At Hand was an interactive media art installation pilot designed for touch screens in public places. The project was about urban gestures, micro spaces of the street and the possibility of encountering otherness. European flow of migrations was its starting point, especially the recent appearance of beggars in Helsinki’s city spaces. It questioned whether we are experiencing a loss in our ability to relate to the other as a unique human being. How should we struggle against such a loss?

The project explored the experiential and expressive possibilities of multi-user touch interaction via an orchestration of intimate close-ups of gesturing hands and the dynamics of the touch interface. The pilot was custom designed for the MultiTouch screen technology and was presented on the CityWall interactive screen installed at Lasipalatsi in the centre of Helsinki between 27.8.-24.9.2010 as part of the Media Facades Festival Europe 2010.
The pilot At Hand was produced for the Media Facades 2010 festival in collaboration with m-cult and MultiTouch ltd. It was co-produced by the Crucible studio, University of Art and Design, where software designer Teemu Korpilahti was responsible for the interaction design. Its development was supported by a grant from the Aalto University Media Factory.