MailboX

Artists: Isabella Bain (Australia) / Steven Bai (United States) / James Rotanson (Indonesia) /
Christopher Simpson (Australia) / Anthony Zeater (Australia) Khanh Nguyen (Australia)

Collaborator: Sencity Corp

MailboX is built to inspire individuals to be more positively connected by verbal and written conversation as social media has made us into antisocial beings due to the abundance of communication platforms. Receiving a letter from a good friend used to be common practice but sadly we are forgetting the importance of written correspondence.

This installation uses the traditional shape of a post box with an illuminated LED façade to recreate messages as an entertaining interactive experience. For this experience we have chosen to use emojis, as they are a modern rebirth of hieroglyphics — an early form of written communication — to create a contrast between the traditional postbox and letter shape that allows the viewer to question the importance of communication and how we are slowly losing this sentiment.

MailboX begins its journey in the present, with the modern day form of a letter (digital messaging). A participant can send a tweet to the mailbox of their experiences while at Vivid Sydney using the hashtag ‘#MailboX’. This message will then be displayed on the MailboX engaging the sender with the audience around the installation. Once the message is sent to the MailboX it will count how many ‘letters’ are posted though the duration of Vivid Sydney and visualise the experiences of the messages sent by participants.

The second interaction engages the audience through capturing ambient sound around the MailboX which responds to the excitement and volume generated by the involvement and then visualises the amount of conversation created on the facade of the MailboX.

Country represented by installation: Australia