I talked earlier about these orange ‘playthings’ being in a gallery, and nobody touching  the thing or playing with it – even though I had made it as inviting as I could.

Talking about this with Luuk Wilmering and Andrew March –  teachers at HKU, check their sites, very interesting – I came to the conclusion that more visual clues were necessary. Also, once someone starts the interaction, when this is seen, other people will follow. So I thought of ways to visualise this.
I came up with the idea of adding  disposable gloves, see picture on the left.  Gloves to start people thinking of touching. I made a square box to go with the orange things, so the gloves would be at a hight that is easy for picking them up. Some gloves I used and then discarded, they are laying on the ground to show traces of  peoples’ interaction.

It became a sort of yukky setup, reminding me of going to the dentist or to a gynacologist, which is not what I intended.  After discussion with Andrew I decided to take away the orange things and keep the gloves, which gives more room to manouvre and more room for the curiosity and the imagination of the participants.
It now looks like this:

It suddenly has overtones of the recent Mexican flue scare.

This may be a work all by itself. Need to think about extending it a bit (maybe another box or hanger with disposable masks?). Could place this at the entrance of an exhibition (us MaHKU students are planning one). Would be interesting to see its effects.