Year
2014
Tag
Installations
A line of light crosses the room. It connects an age to a number of hours, then to another number: the time a person spends with electronic devices and the time they would like to spend. The route holds a small disagreement between a habit and a wish.
Light Strings invited passers-by to make those comparisons visible. Each participant was represented by a luminous string connecting their answers. As the installation grew, individual accounts became part of a shared arrangement that visitors could look into and move alongside.
2014 · TIC Date · Navàs · Art & Research / Installations.
An ordinary discrepancy
The questions asked for reported experience and desired experience. They did not assume that everyone wanted the same relationship with a device. The space between the answers was the subject: how a routine might differ from the place a person would choose for it in their life.
Age added another point to the route. A line could therefore be followed across several answers, retaining a connection between them. The work made comparison possible while preserving the continuity of each contribution.
A participant adds a luminous route to the installation.
A visitor moves among the illuminated contributions.
A pattern made in the room
The illuminated strings crossed and overlapped against the dark surroundings. From close by, a route could be traced. From further away, the accumulation became a field, with areas of density and separation created by the people who had taken part.
The data was not collected first and displayed somewhere else. The act of answering helped construct the installation. Participants entered a situation in which their account of time also altered what the next person would see.
Marked answer positions and accumulated strings.
Individual routes cross to form a collective field.
Time that can be looked at
Hours are usually understood through the activities that fill them. Here they were given positions in space. The translation made a familiar question available in another form, allowing visitors to compare an abstract duration with a visible route.
Light Strings offered no prescription for the correct number of hours. It gave attention to the act of noticing a difference. A line could be slight, but the relation it held—between what a person does and what that person wants—was enough to begin a conversation.
How it was made
Luminous strings were routed through marked answer positions in a darkened installation. Each route connected age, reported device-use hours and desired hours. Anchors, labels and illumination allowed the contributions to remain visible as the physical display accumulated.
Explanatory reconstruction based on the project archive. The drawing shows the installation and visitor interaction; it is not a fabrication plan. Positions and numeric labels are illustrative, not a transcription of the installed scales.
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.
