Can we quantify the impact that an artwork has over a wide audience? This is the question put into play in the Sand Falls installation. During the seven months of the Big Bang Data exhibition (CCCB) in Barcelona, we developed an experiment to understand the flows and real impact that five different art pieces had inside this exhibition space.
Turning subjective art into quantitative insights
We created five sand clocks (one per artwork to be analyzed) and connected each of them with different audience tracking devices that, in real time, were streaming the interest of visitors into grains of sand. Through one of the oldest mechanical instruments, we created a new reading of time that allowed the impact of each group to be quantified over the course of a month.
Beyond all the data gathered, we realised Sand Falls was transforming the behaviour of the people inside the exhibition space: the installation was placed at the end of the show so when most of the audience realised about the data presented in them, they turned back to see again the five artworks, this time taking into account this new layer of information.
In 2015 Sand Falls was awarded with the major city award of Barcelona for crossing arts, technology, social science and design.
Sand Falls
Do you reckon that it is fair to determine the quality of an art piece depending on the interest people have shown towards it?
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