Client
FAD - LAUS
Year
2014
Type of sector
Arts & Culture
Tag
Installations
A vote sent through a screen arrives as a drop. It falls into a glass tube and stays there. Another vote raises the level a little further. The result takes shape gradually, in public, before anyone announces a winner.
For the 2014 Laus Audience Awards, we built a structure holding 371 test tubes, one for each shortlisted project. Votes sent as tweets were translated into drops of golden liquid. The audience could watch its decisions accumulate in the same space as the work it was judging.
2014 · Laus Audience Awards · Barcelona · Art & Research / Installations.
The archived project film, optimised for web playback.
Giving the vote a place
An online vote is easy to make and easy to lose sight of. Once submitted, it often disappears into a total that will be revealed elsewhere. Drip by Tweet gave each contribution a visible destination.
The tubes formed a physical register of the voting process. Their changing levels made comparisons possible without separating the result from its accumulation. A small action became part of a larger form, while retaining a clear relationship to the project it supported.
The complete freestanding apparatus.
Test tubes arranged around the mechanism.
A mechanism for accumulation
The installation joined a liquid reservoir, a controlled dispensing mechanism and a circular arrangement of glass tubes. Slender columns of liquid accumulated beneath a structure that made the route from vote to result tangible.
Time entered the display through repetition. Each addition was slight; the differences emerged through many additions. The work gave the count a rhythm and allowed the audience to encounter a process normally compressed into a final number.
Individual test tubes hold the accumulated votes.
Detail of the dispensing assembly.
The result becomes an object
During the awards ceremony, winning projects could collect their corresponding test tube. A container that had served as part of the display became an object carrying the evidence of public participation.
The liquid did not explain why a person preferred one project to another. It held the fact that a choice had been made. In that limited but concrete sense, the award belonged to the accumulated actions of the audience: a result that could be seen, carried away and kept.
How it was made
A supporting frame held 371 individually assigned test tubes. A controlled dispensing system translated incoming votes into liquid added to the corresponding tube.
Original CAD view documenting the apparatus.
A close view of the drive mechanism during development.
References
- Original DDS case study — Original project description and photographic record.
- DDS exhibition and events archive — Dated event listing.
A project by Domestic Data Streamers. Images selected from the original project and exhibition archives.
