We are being touched. We want to touch. We touch our screens. We touch it again, once more. We watch, listen, tap, swipe, scroll. The screen stays. We cannot get closer than this.
Just tap once more...
Visitors of this installation at DA Z festival in Zürich are invited to use their phone and tap the screen. A hand appears touching back from behind the screen. Like a mirror the hand mimics the actions of the visitor, tapping and moving, projected in the space.
It is a multiplayer experience. The visitor sees not only his own finger touching him but also all the fingers of the other visitors that are live on the website and thus visible on the 8 surrounding projections. The visitors are thus suddenly transposed to the other side of the screen. They become the information, the content that everybody is tapping on.
Our lives are increasingly intertwined with technology. We cannot miss the screens of our mobile phones, tablets, laptops. Apps are developed to get us hooked on the screen. Our screen time is their business model. Unconsciously we ‘check’, tap, swipe our phone screens without looking at anything really. The phone has become an extension of our body and our finger is navigating through the endless seductive space of information or entertainment.
The pandemic has made this behaviour even worse. Our social encounters are banned to be experienced behind the screen, from Zoom meetings to barcode checkouts in supermarkets.