Year
2014
Tag
Installations
A ball enters a track. It travels for a while, reaches a junction, and needs another action to continue. From a distance the structure looks like an arrangement of routes. Up close it asks people to take part in keeping something moving.
Dot to Dot was made for Marketplace, the meeting of volunteers, organisations and socially responsible businesses organised by the Catalan Federation of Social Volunteering. The installation used a shared physical route to consider how a social project develops and what another person can contribute to it.
2014 · Marketplace · El Born, Barcelona · Art & Research / Installations.
The installation in use at Marketplace, El Born.
An idea takes a route
Timber supports held tracks, changes of level and interactive elements. Coloured balls moved through the apparatus, while visitors gathered around the points where the route could be affected. The path was made legible through action.
A social project also has passages that depend on other people. A beginning does not guarantee a continuation. By bringing these dependencies into a physical arrangement, the work offered a small situation in which participants could encounter the difference between an intention and the work of carrying it forward.
Tracks, coloured balls and participant-operated elements at Marketplace, El Born.
Tracks, coloured balls and participant-operated elements at Marketplace, El Born.
Participation leaves a record
The installation also visualised the kinds of volunteers who took part. Participation had two related roles: it contributed to the route through the apparatus and to an accumulating account of the people around it.
The record belonged to the event. Volunteers, organisations and businesses had come to exchange experiences and find possibilities for working together. The installation gave this meeting a common object, something people could approach from different sides and understand through use.
Tracks, coloured balls and participant-operated elements at Marketplace, El Born.
Tracks, coloured balls and participant-operated elements at Marketplace, El Born.
The space between contributions
The title suggests a line that does not yet exist. Separate points become a route only when someone connects them. Dot to Dot placed attention on those connections: the transfers, interruptions and adjustments through which a collective undertaking acquires continuity.
The apparatus made those relations visible in the movement of a shared object. A route continued because someone took responsibility for the next passage. The scene offered a concrete point from which to consider the less visible work of maintaining a collective project.
Tracks, coloured balls and participant-operated elements at Marketplace, El Born.
How it was made
A freestanding timber framework supported tracks, coloured balls and interactive route elements. Visitors’ actions affected the passage through the structure and contributed to its visual record.
Explanatory reconstruction based on the project archive. The drawing shows the installation and visitor interaction; it is not a fabrication plan.
References
- Original DDS case study — Original project description and photographic record.
- DDS exhibition and events archive — Dated event listing.
A project by Domestic Data Streamers. Images selected from the original project and exhibition archives.
