The Toronto-based design firm Lateral Office has experience in trying to persuade adults “to be kids again,” said founding partner Mason White.
However, collaborating with Columbus Signature Academy Lincoln Elementary students to design games for an Exhibit Columbus installation may be the first time the team has actually worked directly with elementary school children on a project.
“I have kids, so I’m schooled on their amazing ingenuity and adaptability,” said White. “… It was a lot of fun.”
Located in the 600 block of Washington Street, the Exhibit Columbus installation “This Appearance Is ____” is a maze made up of curved lenticular plastic sheets. When an observer steps behind one such sheet, they practically disappear from view to anyone on the other side.
Likewise, nearby surroundings and buildings — which one might expect to be reflected or seen transparently through the translucent sheets — also blur and become little more than a stream of colors.
At night, the panels are lit up to form “an ethereal ribbon of light creating shadowy and lit figures,” according to the project description.
The project design was led by founding partners of Lateral Office and 2021 Exhibit Columbus University Design Research Fellows Lola Sheppard and White, who are both professors.
After coming up with the form and the materials, White and Sheppard presented the idea to sixth graders at CSA Lincoln in late April. The team worked with the students and asked them for help designing games for the exhibit.
The firm met with students via Zoom on a regular basis through the end of the last quarter, said sixth grade teacher Stephen Shipley. Shipley’s students and the school’s other sixth grade class worked on the project.
As a teacher, Shipley helped with facilitating workshops, guiding students on working in groups and keeping students on task. Shipley said the endeavor fit well into CSA’s focus on project-based learning — as well as one of his students’ favorite hobbies.
“Every day out at recess, that particular group, they were always creating these games,” he said. “And we would joke around and laugh at how weird their games were and how a big thing last year was ‘Among Us.’ … They would actually play versions of that on the playground with each other.”
White said, “It’s impressive. Kids are really attuned to rules, I think, because their world is based upon rules. So when they get a chance to make up rules, it’s really interesting. It’s sort of a role reversal.”
Some of the games created by students, according to instruction sheets posted at the site, are “Kaleidoscope,” “Invisible Poses” and “Capture the Light.”
For “Kaleidoscope,” each participant stands behind a screen (out of sight from the others), and the first person strikes a pose. The next person tries to guess their pose and copy it. Another person tries to copy their pose and so on, down the line. White compared it to a physical version of the classic “Telephone” game.
“Given the nature of the project, the kids were really engaged,” Shipley said. “… They took a lot of pride in what they were doing and the idea of being able to actually play this. Everyone loves Exhibit Columbus. This is something that really excites the kids, especially since we have a couple (installations) right here, close to our campus.”
After school on Aug. 23, Shipley and some of his current sixth grade students visited the exhibit to meet up with a few of his students from last year and run through some games and explore “how to utilize the space for play.”
He hopes to visit the exhibit regularly either with previous sixth-graders or current ones. The idea, he said, is to have someone there to “facilitate games” and show people how the space can be used.
“Hopefully some new games will appear,” White said. “In a way, anybody can play with it in any way.”
While Lateral Office began collaborating with CSA Lincoln students in April, they had already been working on and planning the project since last October. The actual installation work began on Aug. 15, though electrical work began about a month before.
The installation is greatly inspired by political theorist Hannah Arendt’s concept of the public realm as a “space of appearance.”
“We’ve been thinking a lot about public space the last year in particular with COVID,” White said. “I think we’re all wondering ‘What is public space for? How do we use it? How will it change after this unprecedented year?’ And it just seemed really timely to revisit Hannah Arendt’s observations on public space.”
People present themselves — their passions, motivations and beliefs — in public space, he explained. It is a space in which “we appear to others.”
The project’s title is a play on this idea — and, when said quickly, becomes “disappearances.”
As he spoke about the project, White pointed out a woman and young girl encountering the exhibit and how, as they stood on opposite sides, each disappeared to each other.
Unlike a hall of mirrors, viewers don’t really see themselves reflected in the sheets, he said — instead, when you approach the lenticular walls, “You even kind of disappear to yourself.”
White emphasized that the piece is made for interaction and play, not to be a symbol of something else. He hopes that adults can see “through the eyes of a child” as they explore the piece instead of just standing still.
“I think — maybe even more so in Columbus than in other places — that people are used to seeing objects as things to observe,” White said. “… It’s like, ‘Oh, look at this thing. It stands for that but don’t touch it.’ And this one’s the opposite. This is ‘Get in there. Discover. See yourself. See a stranger. Disappear in this.’”
