Interactive City: A Break from the Ads

Want a break from the ads?

Commercials are annoying.

Especially when you have to watch them before your favorite songs or videos.

Yes. I’m talking to you, Spotify and YouTube.

For me, Spotify is a great place to get some new music and have a fresh taste. However, as a Spotify Free member who has yet not upgraded to Premium, commercials regularly turn up in the stream feed. Once, the feed said something like this:

Want a break from the ads? Watch this short video…

Then I closed the app.

Nowadays, we are immersed in the context of materialism and endless advertisements. Internet services (e.g. Google, Facebook, YouTube) use ads to gain revenue, and users pay to get rid of the annoying ads. Users always want to find a break from the ads, otherwise they would not pay to get rid of them.

Ads are stress-builders. They keep us constantly want things. Such desire, and even consumption, does not necessarily make us happier. And yet they exist for the endlessly growing economy, for the materialism culture and those few who benefit from it.

I want to provide a way to relieve this kind of stress.

How I developed the idea for this project.
How I developed the idea for this project.

Destruction can be a outlet for stress, especially virtual ones with no consequence or damage. Because “break” can have the double meaning of “getaway” or “destruction,” such as breaking the glass, I decide to take this sentence into this project. The project is comprised of several videos that play simultaneously, and at the surface is a virtual glass-breaking interaction with mouse click. Of course, for a better simulation of breaking the glass, the click would be accompanied with a sound of cracking.

Interface demo: when you click with your mouse...
Interface demo: when you click with your mouse…

I do not know how people would interact with it in a public space nor whether it would create a magic circle. What I wish to do is to challenge the existing network established by markets and materialism. Ads are something stressful and we need a break from them. Yet they are around us anytime and everywhere: from cell phone screens to giant LED installations in Time Square, from magazine pages to film shots of certain products. We are not happier because of them. I think we need a constant reminder of the stress in order for the audiences to have greater incentive to look into new solutions in the market to make us happier.

Author: Yuci Zhou