Hand-held
Interactive installation
Hand-held is an installation that consists of an apparently empty space which reveals its contents as you explore it with your hands. Today, we regularly use our hands to navigate virtual spaces and relationships using touchscreens, mice and keyboards. Hands, which have evolved to have a great degree of articulation and high concentrations of nerve endings, are reduced to pointers and signfi ers.
Th e work occupies the exhibition space in the manner of a sculpture but is initially invisible. Your hands are your active agents with which to explore the space. When your hand moves into the space occupied by a part of the sculpture, its image appears on the skin of your hands and fingers as though it were physically present there. Moving your hand around allows you to discover the extent of the object and its relationships with things around it.
Th e invisible sculpture is built largely of hands and of objects we hold. At the same time it is an evocation of the fullness of the apparently empty space all around us... occupied by our projected ideas, our voyeuristic and surveillant gazes, emotional charges, and, ever more so, the invisible communications through which we increasingly convey information, conduct transactions and relate to each other.
David Rokeby (Excerpt)
Production: Le Fresnoy
