Social Creatures is an interactive audio-visual installation that aims to make users more aware of the act of creating their public identity. To create their ‘identity’, people use gestures to select a particular form and then interact with a pseudo-musical instrument. The instrument consists of eight visual zones that influence the shape and aural properties of the resulting entity. Once complete, users can name the entity using a mobile device, and then set it free into an eco-system inhabited by similar entities. In the eco-system, the entities react to one another, much like human beings in a social network. Users can use a mobile device to command various entities or cause environmental disturbances through simple gestures.

The physical gestures required of the users ensures a higher level of investment in the process, causing a heightened awareness of one’s creation, and thus oneself. Watching the entity interact with other entities is a reflection of our own interaction in our social networks.

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