Threshold — A Synesthetic Adjoining

Unity 3D, Arduino

Created by whatsoftdata for Make It Soft, the first exhibition of SoftRx.

A threshold is a point of transition—a line of wood, metal, or stone that simultaneously joins and separates. It marks the moment when one state spills into another: when something fills, accumulates, and exceeds its limit, triggering a shift in atmosphere, perception, or behavior. It is a boundary that belongs fully to neither side, a spatial and perceptual in-between.

Threshold (2022) reinterprets the intersecting frames and layered structures of the original house as an interactive, multisensory installation. Stepping through the air curtain and scent—crossing the literal threshold, visitors enter a room populated by the house’s former doors and windows. These architectural elements, once divided rooms, were hidden beneath wallpaper or served as portals to the outside. Now displaced from their original roles, they return as vessels of memory and material witnesses of time.

Visitors can freely move the doors and windows, causing the spatial configuration to shift. As these elements slide and rotate, patterned glass and wooden frames cast evolving shadows across the room, creating a continuously changing field of light. The installation becomes a living diorama: from afar, the room appears washed in light and shadow; from within, each window reframes the outside world, creating a diorama within a diorama—a world nested inside another world.

This work stages a sensory threshold where memory, architecture, and the imaginary intertwine. The familiar warmth of scent, the soft turbulence of air, and the responsive movement of architectural fragments invite visitors into a space that is at once real and remembered. The boundaries between interior and exterior, present and past, and solidity and illusion remain in flux—offering a temporary passage into a different time, a different world.

Experience Structure

  1. Viewing from the outer hall

    • The installation reads as an otherworldly diorama suffused with shifting light.

  2. Looking inward from the intermediate room

    • Layers of frames and objects generate complex, moving shadows.

  3. Inside the small room (participatory zone)

    • Crossing the air curtain and scent sets up a sensory transition.

    • Visitors move doors and windows to reshape spatial boundaries.

  4. Looking outward through the small room’s window

    • The outside becomes another framed world—a diorama inside a diorama.

Echoing Bachelard’s reflections on the home as a vessel for dreaming, Threshold invites visitors to inhabit a poetic space where memories are activated through spatial play, sensory cues, and shifting boundaries.