Can cities be built for collective daydreaming?

Daydreamer is a new sculptural series of interactive, slowly rocking benches that compose gentle music and encourage synced up choreographies. Conceived to create a ritual around a moment of pause in the urban realm, the artwork stimulates a communal experience in a soothing soundscape.

The first trio was installed in the City of South Bend (US) in November 2022.

Can cities be built for collective daydreaming?

Daydreamer is a new sculptural series of interactive, slowly rocking benches that compose gentle music and encourage synced up choreographies. Conceived to create a ritual around a moment of pause in the urban realm, the artwork stimulates a communal experience in a soothing soundscape.

The first trio was installed in the City of South Bend (US) in November 2022.

Context

In our times of unprecedented population growth, densification and increasing division in urban areas, we need to forge new modes of interaction for our public spaces. While we are connecting in increasingly toxic ways online, streets are becoming an important place where we can connect directly to people outside the echo chamber, with no filters. Daydreamer reinvents the public bench, binding together communities in a moment of relaxation.

Collective Daydreaming

The concept is based on two principles. The first one is the motion of rocking, which has been known to induce a state of daydreaming. Proven to lessen stress and anxiety, daydreaming opens up the mind to be more intuitive and imaginative at finding solutions, by simply letting go for a while. The second one is synchronicity. According to different studies, synchronous activity strengthens social attachments among the group well beyond the moment of coming together. The artwork encourages slow synchronous rocking motions to collectively create ever evolving, calming soundscapes.

Sit, Rock, Spin

When one sits on one of the benches and starts pushing it to spin, the mechanism inside each bench's pivot center ensures that the motion is slow. The benches rock in four quarters, and rotate (slowly) with a bit more strength from the user. Simultaneously, music and light animations are triggered through motion detection, merging analog and digital movements.

Voices, a collaboration

All the sounds of a Daydreamer are recordings of the human voice. The notes that are sung depend on the benches position and direction of travel. The volume of the voices is dictated by the speed of movement. By mapping multiple musical parameters to different physical states, a strong gestural link is created between body movement and music. Each bench occupies a slightly different musical register; soprano, alto and tenor. Voices sing more complex partitions when benches are moved in synchronicity to encourage collaboration between players. The ensemble is an evolutive and organic tapestry of tension, release, motion and stillness.

Project specifications

The installation consists of three revolving benches that host a sound and sensor system, each accommodating up to four people, finished in Canadian white oak (bench) and powder-coated aluminum (arch) . LED lights are integrated in the arch which change with the sound created. There are also two custom LED downlight assemblies under each bench to enhance the movement.

From a technical innovation perspective, the creation of the artwork's unique "slow-rocking" movement is the result of more than two years of collaboration with industrial designers, engineers and machinists, and includes magnetic brakes and a custom asymmetrical pivot.

Technology wise, each Daydreamer is equipped with a sensor box, a DMX box, 2 marine speakers and a custom slip ring assembly.

Poured-in-place rubber was used as the ground treatment in South Bend. A custom pattern, created with multicolored pellets came to life for this iteration.