through the digital traces from vari-
ous social media, they could choose
up to four utterances, pictures, or
videos that caught their interest
and supported their completion of
the sentence. The chosen samples
were stored in a dock placed at each
narrow end of the table. When a
user clicked on a small keyboard
icon on the dock, an onscreen
keyboard would appear, allowing
them to complete the sentence with
statements such as “Digital Natives
are CREATIVE,” Digital Natives are
“EGOCENTRIC AND SPOILED,” or
Digital Natives are “NO DIFFERENT
FROM OTHERS.”
The statements produced by audi-
ence members were displayed as a
part of the Digital Natives exhibi-
tion on two 22-inch touchscreens
located close to the installation.
Here, visitors could see what they
and other visitors had written and
explore the digital material that
had been used to support the state-
ments. Moreover, visitors could
respond to the utterances by push-
ing a “like” or “dislike” button on the
touchscreens, adding their score to
the total number of likes and dis-
likes for each statement.
Google My Head illustrates and
represents the vast amounts of
fragmented information and com-
munication that exist in the lives
of digital natives. The curation
process of selecting materials from
their own digital repositories was
completed by the young natives
themselves, as were the tags that
combined the digital materials
in the installation and made it
possible for audiences to navi-
gate through them (for example,
“Martin_concert_friends_photo,”
“Metha_Japan_manga_leisure”).
As such, using the form and lan-
guage of social and online media,
the audience was invited both to
explore aspects of digital natives’
everyday cultures and to contribute
to their overall representation.
DJ Station
DJ Station is an interactive and
audiovisual installation based
on a tangible user interface with
fiducial tracking (unique tags that
enable the system to recognize specific music loops) inspired by the
Reac Table [ 5]. The DJ Station allowed
the audience to interact with the
musical universe of the seven digital natives involved in the project
while getting first-hand experience
with the remix and mashup cultures that are hallmarks of the digital natives’ generation. Each young
person was represented in the
installation by a cube (with visible
fiduciary markers), which played
musical loops when placed on the
tabletop. Each cube represented one
person’s musical taste, and each
side of the cube contained a unique
loop. The loops were co-produced
during the design process by the
digital natives and the designers in
an attempt to create an auditory
image of each digital native. The
loops were all the same tempo/BPM,
enabling an infinite repertoire of
combinations. Flipping the cube to
a new side played a new loop, while
rotating the cube controlled the volume of the loop. The colored cubes
contained unique audio effects
that could be applied to the musical loops. The closer an effect cube
was placed to a loop cube, the more
that effect (such as reverb) would be
applied to that loop.
By placing more musical cubes
(each representing a different
digital native’s musical identity)
on the table and applying effects
to them dynamically, the user
could combine and alter loops to
create complex mashups. In addi-
tion, visual images representing
each of the digital natives gathered
around the respective musical
cubes on the table surface and
interacted with images from the
other cubes. The tracks created
by the audience were streamed
live on the exhibition’s website.
September + October 2011
interactions
(Re)connecting to Everyday
Experiences
Both Google My Head and DJ Station
invited audiences to explore and
interact through both individual
experiences and social engagement. In Google My Head, people
browsed large amounts of user-generated content by playing with
a multi-touch table and became
acquainted with the opportunities for interaction offered by the
interface. Visitors selected materials according to their own interests
and gradually became more focused
in their search when prompted
with the statement “Digital Natives
are…” The selection process forged
a kind of in situ curation, in which
audiences created their own
micro-stories around the theme
of the exhibition. Once personal
statements were displayed on the
