social practice

interactive zoetrope
kitlab, 2017
private art salon, 2015

A zoetrope serves as a DIY animation station. There are three sets of images animated by the zoetrope. Two are built-in pieces — one of my eyes and one of my mouth. The third are animations drawn by participants and clipped in. This piece has appeared in multiple types of venues, creating a collaborative makers activity.

alit
Black rock city, 2015

This piece comprises two sets of hand-printed fabric patches. One set has a small LED light in it, the other has rivets. The LED patches will only light up when touching the rivet patches. This prompts a study on social interaction — who takes which patch, who chooses to get close enough to a stranger to turn their patch on.

memories for sale
2015

Eight people of different age and racial demographics were asked to give up an item that was priceless to them. These items were sealed in separate plain, cardboard boxes which were paired with a portrait photograph of the contributor. These paired boxes and photographs were then taken to different public spaces around the Bay Area and hawked as buyable wares under the sign “Memories for Sale.” No price was set for the boxes nor were visitors able to look inside. Instead visitors were asked to pick a box based on the portrait photographs and pay whatever they thought was fair for that person’s “priceless” item.

social Experiment kits
kitlab, 2017

Visitors are asked if they would like to participate in a scientific experiment, then are asked a series of random, purposeless questions to test “eligibility.” They are then assigned one of three experiments:

• Operation Show Me Your Teeth: Participants are instructed to smile nonstop for 30 minutes, observe the changes in others’ behavior towards them, and report back. Results consistently show friendly behavioral change of those around the participant.

• Operation Color My Mood: Participants are presented with squares of colored felt (white, black, brown, pink, red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple.) They are instructed to choose the color that best represents their current mood and pin it to their shirt. By the end of the exhibition, most visitors are wearing their felt of choice, prompting interesting interactions between both loved ones and strangers as they empathize or struggle to understand the correlation between others’ chosen color and mood.

• Operation Nancy Reagan: Participants are instructed to ‘just say no’ to one thing that they want to say yes to that day and report back. Results consistently indicate either participants’ frustration or surprising relief.