“Please do not touch the display.”
There’s a good reason museums and art galleries place signs like this in their exhibits.
Whether it is an ancient, fragile papyrus scroll or a Jackson Pollack painting, it is human nature to want to touch something that is appealing to both the visual and tactile senses.
Tangible Interaction has exploited that impulse with great success in recent years by developing interactive installations for concerts, festivals and other special events, including the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The company encourages engagement with large groups of people by giving them something to do, something to touch. This can be anything from large helium-filled balls of light dropped over concert crowds to digital graffiti walls.
“Technology is making people so distant and disconnected from physical reality,” said Tangible Interaction founder and creative director Alex Beim.
“We feel like it’s sucking people into the screens and missing out on what’s happening outside. We try the opposite thing, where we push people away from the screens into the real world so they can interact with each other.”
That’s not to say digital and social media don’t play an important role in the company’s installations – they do. But it is combined with participatory and tactile elements to give events a touchy-feely quality.
“We try to create a conversation with people,” said Beim, a graphic artist by trade. “Yes, we use social media, but we use social media to bring people together.”
The company’s Social Mosa platform, for example, is used at special events to aggregate photos, videos and messages posted by those attending the event on Twitter and Instagram and create a social media mosaic that is broadcast on live event screens.
There is usually some tactile element to the company’s installations, however. Its first big hit was its zygote interactive balls – huge, helium-filled, LED-lit, remotely controlled balls that are dropped over an audience. When people touch them, they change colours and bounce away.
More than two billion people saw them on TV in 2010 when they tuned in for the closing ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Games. Twenty zygote balls filled the air during the ceremonies. It was just one of more than a dozen installations the company was commissioned to create for the Games.
The company’s biggest client is the Blue Man Group. Other big-name concert acts, including Arcade Fire and Green Day, have also used Tangible Interaction products. In Green Day’s case, digital tagging screens were set up at concerts and fans were encouraged to create electronic graffiti, which was then broadcast.
Locally, Tangible Interaction has done installations for the Vancouver Public Library, the Museum of Vancouver and the Vancouver Aquarium.
For the Vancouver Aquarium, Tangible Interaction worked with origami artist Joseph Wu to create a visual display for the aquarium’s annual winter Luminescence celebration.
It features 94 origami jellyfish suspended from the ceiling that change colour. Visitors use touch screens to create changing light patterns among the jellyfish colony, just as real jellyfish change colour when disturbed.
“You can basically paint with light,” Beim said.
Joanne Turner, marketing consultant for the Vancouver Aquarium, said the aquarium wanted an exhibit for its annual Luminescence celebration that engaged people and found Tangible was the only company that could bring the idea to life.
“Truly, there wasn’t anyone else, in our eyes, that even compared to the level of work that they were doing in this marketplace, and they were able to come forward with an idea that was really unique.”
Turner added that the exhibit, now in its third year, is a hit with both adults and children.
“It promotes a much higher level of engagement than when it’s simply a static thing,” she said. “You almost feel like you’re part of the exhibit.”
Despite all the exhibits the company has done in Vancouver, Beim said most of the company’s work is done outside of Canada – mostly in the U.S. and Europe. It has partner companies in Italy, Dubai and the Netherlands.
Although Tangible did not get any invitations to do installations for the Olympic Games in Sochi, the company has received queries from Brazil, where it hopes to create installations for this year’s World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
In March, the company will do an installation for South by Southwest, the annual film and music festival in Austin, Texas. It will also be at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
