Under the Wraps
Life-sized burrito, made with felt, paper and foil
Location: Open spaces in ADM
by Joan Li and Tiffany Anne
An interactive installation that wraps two individuals within a close intimate space. It aims to stimulate various kinds of human interaction between two unsuspecting persons.
Ideation
We had two initial ideas surrounding the theme for this exercise – Be Part of The Art:
1. Hanging clothes
Setting up clothes lines along corridors or walkways around ADM, and invite students (or anyone else) to participate by clipping the top of their clothes to the line. Much like our laundry at home, several people can be attached to the line in a manner where they cannot undo their clothes pegs without the help of passersby or other ‘laundry’. We were interested to see how participants would react when put under such situations – Will they start socializing? Will it be awkward? Or will they try their best to wriggle themselves free?
2. People as food
Our second idea was the perceive people as individual food/ingredient, and place them together to create a dish. Based on the colors that the participants are wearing, they can play the roles of different foods – for example, red tomato on a sandwich, green lettuce in a burrito or yellow cheese in a taco!
We decided to embark on our second idea and create a life-sized burrito large enough to wrap two individuals together within an intimate space. As burritos are often brightly colored and associated with warmth and blankets (“blanket burrito”), we felt that it was appropriate and would encourage positive human interaction between the participants.
Photo Gallery
Some responses & behaviours of participants
1. “It feels strangely intimate to be wrapped inside a burrito with him.”
2. Casual talking between close friends, no signs of awkwardness
3. Awkwardness
4. Signs of teamwork – trying to move around as a pair/trio
Processes
For the tortilla wrap, we sourced some brown paper from the drawing room and used chalk, charcoal and color pencils to create the toasted texture.
For the ingredients inside, we bought some colored felt cloth from Daiso and painted some materials that we found in the IM lab. We made a slice of tomato, vegan cheese and several pieces of lettuce as props
Finally, we packaged our burrito by wrapping its bottom section with aluminum foil.
Done! It’s a wrap 😉