Remote Controls

Remote Controls began with a simple question: if you had a futuristic remote control that could do anything at all, what buttons would you want?

That question became a social experiment. Over 100 participants were interviewed about the buttons they wished existed in their lives, from the small (mute traffic) to the existential (rewind a decision, fast forward through grief, pause to think). Their answers were translated into ceramic remote control sculptures.

Each sculpture is hand-built and raku-fired in clay, with the buttons rendered in real 24-karat gold leaf. Each one looks at first like a beautiful, slightly off-kilter object on a shelf. Then you open the augmented reality app and point your phone at the buttons, and the wishes themselves come alive in your hand.

The series is part artwork, part future-of-interface speculation, part group portrait of a moment in time. It became one of the touchstone bodies of work that pulled together Zenka's AR practice with her ceramics and her social research instincts.

“Ceramic in your hand. Wishes in the air.”