rapoptosis: Renatusu via Apoptosis - Prototyping Using Clothes

To redefine the way artifacts are inexhaustively produced, consumed, and discarded, the authors define a new form of death for “things” and propose a system in which artifacts circulate and transform themselves in our society. This system is inspired by the characteristics of organisms, such as self-death and regeneration, in nature. We redefine the death of artifacts as the time when their intrinsic existence value ceases to exist in the relationship between the object and the user, rather than when it ceases to function (self-death: apoptosis), and we propose a method to allow artifacts to judge their intrinsic existence value themselves and survive by having them change users autonomously (rebirth: renatusu). We propose to call this system “rapoptosis” (renatusu via apoptosis). In this paper, we report the results of the rapoptosis prototyping using clothes and investigate the current general methods, timing, and potential requirements of methods to dispose of clothes.