Sit with Me 2016

Sit with Me was an interactive digital media installation, situated in the permanent exhibition Destination Tyneside in the Discovery Museum, Newcastle, UK between 2016 and 2020. It was created by a multidisciplinary design team from Newcastle University, deploying an iterative research-through-design approach. The installation experiments with the idea of creating a space, in which visitors to the exhibition interact with nine ‘portraits’ of historic migrants in the Tyneside and with other fellow visitors seated with them.

Visitors were invited to sit down at an interactive mirror that forms part of the new exhibit. As the visitor looks at their reflection, an archive image of a person gradually appears inside the mirror. Using the same 3D camera technology as an Xbox Kinect, the installation reacts to the visitor’s presence, locating where they are sitting and then configuring the display so that they can make eye contact with the person in the photograph.