Restraint and Punishment: Responding to Crimes of the Hand (Part Two_)

A few weeks ago I created a set of fingercuffs in an attempt to prevent people from being able to flip each other off etc. This idea came after I began to break down the hand into individual components such as the index finger, middle finger, palm and thought about how when someone is arrested the handcuffs only prevent the individual from moving their arms properly, the handcuffs have very little effect on an individual's abilities to operate their fingers and pick items up.

I have been thinking about other ways that the hand can be restrained and punished for crimes. In particular, I have been interested in tackling the hand's ability to operate a modern smartphone, as I believe that over-usage of mobile phones and social media is a very large problem among my generation and fundamentally changes the way that we interact with each other. I fear that soon meeting people in person won't even be necessary with how technology is connecting people all over the globe so easily.

My solution has been to develop a hand restraint that can be used on those that are addicted to their mobile phones. I began by thinking about how the hand interacts with a smartphone, in the 21st Century the touch of our fingers is used to operate almost all mobile phones.

I immediately felt that the best way to stop the interaction of the hand and phone is to create a barrier between the fingertip and the screen.

I also looked into adding leather straps and a wrist clamp to prevent the criminal from removing the restraints. These ideas were influenced by the aesthetic of medieval torture devices as strong metals and leather were often used in their construction, particularly as they were available at the time.

I now felt that I had a pretty good product, however, as I was finishing this design up I realised that I felt that the design did not deliver enough on the promise of punishment. So........ to punish the user of the phone for spending too much time on it I felt it was responsible to make them pay for a new phone screen... you could call it a fine. How did I do this? SPIKES.

The final design above is what I came up with, although I decided to use metal strips instead of leather to make it even MORE difficult for the user to move their fingers or operate a mobile phone.

I began making this restraint/gauntlet by creating the fingertip pieces in a similar way to my previous hand restraint (in my last blog) using a mandrel and mallet. I then used the spot welder to attach the spikes to the tips.

I tried to be as accurate as possible but it was hard to create a very tight circle with the mandrel so it was good that I had already decided to attach them to some metal strips and a wrist piece.

Once finished the piece looked a lot like a gauntlet, the rust that developed on the metal over the next couple of days really enhanced the archaic aesthetic. This is also the reason I didn't remove the weld marks as I felt that it fit the sinister look that I was aiming for. Scroll down for more images of the finished piece!

Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to read about the artefacts of life!

- Samuel Sant

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