Astra Howard’s evolving series of interactive Machine-Vehicles (M-Vs) disrupt conventional means of communication to heighten engagement with the public. The M-Vs reduce certain sensory capacities and enhance others. This altered means of communication encourages direct, honest, sometimes unexpected, and often quite intimate responses. The M-Vs are means by which individuals tell their stories of the city; they optimize the fiction to realism ratio to achieve maximum communication in popular, nondescript, and even hostile locations.

Astra Howard is an Action Researcher/Performer working predominantly within public spaces in cities. Since 1998, she has designed and produced site-specific works in cities across Australia and internationally, including Beijing, Paris, New York, Delhi and London. After completing a PhD in 2005 titled Orchestrating the Public: To Reveal and Activate through Design the Experience of the City, Howard has continued to test urban and social theories in the city spaces they critique. Commissioned by cultural institutions and local and state governments, these iterative projects generate dialogue and debate about issues affecting the city. Howard has worked professionally as a designer in commercial agencies, a lecturer in higher education and a community development worker, predominantly in crisis homeless services.