Borderless

Interactive installation

Borderless is an immersive, interactive experience that explores unconscious interactions among strangers. Taking place in a darkened space, projected figures emerge from the blackness while the soundscape shifts based on the number of people in the area. The experience of Borderless walks the line between calming familiarity and unnerving disassociation.

The piece examines the way we shape and are shaped by our surroundings, creating invisible movement within society's social fabric. Borderless tests the idea that by recreating unconscious interactions within a tactile and visible medium, we can unveil nuances in social behavior and response.

Direction & Production
D. Schmüdde & Kim Burgas

Cinematography
Constance & Eric

The Installation

Visuals

The video images are projected onto black cloth suspended in the space. The figures seem to levitate in the air as they navigate one another. The image bleeds onto several layers of folded cloth suspended behind, furthering the intrusion into our space and bringing the waves of the water into our reality.

Audio

The Borderless soundscape evolves based on activity within the space:

High activity and a large number of people triggers a dissonant composition
Low activity and a small number of people causes aural sparseness
A completely empty room is silent

The environment abstracts the activity of everyday spaces - being both familiar and alien. Through Borderless, we experimented with ways to render the intangible tangible. Generative audio was used to subtly expose the presence of others in the installation space.

We were also concerned with designing a generative system where the design itself remained obscured. A general tendency of visitors to interactive installations with tight feedback loops is to get lost in the implementation and “figure out” the algorithm. Borderless intended to transliterate the unconscious ways we navigate one another, partially by generating audio based on the movement of visitors. Participants were aware that the aural environment changed, but it was unknown how the environmental changes were constructed. Obscuring the system’s design placed the focus more on Borderless’ intention and less on the technology itself.