Secret Cinema
-An interactive projection illustrating today's invasion of privacy.
Client /Secret Cinema
Role /Concept, UX Design, Art Direction, Project Management
To give a modern twist to Star Wars' Death Star set, I created an installation which tracked visitors in a disturbing parallel with today's ubiquitous monitoring of our everyday gestures.
THE CHALLENGE
Secret Cinema creates large-scale theatrical immersive experiences inspired by famous movies.
For their Star Wars episode, they asked me to create a site-specific interactive installation which would plunge visitors into a state of anxiety and a feeling of being monitored while walking along the corridors of the Death Star.
Half human, half machine, Watch Out displays a giant red eye monitoring visitors who walk through the set.
THE SOLUTION
Using one of the circular cavities of the former printing press’ building in which the experience took place, we created an interactive eye projection that follows every movements of the passers-by.
THE RESULT
We instilled a sense of uneasiness in the visitors by bringing them to walk along the installation before discovering it, rather than stumbling onto it head first.
At the time, interactive installations which were capable of tracking users’ positions were also rather rare. Combined with the animation choices we made for the eye, users took a few seconds to fully realise whether the installation was actually tracking them or a simple video feed.
This led visitors who discovered our installation to immediately show surprise and uneasiness, and then spent the next few minutes delightfully interacting with it to understand its mechanisms.
We wanted to recreate the insidious sensation distilled by today’s monitoring systems - subtle, but ubiquitous and highly invasive.
