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stavros.didakis@nyu.edu

The Politics of Media Governance

An Interactive Participatory Performance

Commissioned Artwork, Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, Heraklion (GR)

Custom-built multitouch tabletop, software development, media design
2012

The Politics of Media Governance is an interactive media installation that interrogates how systems of control, participation, and agency manifest within hybrid environments. Commissioned in 2012 by the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, the work invites users into a dynamic, real-time performance where the abstract and tangible intertwine — physically, digitally, and politically.

At its core lies a custom-built multitouch tabletop, engineered using back-screen projection and infrared tracking technology. The interface is augmented with physical objects embedded with fiducial markers — each symbolically coded to represent various facets of contemporary governance: censorship, transparency, freedom, surveillance, and authority. These tangible markers are not merely triggers, but provocations; they anchor a gestural vocabulary that transforms the audience into co-authors of a continuously evolving social landscape.

Each action on the tabletop triggers immediate visual and sonic feedback. As users move the objects, the system translates their gestures into evolving audiovisual responses. These interactions simulate how governance operates — reactive, unpredictable, and shaped by collective input. The installation rejects the idea of media as passive. It presents it as a system of influence, where control, surveillance, and freedom are constantly negotiated through interaction. It is not a solitary experience. The tabletop becomes a shared interface, where one user’s decision alters the environment for others. This reveals how individual agency operates within a larger, interdependent system, highlighting the social and political stakes of participation.

The Politics of Media Governance ultimately functions as both a critique and a proposition. It critiques systems that govern how we see, hear, and act in the mediated world, while proposing an alternative—an arena where meaning emerges through open-ended interaction, symbolic play, and collaborative negotiation. By embedding these dynamics in an artistically constructed ecosystem, the work offers a space to rethink participation, not just in art, but in the broader architectures of society.