Lantern Field: Exploring Participatory Design of a Communal, Spatially Responsive Installation

Mountains and Valleys (an anonymous name for confidentiality) is a communal,site-specific installation that takes shape as a spatially-responsiveaudio-visual field. The public participates in the creation of theinstallation, resulting in shared ownership of the work between both theartists and participants. Furthermore, the installation takes new shape in eachrealization, both to incorporate the constraints and affordances of eachspecific site, as well as to address the lessons learned from the previousiteration. This paper describes the development and execution of Mountains andValleys over its most recent version, with an eye toward the next iteration ata prestigious art museum during a national festival in Washington, D.C.