Studio Moniker’s Touch for Luck lets you interact with a giant pool of fish on the M+ facade

The recently opened, Hong Kong-based “mega museum”, M+ has commissioned design studio Moniker to create a giant interactive artwork, Touch for Luck. M+’s inaugural digital commission allows audiences to see themselves, or their fish selves, swim across the museum’s facade. By accessing Touch for Luck from your smartphone, audiences enter an “art game”, through which they connect directly to the M+ facade in real time, explains a release.

At 65 metres tall by 110 metres wide, the M+ facade is one of the largest media facades in the world, meaning the Touch for Luck display is visible up to one and a half kilometres away. A release explains that the Hong Kong skyline has been enriched with “a new pond in town”. It continues: “Jump in the pond and swish that tail. Touch your screen. Touch for luck. Touch and never let go.”

While the concept sounds whimsical, Moniker’s Touch for Luck explores how technology impacts our daily lives. Users accessing the Touch for Luck site are invited to touch their screen “without letting go” to connect with the facade and other users. During the game, users receive “small feel-good gems” for their sustained touch, bringing them luck – “so you can’t help but want a bit more each time”, states the release. “You’re one fortunate fish. It’s all about you. Your perseverance is rewarded; your popularity grows, you gain influence over others, perhaps even wealth and power”.

Moniker co-founders Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters explain: “The work thematises the mechanics of our online representation and our smartphone addictions.” Exploring how we use digital spaces to enrich ourselves and seek fulfilment, the game explores the dangers of this online domain. “Loops like so-called social media platforms are designed to get us hooked to (phone) screens – often at the cost of our physical and/or mental wellbeing.”

Touch for Luck will be displayed daily on the M+ facade from 12pm to 3pm CET.