collaborative partner: Critical Software Thing
Supervision: Lone Koefoed Hansen
Year: 2016

The wearable sextoy “Marcelle” (2016) is named after the protagonist in Bataille’s pornographic novel “Story of the Eye” from 1928. As ahonour to her fights with the unwilling lust that led to her suicide, I designed a sex technology in the name and spirit of Marcelle.

“Marcelle” is a wearable sextoy with vibrators that can be positioned by your choice. The vibrators get activated by the surrouding wifi-landscape, so that the more wifi-activty detected, the more vibrations you will feel.

For too long women’s sexuality has been hidden away, tabooed and shamed. As an alternative to (sur)real dildos and sleek pink vibrators, “Marcelle” asks you if you are willing to be, literally, turned on by wifi?

Published in:

Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard. (submitted, 2018). Marcelle. In Wilful Technologies. A publishing experiment on feminist + technologies + design. Edited by Madeline Balaam & Lone Koefoed Hansen.

Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard and Lone Koefoed Hansen. 2017. Designing with Bias and Privilege?. In Nordes 2017; Design + Power.

Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard and Kasper Hedegård Schiølin. 2017. Bataille’s Bicycle: Execution and/as Eroticism. In Executing Practices, edited by Helen Pritchard, Eric Snodgrass, and Magda Tyżlik-Carver. Autonomedia (DATA browser 06).

Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard and Kasper Hedegård Schiølin. Forthcoming 2018. Bataille’s Bicycle: Execution and/as Eroticism. In Executing Practices, edited by Helen Pritchard, Eric Snodgrass, and Magda Tyżlik-Carver. Open Humanities Press

Exhibited at:

Internet Week, Aarhus, Denmark, 2016
MEDEA, Malmö University, 2016