During Milan Design Week, BE OPEN presented the work by a creative duo Sfelab, who had won the foundation’s competition among young designers the same year. The task of the competition was to develop a sensory project to fit into the space around the House of Senses installation by Christoph Pillet, in the ‘Cortile della Farmacia’ of the Milan State University.
Sfelab’s project, ‘Zang Tumb Tumb’ consisted of a series of surfaces that were sensitive to sound and touch. The installation could be experienced both individually and in a group with the aim of encouraging users to interact and collaborate. The installation reflected the shapes and colours of the site within the Cortile arcades; it blended with the walls and the portico columns and revealed its real identity only through sensory stimulus. It could look, hear, speak and interpret senses exactly as we do.
The installation in the main courtyard was made of two interactive areas that are sensitive to sound. The sounds users made would send bright, sonic-wave forms running the length of the courtyard, reflected by lights and mirrors suspended under the portico that will create different effects by night and day.
‘Zang Tumb Tumb’ was based on “touchgraphy” which is the creation of a touch sensitive, interactive surface. The interactive cloth was located in the main passageway to the ‘Cortile della Farmacia’. It reacted in different ways depending on how the user touched it. If you touched the projector cloth, the machine would reply with a sound and a variation of the graphic content projected.
Sfelab focuses mostly on communication arts with expertise in interactive art, web, photography, video, graphics and illustration. The studio was founded in 2011 by Marco Brienza, Giorgio Pagani and Tommasso Nava. In 2012 Pietro Porro joined the group as director. Their diverse talents lead to multidisciplinary projects that address both aesthetic and practical needs and especially that involve the active participation of the user.