designed in collaboration with Kayla Wisniowski and James Cooper at CSM
Queue Etiquette Forum was established to explore how queues could organise themselves through sound. Operating in a nightlife corridor where venues and housing overlap, the company addressed rising tensions in unmanaged lines outside clubs and events.
Developing the sonic apparatus involved combining responsive tiles with an overhead camera that translated movement into sound. As people shifted position, audio cues revealed subtle changes in direction and density, allowing the queue to adjust without direction. The camera mapped the ebbs and flows, while the tiles produced sonified activities — tones triggered by steps, pauses, and small gestures. Together they made the queue audible, exposing its collective rhythm in real time.
The Forum replaced barriers and signage with signals, etiquette, and low-tech infrastructure. By turning waiting into a participatory soundscape, it encouraged more self-aware and cooperative queues — spaces shaped through the shared sound of movement itself.
The instalation consists of a camera and set of sensors embedded in floortiles controlled by an ESP32 microcontroller. The data is then sent to a computer, reinterpreted by a Python code and translated into a soundscape. Playing with the idea of elevator music which is usually imposed on the user in certain spaces, the installation generates sound in response to the queuer's behvior.
