Supported by Jofebar, Panoramah!, Pláka Porto, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Beşiktaş Municipality.
The shift to the digital has accelerated atomisation between people through the promotion of virtual experiences via social networks, where physical encounter is absent. In 2020, this distance was suddenly verbalised and made mandatory by the rapid transmission of SARS-CoV-2 – an enemy with an invisible body – imposing the absence of personal contact and instigating mistrust towards the bodies of others.
Public Devices for Therapy aims to help us regain confidence in proximity to each other’s bodies in the form of a collection of large-scale objects resembling sports equipment. Mediators of collective therapy between bodies in public space, the devices encourage observation and touch, bringing people close together again to rebuild their trust in one another, while safely regulating proximity between them. In doing so, this design produces a new configuration of intimate spheres between public and private realms.
Scan the QR code or click on the link below to access Soraia Gomes Teixeira’s Public Devices for Therapy in Augmented Reality form. It counteracts itself by raising questions of tactility within the digital realm and the impossibility of touch that is required to give meaning to the sculpture in the first place. This AR project is powered by Digilogue: transmedia Arts and Technology Platform by Zorlu Holding and the Zorlu Performing Arts Center focusing on techno-philosophical inquiry and education in regards to digital tools and creative industries.
Soraia Gomes Teixeira (Portugal) is a designer, working in close collaboration with industry, and a visiting assistant professor in Projects at the School of Media Arts and Design of the Polytechnic of Porto. In 2019 she took part in the RARA residences of WALK & TALK festival, Azores, a project that promotes dialogue between local crafts and design. In 2017, Teixeira worked at Ciszak Dalmas studio in Madrid. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the Young Creators Award and represented Portugal in the Product Design category at the VII Biennial of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. She completed a degree in Industrial Design at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto and a Master's degree in Product Design at the Caldas da Rainha School of Arts and Design.
