Orus Mateo Castaño-Suárez, Lanlan Chen, Jiayun Qiu, Samarth Reddy

"In a time of unprecedented grief and turmoil, the ""Meditative Digital Detox Zone"" offers a respite for the OCAD U community by transmuting participants' smartphones into a therapeutic digital tableau. In the Meditative Digital Detox Zone, technology recedes to enable a shared moment of moment of silence and light. The MDDZ's form was inspired by Jenny Hozer's Blue Purple Tilt, and it guides participants through the use of the physiological sigh breathing technique through a mindful orchestration of light and natural sounds. This durational participatory installation culminates in an impressionistic seascape of colour light cast onto a white wall by a series of white acrylic 6"" x 2' light pieces, which are simultaneously emitting the sounds of ocean waves and gulls. Seating is arranged facing the installation in columns of three, corresponding capacity for each light piece to hold three phones vertically. This maps neatly onto the seating to allow the artist an easy way to identify which seat corresponds to each phone. It also allows each row of seats to correspond to each row of colours in the MDDZ installation (orange, blue, and green). Participants enter the quiet and dimly lit room one by one, remove their shoes, place them under their selected chair. They then voluntarily hand over their phones to the artist, who carefully secures it onto the white laser-cut acrylic rectangles. Three P5.JS programs power the audio seascape—lapping waters, gulls, and waves—paired with corresponding colours of orange, reminiscent of sand (bottom row), blue, like the ocean, (middle row), and green, like a tree lined coastline (top row). "