Anthropomorphic cuddly lights: LightMate

Artist Francesca Lanzavecchia shows off her Lightmate: "Can electric energy fill the void of human absence? LightMates are soft anthropomorphic pillows and warming lamps. This awfully attractive creature heats, lights and provides company. Their different sizes answer to everyone's need of heat; a mate to hug or a huge companion you can lay on." ightMate, hugging lights S (via JWZ)

• [jbang]

  @EH: Woah. Nostalgia flashback. I totally loved my glowworm. Those hard plastic faces didn’t age well with the illumination though, if I recall how it looked the day It was retired.

  Hentai, eXistenz, giger / aliens, alien placenta… a whole bunch of visceral and not-quite-right images come to mind.

  But they’re still awfully desirable in spite of that.

• [Lobster]

  Now if only they vibrated…

• [Jeff]

  Now if it only gave a good bj…

• [Daemon]

  “anthropomorphic”?! I think not.

• [Jeff]

  I wondered about the use of that word too, but seeing that English is dynamic, I didn’t want to diss someone’s use in an unfamiliar way. I guess it might mean “getting human comfort” from something that looks like a life-sucking slug from Epsilon Gamma Hydra-4! If they are already here, we are doomed.

• [ornith]

  @2: the big one in the linked pics seems to have a power cord.

• [Frank_in_Virginia]

  It looks like a (extra large) reservoir tip condom to me.

• [anthropomorphictoast]

  Will they have a toast-shaped one? :D

• [Foolster41]

  These are cool. Having heat and light together makes it all the more cool. I want one, but I have a feeling it’s not cheap.

  I wonder though what powers this. Is it a battery pack tucked inside like with talking stuffed animals? One problem with that is, the pack is usualy pretty big and makes a hard spot.

  The only other way I can think of for powering it would be a smaller non-replacable battery, or a power cord charger maybe.

• [EH]

  Hasbro had a lock on these 25 years ago

• [Kieran O’Neill]

  … and in the next iteration, they grow tentacles and violate her every orifice…

  Does no-one else see the hentai potential here? Wonderful as I’m sure they must feel, they’re just in the wrong part of the uncanny valley for me visually.

• [Gilbert Wham]

  @ #18: full of glowing, mutant semen. Scary.

• [geddygibson]

  “Artist Francesca Lanzavecchia shows off her Lightmate”

  Influenced by the pic, I first read that as “Lightmare.”

• [Pipenta]

  Kinda neato, but…

  Does no one else see the fire-hazard potential here?

• [ill lich]

  Do they purr too? If so, I’m there.

• [Lazlo Panaflex]

  Does anyone else see the resemblance to those bioport connected game consoles from David Cronenberg’s “eXistenZ”? These do look pretty kuu though. Just integrate some sort of haptic response interface, a wireless broadband connection, and a social network of agoraphobic misanthropes and you have an interactive love replacement machine.
  Damn, can’t wait to sign up.

• [hassan-i-sabbah]

  delightful! Now,who has any MDMA?

• [Kieran O’Neill]

  #7: Exactly my first reaction (the eXistenZ connection).

  And lol. See my above comment #4, and think of the possibilities.

• [Takuan]

  schmoo

• [Takuan]

  oh OK, “shmoo”

• [indieandy]

  Technically, anthropomorphism means that you’re attributing human characteristics to an non-human item. The appropriate word (at least, in my opinion) in this case is zoomorphic – attributing animal characteristics to an object that’s not an animal. Also, I want one. Then maybe I’ll have someone to listen to my lectures on etymology.

• [buddy66]

  After treating a few mental patients who imagined they were machines (the clunky sort), a friend coined (I think) the term mechanomorphism.

• [Enochrewt]

  I don’t know about hentai, but they sure seem like they’re one step away from spawnning a face sucker or the flood.