We face an increasing loneliness epidemic in large urban areas. People increasingly mourn the loss of free third spaces where communities can gather outside their homes. At the same time, we are more digitally connected than ever, but these connections are increasingly fraught with misinformation, polarization, and parasocial relationships. In response, grassroots initiatives have emerged to facilitate community connection: little free libraries, community fridges, neighborhood bulletin boards, and spontaneous memorials.
Computing Shrines is a set of public installations that transform participants’ phones into sites for connecting with neighbors. Using intimate interactions that flourish in digital space, the project builds upon these existing practices rather than aiming to replace them, transforming everyday infrastructure into opportunities to better understand, and thus be prepared to be in community with, each other.
The name is inspired by shrines, both those part of a formal religious institution and unofficial ones created by locals, to rally a community around a common place and associated ritual. For example, Oakland Buddha refers to a Buddha statue purchased from a hardware store that a local placed in a street intersection with illegal activity in Oakland. In the years and now decades since it was placed, the local Buddhist temple community adopted the shrine and continued to add to it, and the illegal activity all but disappeared. Or, on the other extreme, ema (絵馬), a centuries-old practice of writing wishes on small wooden plaques in Japan creates sites where people can see each other’s deepest hopes and dreams.
I get so inspired by these emergent collective practices because they arise out of direct everyday need rather than being prescribed by a city governing body. Because the designers are also the users, these systems are adapted precisely to reality and can easily be adapted to changing conditions. Computing Shrines is a project that emerged out of my own desire for connection to my neighbors in more intimate ways than everyday interactions allow for and the intimacy I’ve been able to share with many Internet strangers who are now close friends.
Computing Shrines is not just a collection of my own individual artworks, but it is also designed to be an open framework for others to build off of and adapt to their own neighborhoods.
Each shrine is composed of a physical structure paired with a site-specific website, accessible through a tap interaction with visitors' phones. The physical structures are designed to be compatible with relatively universal installation tactics such that they can be installed anywhere on top of existing infrastructure, from abandoned phone booths and park benches to neighborhood trees and outside local businesses. They consist of a no-power computing rig that brings visitors to the site's website, through a tap interaction with their phone. Each website is built around a simple collective interaction enabling visitors to share with past and future visitors.
Through the support of DAL and APOSSIBLE, I developed three experimental concepts to explore different applications of the framework:
Upon approaching the shrine, visitors are prompted to offer their phone to the shrine. This physical gesture initiates the digital experience automatically through a system prompt. Once connected, the visitor's phone becomes the portal for sharing intimately. When two Shrines are installed in different locations (e.g. one in Japan and one in California) but connected together, the visitors in each location interact with each other and live captions translate between different languages.
The core mechanic of the digital experience is an intimate exchange. The visitor first listens to the voice of the last visitor and is then prompted to respond with their own worries and dreams. Balancing anonymity with connection, the experience creates a space where visitors can express themselves authentically and vulnerably. By limiting listening to just the last message rather than a complete archive, the shrine creates the digital equivalent of a fleeting conversation with a stranger—a temporary but meaningful moment of connection that acknowledges our shared humanity without demanding ongoing engagement.