“Modern Carpet with Endless Entertainment for you Friends”

Heath Robinson is a British artist famous for his illustrations of ad hoc mechanisms for every day tasks. Although overcomplicated and exaggerated, those mechanisms raise an important point on tactile relationship between built environment and our daily rituals and habits. Or as Juhani Pallasmaa once put it: “a doorknob is a handshake with the building”.

Simultaneously marking 150th birthday of the artist, “Modern Carpet with Endless Entertainment for you Friends” is an interactive installation, which recreates one of Robinson’s illustrations taken from the book “How to Live in a Flat”. The carpet consists of several board games and will be available for visitors to interact with.

During the game, the interaction between visitors becomes almost choreographic and is achieved through engaging a simple interior item – the rug. The act of participation in people’s daily lives is something that is imbedded in Robinson’s mechanisms through physical engagement with spatial surrounding or objects.

The installation was designed and organized by Akezhan Zhunussov, commissioned and exhibited by Heath Robinson Museum and hand tufted locally by Sophie Robinson.