significance
There are many spectacular installations remixing the view of their audience and surroundings at larger scale, such as Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, which reflects its viewers in the view of the skyline of Chicago and the immediate neighborhood, for an involving experience without the continuous participation of its creator.(6) A Shuffle Space project, on the other hand, produces a designer-embedded exhibition within the interactive experience. For the designer, it is a rewarding challenge that goes beyond reaching functional goals in an interactive project.
“We search for ways to see ourselves,” Sherry Turkle observed, in one of her studies between humans, computer and the in-between subcultures. “The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine.” (Turkle 279) This evolution may be sad for generations who grew up without computers involved in all aspects in everyday life. Yet a designer must find a hopeful way to see this current and future hybrid nature.
Mieke Gerritzens’ series of projects criticizing on the intersection of branding, mediated society, and culture makers is an inspiration as well as a reminder for Shuffle Space.(7) Gerritzens’ works argue that designing for well-known brands makes the customers and the culture makers end in a relationship of symbiosis, as well as urges culture makers to investigate the new form of media creations in the ever-changing mediascape.
With Turkle’s findings and Gerritzen’s reminder in mind, Shuffle Space intentionally pulls out complex dimensions of a group of people connected by professions, education, or other cultural conventions, and reflects these faces to its contributors. Through this mixture of process and outcome, the designer and users shuffle their roles, co-creating a new circle of production and consumption, in this local space where conversations happen and thoughts flow.