Exploring the Family Experience of End of Life.
Created by: Karen Oikonen, MDes & Kate Hale Wilkes, MA
Constellations is a participatory art installation exploring the family experience of end of life. Held in January 2019 at Artscape Youngplace, a community-based arts hub, Constellations was part of DesignTO, a 10-day art and design festival in the city of Toronto. People were invited to select a ball of yarn and weave their experience of death and dying through a series of questions. What emerged was a tactile expression of the universal human experience of end-of-life, honouring individual experiences while revealing patterns in the collective. As one participant shared, “It felt like walking a labyrinth and everyone else’s paths were visible.” At the closing of the festival, the designers removed each string, capturing the data that underpinned the visual patterns.
Constellations was also part of the Participatory Design Conference 2020 (PDC2020/www.pdc2020.org) in the Situated Action stream. The full paper can be found here: https://bit.ly/3n9oiYN
Constellations is a participatory art installation exploring the family experience of end of life. Held in January 2019 at Artscape Youngplace, a community-based arts hub, Constellations was part of DesignTO, a 10-day art and design festival in the city of Toronto. People were invited to select a ball of yarn and weave their experience of death and dying through a series of questions. What emerged was a tactile expression of the universal human experience of end-of-life, honouring individual experiences while revealing patterns in the collective. As one participant shared, “It felt like walking a labyrinth and everyone else’s paths were visible.” At the closing of the festival, the designers removed each string, capturing the data that underpinned the visual patterns.
Constellations was also part of the Participatory Design Conference 2020 (PDC2020/www.pdc2020.org) in the Situated Action stream. The full paper can be found here: https://bit.ly/3n9oiYN
Hear Karen and Kate speak about the purpose and creation of Constellations.
