How to say goodbye
Interactive Installation - 2016
The installation consists of a plaster hand with a metal wire that is connected to an Arduino board, making it touch sensitive. There is a video projection in the room of a black screen with the title “how to say goodbye”, as the interactor brings his hand close to the piece, the video starts to appear, as the interactor releases his hand, the video dims again, remaining only the audio and the initial title, waiting for a new encounter of hands.
The work proposes an interactive reflection on farewell rituals, exploring the symbolic relationship of hands and touch in these contexts. Accepting finitude is a difficult task. We create various daily rituals to deal with the absence of people or objects. Shaking hands is a social agreement, we say hello, we shake hands, we say goodbye, we shake hands. In this way we create linearity and delimit encounters and moments with other people.
However, when these memories are stored in our brain, this linearity does not always make sense, the touch itself becomes a memory encoding. As relationships begin to develop, along with emotional involvement and memory creation, interactions become more complex and deeper. Touch takes on a more important and present function, so that following a farewell protocol no longer makes sense.