Framing fraught topics through tangible multi-display engagement with live news

Abstract

We describe an art museum installation that employed tangible interface, peripheral interface, and ambient display modalities to engage with news content regarding politically charged topics. News content was sourced via Google News, and used as driver for both a kinetic sculpture and a screen-faced tangible interaction console. Tangible tokens represented several keywords such as "human rights" and "torture," in the context of a 2006 project engaging the U.S. "War on Terror." We describe our implementation and experiences from two gallery deployments, and reflect on the piece's engagement with sensitive material after a decade's passage.