Design Engineering
Showcase 2020

1. Art galleries exist for their own sake – visitors often appreciate the gallery as a space more than the actual artefacts displayed there.
2. Gallery visits are transformative – art galleries are transformative spaces, both towards their visitors, and in their own development.
3. Interactions are self-centered – when engaging in interactivities, users tend to be focused on themselves and their personal benefits.

Presented is a design intervention concept, which aims to catalyse social interactions in art gallery settings, by depriving the users of direct feedback when engaging with the installation.

This design intervention is based on the concept of reversing interactions. We are used to receiving direct feedback when interacting with objects. When we touch, move or speak while in the presence of an interactive exhibit, we except something to happen. Direct feedback is a proof that the object is working properly and is a validation of the interactive experience.

This intervention aims to examine what would happen if users were deprived of that direct validation – receiving no feedback for themselves, while all their interactions are being projected onto others.

The design is a small construction to be put up in an art gallery setting. This set up aims to build a feeling of curiosity and intrigue within the users. As the participants try to explore the exhibit, they will start to notice that their actions don’t generate any visible results. The installation transforms the typical elements of interaction and projects them onto the people on the outside. Touch, movement, speech become colour, intensity and noise. The participants are not aware of the experiences they’re creating for others.

The aim of the intervention is to encourage social interactions between people. Seeing how it’s not likely for the users to be able to figure out the scheme in which the exhibit operates on their own, they will be forced to reach out to others, if they are willing to find out what is happening around them.

By collaborating with people on the outside, the participants gain a new understanding of the mechanics in which the installation operates. Through communication they can start to notice that their movements around the room are tracked and projected to the outside by the use of alternating light intensity. Their tactile interactions – touching or moving the ball, or the walls of the exhibit, cause its external colours to change. And finally, the sounds they make on the inside and the words they say are distorted and replayed as noise through the speakers in the gallery room.

The idea behind the intervention, is that the personal need for the validation of interactions, will force the participants to reach out to strangers behind the wall, soon finding themselves engaging in unanticipated collaboration with others.