Populus

This is interactive multitouch installation I built for End of Year Exhibition at my Academy. I’ve developed both hardware and software.

Populus, people, crowd. Thoughtless masses, seemingly living their own lives, waiting only for someone else to take over and relieve them from the burdens of responsibility of taking decisions, always turning to obey the one who is the most powerful or the one who is shouting louder.

The target of this realization is to enable anyone to test how it feels to control a crowd. Dictatorship, absolute power, playing god. The work allows for an instant to become a person who has a power and who has control over people.

The work is a sort of experiment. It is an attempt to contradict the rules prevailing at the exhibitions. Do not touch, do not come too close. Why? Why it is not allowed to touch the work, to feel the texture, to feel it and to interact?

People, spread initially in disarray, follow the finger everywhere it points as soon as the screen is touched. Reaching the destination they come to a standstill and look up at us. If more persons/hands touch the screen, the crowd splits into subgroups.