Smart Meter. Art Meter?

Talk about suffering for your art. Or energy consumption. Swiss-born artist/inventor Annina Rüst has developed Project Thighmaster, a device which allows consumers to measure, and experience, the effects of their energy consumption. From Rüst's artist statement,

The system consists of a personal techno-garter -- inspired by the Opus Dei cilice popularized in Dan Brown's Davinci Code -- worn on the thigh, communicating wirelessly to a set of low-power sensors measuring the wearer's personal energy consumption. If the wearer's electricity use exceeds a certain limit, the device plunges stainless-steel thorns into the wearer's thigh, a reminder of their complicity in the planet's demise, and perhaps their own mortality.

Stocking stuffer, anyone?

(h/t Jascha Hoffman, New York Times.)

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