Hello everyone! Today I want to invite you to the square to play with a scratch-off!
This scratch-off is a little on the large side. About... the size of a building. Really!
A little scary, right? 😈
And you don't even need to buy anything to scratch it with. Just bring yourself~
Uh... I'm kidding. But if your city really does have a “scratch-off” like this, forget I said “I'm kidding.”
OK, back to issue 003 of City at Play. Yep, here comes the actual topic!
The project I found today is called Body Movies, a work by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. I was so excited when I first saw it. Wait, you can play like this?!
That night, while brushing my teeth and looking at myself in the mirror, a thought suddenly popped into my head: isn't this just a giant scratch-off in the city?!
Hey! It really is! The more I thought about it, the more it felt like one!
In 2001, Body Movies first appeared in Rotterdam's Schouwburgplein square. It later appeared in places including Lisbon, Liverpool, Iowa State University, and Hong Kong.
So what did the earliest version look like? (It varies a little from city to city~)
At night, a huge interactive projection covers an entire exterior wall of a building. Hidden in it are many portraits photographed on city streets, but bright lights at ground level wash out the projections so much that they're almost invisible to the human eye.
So when someone walks over, the light casts their shadow on the wall. Their body blocks the bright light, and the portraits start to appear inside the shadow, little by little.
And just like that, a person becomes the “scratcher” for this “scratch-off card.”
Take a step to the left, and the shadow changes. Move a little to the right, and it changes again. Depending on where a person stands in relation to the light source, their shadow on the wall can even stretch to over twenty meters tall.
While digging through old material, I found quite a few fun scenes.
For example, people in the square can make their hands dance on the wall, jump up, or crouch down and make little movements. When another person comes along, their shadows merge. Add a few more people, and the whole wall turns into a screen playing a “movie filmed in real time,” with each frame gradually coming into view to a different degree.
A few more examples: some people use big shadows to chase little ones. Imagine a big bad wolf chasing a little white rabbit, or Tom and Jerry chasing each other. Some “tickle” each other: I'll get you, you get me! Strangers even put on little plays together, acting out palace intrigue dramas (OK, that's a bit much. I can't really call them that. It's more like a slap scene hahahaha)... Mm, the people standing quietly off to the side can't help thinking: we really are “watching a movie.”
People who followed and studied the work later wrote that local residents in Rotterdam really liked it because it gave people who didn't know each other an “excuse” to play together in the square (yes! A “catalyst/accelerator for making people less distant”), and even to become “like a child” in public (doesn't it give you that “the world is one giant playground” feeling?!)...
This reminds me of the question I asked when I first started writing City at Play 001:
If installations in the city gave us a little permission to interact, what would we do with it?
In Body Movies, all we need to do is walk into the light, leave a shadow on the wall, and use that shadow to “scratch off” the surface and reveal the portraits...
Then what?
Then it's up to the people in the square! That's one of the things I love so much about these kinds of urban installations!
With a set of rules simple enough, once people enter a public space, they'll try things out and invent their own ways to play. They'll also watch the people nearby, then suddenly decide to invite someone: hey, want to play this together?
And! The rules can even be “unwritten,” because curiosity and the urge to explore can open up possibilities for us.
In fact, when Rafael was designing Body Movies, he specifically thought about how to design it so more people could participate at the same time. Which means: design changes what can happen!
Everything in life has something to do with “design,” including you in front of the screen. The words you're reading right now have also been “designed” by me. Of course, compared with other kinds of “design,” mine is still pretty small-time... 👻
To connect this to everyday life a little: we often see technologies like projection, tracking, and giant lights in advertising and commercial events. Rafael uses some similar technologies to create a shadow game in the city that looks a little childish and more than a little silly. Or, you could call it a giant “scratch-off.”
That makes me think of certain buildings in our cities. At set times, colorful text projections/long-range spotlights appear on them (or something like that. I really don't know the technical names), but they leave me feeling distant, like “you can admire this from afar, but you can't play with it.”
I know there are reasons for that. But what if, and I do mean if, we quietly installed some devices in large shopping malls, squares, or even brand stores (we could do it openly too), and then certain shadows appeared in a particular place (a little heads-up: this has something to do with the next issue of City at Play. Stay tuned!)? Whether the two places are close together, far apart, or whatever, I think the result could be something to look forward to!
So... anyone want to make some “scratch-offs in the square”? 👀
