TALKING DOORS (official project website)

This is a set of five interactive doors that were installed in well-known public buildings in Lithuania’s capital. The doors became a portal to Lithuania’s Democracy Index, a musical instrument, a kinetic sculpture and even the source of an earthquake. Talking Doors ultimately proved to be not only the materialization of symbolic concepts but also a peculiar experiment that evoked a whole series of curious events.

The door shown above is the Democratic Door, the door that is open to democracy. The degree to which the door of the municipality’s building was open was controlled by a custom-made electronic door-closer reading the current value of the so-called “democracy index”. The latter was being formed in real time by processing the data obtained through the special online poll that asked web surfers to rate the level of Lithuania’s democratic development on a ten-point scale. The door’s position visualised the poll results and thus became a peculiar indicator of democratic development itself.

I believe find this project interesting (and in particular the Democratic Door) because is questions who has the power to set up the rules in a country. The creator proposes that if the Democratic Door was installed in all state institutions, then politicians would be physically pressed to respect democratic values and pursue democratic ideals. Otherwise they would be unable to leave their workplaces.

This idea is fascinating because it makes authority kind-of a physical concept. I wonder what would happen with this project in countries where the type of regimen is changing from democracy to something else. Could windows also take part of the game?