Touch for Luck
Interactive digital commission for the M+ Facade
January 27–May 1, 2022
38 Museum Drive, Kowloon
Hong Kong
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm,
Friday 10am–10pm
T 852 2200 0217
Touch for Luck is an interactive digital work that reflects the mechanics of social media platforms designed to hook us to the screen through a game. By simply touching their phones, players navigate a fish through a virtual pond, interacting with other fish that are similarly guided by users from around the world. The entire collaborative, multi-player pond appears nightly on the M+ Facade, an expansive LED screen on the museum building overlooking Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong.
Created by the Amsterdam-based interaction media and design studio Moniker, Touch for Luck explores the lure of social media and the physical and psychological costs of staying perpetually online. The point of the game is to acquire lucky charms by touching the phone screen and never letting go. “Disconnection itself has become an elite privilege,” according to Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters of Moniker. The longer players stay in touch with their phones, the more charms their aquatic avatars acquire. Over the course of the game, a simple green fish becomes a sparkling object of online attention.
Connecting players’ personal devices to one of the biggest screens in the world, Touch for Luck offers a mesmerising experience and probes the absurdity and pitfalls of touch-fuelled online interactions.
About Moniker
Moniker is an Amsterdam-based interaction and media design studio by Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters. The artists explore the characteristics of technology, including how we use it and how it influences our daily lives. The audience is often asked to take part in the development of their projects. Moniker has won several awards, including a British Music Video Award, several Dutch Design Awards, and the Amsterdamprijs voor de Kunst.
About M+
M+ is Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture. The museum showcases a pre-eminent collection of 20th- and 21st-century visual culture within an Asian context, encompassing the disciplines of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art from Hong Kong, Greater China, Asia, and beyond.
