‘Strang3rs’
Smartphones, QR code based entry point, multi-user interaction design, rule-based interaction flows
Strang3rs is a two-person installation that uses smartphones and environmental triggers to examine how screens structure attention, vulnerability, and social connection.
How it works
One participant initiates the experience by scanning a QR code.
The system instructs them to find a second participant.
The second participant scans a plant in the space.
Each plant triggers a specific prompt.
The prompt requires the two participants to speak with one another to proceed.
The experience cannot be completed alone.
This project grew from an interest in how screens often provide distance rather than connection. While phones are commonly used to avoid vulnerability, Strang3rs tests whether structured mediation can instead create conditions for presence. By requiring cooperation and conversation, the work makes the social rules of the interface explicit.
Borrowing from earlier experiments that treated plants as quiet sensing objects, I use environmental triggers to counter the urgency and isolation often built into mobile interaction. The phone becomes a tool for coordination rather than escape, and connection becomes something that must be actively negotiated.
Why I made it
Experience
Two participants enter the work together, but the interaction only unfolds if they cooperate. Smartphones act as the interface, yet the system resists passive use. Participants must move through the space, attend to their surroundings, and engage with another person to continue.
Plants in the installation function as activation points rather than decoration. Scanning a plant is a deliberate gesture that slows the interaction and redirects attention away from the screen and back into the shared physical space. The work treats the environment as an active component of the system, shaping how and when interaction occurs.