Launching Duet
We have just officially launched Duet, our collaboration with Quicksand which has been developed together between Leeds, Delhi and Bangalore over the past two years. It’s always a big thing letting a work that has been in development over many years go out into the wild.
On a practical level Duet is an app that you download and that pairs you with one other person in the the UK or India depending on where you are based. Once you have signed up you will either be paired immediately with someone waiting to also be paired or you will be partner pending until someone new downloads and activates the app.
Duet is not social media, (although thats the only suitable tick box given to us by apple) neither is it “entertainment” or a “game”, our intentions were to create a different type of digital app experience, a dreamy, slow one, where you partner with one or maybe hundreds of people, over the duration of the year, getting little glimpses of each others daily lives as you answer a question you might not otherwise have been asked.
The piece attempts to connect people over long stretches of time and distances, if your lucky you may have one dedicated partner for the whole year or much like real life you may meet and exchange briefly with many people that then drift on, you may get many responses you may get very few. Duet is about an attempt to keep a connection with people.
We wanted to create a digital experience that was the opposite of traditional social media platforms and the way in which we usually share or broadcast information. Duet is completely anonymous, the reasons to participate are not about publishing an online profile and identity. We hope that Duet will be an interaction on your phone that challenges your current relationship with technology and social media.
A moment out of your day, shared with one other, shared with thousands online via the web platform, or by people walking past the public artworks on the way to work. It is about small, brief moments of self expression.
Its about looking outside of your own day to day, and imaging someone experiencing a different life on the other side of the world, and what our relationship to each other is and feels like. It is about day dreaming and gradually imagining anothers life through the snippets of information revealed to you but also crucially it is also about you, and taking time to reflect and answer a question about your life.
We currently have an even 124 UK — 124 Indian participants live after the first two weeks, you can view the conversations taking place live here.
And join up here:
