At Hand is an interactive piece designed for touch screens in public space. The project is about urban gestures, micro spaces of the street and the possibility of encountering otherness. Its starting point is in European flows of migration and specifically the recent appearance of beggars in Helsinki’s city spaces. How should we encounter and respond to the new gestures of plea directed towards us?
The project explores the experiential and expressive possibilities of multi-user touch interaction via an orchestration of intimate close-ups of gesturing hands, and the dynamics of the touch interface.
The project was produced for the Media Facades 2010 festival in collaboration with MultiTouch Ltd. and co-produced by the artist with m-cult and Crucible Studio, Media Lab Helsinki, Aalto University School of Art and Design / software designer Teemu Korpilahti. Its development is supported by a grant from the Aalto University Media Factory.
At Hand was custom designed for the MultiTouch screen technology and was be presented on the CityWall interactive screen installed at Lasipalatsi in the centre of Helsinki. It was premiered on the Night of the Arts on August 27, 2010 and the presentation days were prolonged until October 2010. After the MFF presentation versions of At Hand have been seen e.g. at the “Europe” metro station in Paris in 2012.
Thanks to: Social centre Satama