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In 2014, Kaiwei Tang joined the inaugural class of a startup incubator in New York. It was backed by Google, among others, and its goal was to turn Tang and his classmates into creators of viral apps and world-changing tech companies.
Given his experience designing phones for Motorola, Nokia and Blackberry, Tang was more than qualified. Yet he thought about technology differently from his teachers and peers. For them, he says, success was about users spending more and more time on their phones, engrossed in the founders’ new apps. But to Tang, who describes apps and phones as ‘tools’, this sounded perverse. Would the maker of a hammer boast about how long his customers spent using it?
Called Dis/Connect, the light features ten radio-jamming antennae where the candles would traditionally sit.
These interfere with the wireless communication of devices brought within a five-foot (1.5-metre) radius below the chandelier so people are unable to browse the internet or make calls.
The chandelier was designed by Eric Forman
Forman created Dis/Connect in collaboration with artist Ben Luzzatto and engineer Daniel Gross to help people get off their phones. To be wholly present with ourselves and each other, we must design new tools to create spaces of digital quiet in our homes, Forman told Dezeen. It s not that we can t turn our phones off, it s that we don t – they are too addictive, he said.