major research project, 2025
prototype updates & field test
Research Question:
How can a bike-based interactive media platform, developed through research-creation and critical making, be designed to support participatory, public interaction and create conditions for community engagement and urban spatial reclamation?
The Tactical Interaction Project (TIP) is a bike-based, modular media system that facilitates interactive, site-specific interventions. Built in response to the issues of the privatization of public space and threats to cycling infrastructure in Toronto, TIP acts as a form of tactical media, critically examining questions of authorship, power, and the right to the city.
Designed through research-creation and DIY critical making, TIP explores how mobile technology can encourage both digital interaction and social engagement in the city. The platform leverages consumer electronics and software tools to create spaces of play, experimentation, and co-creation in the urban environment. It is designed not just to deliver messages, but to enable a collective process of meaning-making and spatial reclamation of the city, tipping the scales back towards those who live, work and play in these spaces.
First imagined over a decade ago, during my undergraduate studies in Global Development and Film & Media, this project was revived in response to recent political developments in Toronto, particularly attacks on cycling infrastructure and increased privatization of public space, furthering my desire to entwine my personal art practice with social engagement.
It also draws a inspiration from a wide net, including: avant-garde artists like the Situationist International and Nam June Paik, contemporary artists such as Krzysztof Wodiczko and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, collectives like Critical Art Ensemble, The Illuminator and Graffiti Research Lab, and the DIY-punk community in Dawson City, Yukon, where I lived for 8 years.
Unlike traditional projection-based art or tactical media, which has historically focused more on spectacle and messaging than on engagement or co-authorship, TIP emphasizes both interactivity and modularity, inviting others to contribute content, co-create, and shape experiences in real time. It’s not just a media platform, but a flexible, DIY, participatory toolkit designed to foster community connection, critical dialogue, and tactical reclaiming of public space.
Read more in the Tactical Interaction Zine: