Traces of an Imaginary Affair: experience design fiction?

Traces of an Imaginary Affair designed by Björn Franke is a kit containing a set of nine tools which can be used to create an imaginary affair. These tools leave marks on the body, such as bite marks, carpert burns, bondage marks, love bites, scratches and bruises. In addition, probes of perfume, lipstick and haïr can be applied to either the body or clothes. It was inspired by stories of people who used to fake évidence of victimisation or illnesses to receive attention from others.

Björn Franke is a designer who investigates the social, psychological and philosophical implications of artefacts and products; in particular how the shifting technological environment alters human behaviour, relationships and self-conception. By means of both socially and psychologically challenging projects, Franke explores how people can express and control their emotions, obsessions and fears through objects and technology.

This kind of high concept design can be simultaneously fascinating and unnerving - depending on both the motivations of the user and the perceptions of the viewer. Either way, I think it's quite brilliant and refreshingly pure in concept. Alternate reality and social engineering tools in the most literal sense of the word.