Lonely Crowds
ACCA FORECOURT 2018

Interactive
Public art

Noise-cancelling headphones
Instructions cards
pencil & paper

Public space is deﬁned as a place where at least two people are exchanging information. Since the boundary between public and private is not clear, How would this change if we could not hear anything or talk to anyone in public spaces?

With booming modern technology, people are getting anxious more easily, we can not help connecting with other people, but have we left anytime to connect with ourselves? This project “Lonely Crowd”, will provide visitors with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones on site, in order to create a silent zone to alienate ourselves from others. A set of instructions and activities to help the participants reconnect with the site. From experiencing this type of public space (gallery) in silence, it will help people enter a meditative state of mind, where everything is silent, the only voice you hear is from your inner self.

Once you put on the noise-noise headphones, you are forced to ﬁnd your most comfortable position to face the challenge. The ﬁrst part of silent action is done as an individual activity, when there are more than two people doing it, the silence between them forms the second layer of silence. By doing that in a crowd with others yet somehow only with your inner self, your memories, your abstract thinking come up to ﬁnally reach a self-awareness.

When the outer communication is blocked, the participantes are seemingly isolated, the overwhelming self-conscious blossoms from the nurturing soil of complete silence. It challenges the blurry boundary between private and public with the connection between inner voice and outer silence.

This project not only will make you experience the place diﬀerently, but also creates a situation about being in a group being alone together within city crowds.The pen and paper is for the last instruction when they return to the starting point,visualising the first sound in mind after the experience.

In order to explore the present contrast in city and nature, private and public, land and raw elements, everlasting ocean and time. In another word, to cast a shadow at the darkroom where such realm is the norm.

It is in my believe that visualisation of particular space is determined by self-consciousness, our senses could be awakened or misled just by the smallest thing, which eventually shaken the balance between inner self and outer self if we are provided by different situations. As the current disconnection of nature is never more profound, my artwork focus on the relationship between natural surroundings. In the field of using basic elements to enhance the viewer’s experience.