The Pulse of Play: Light, Motion, and Urban Connection
The work “Impulse See-Saw” was designed and created in 2015 by Lola Sheppard and Conor Sampson for the Montreal Light Festival (Luminothérapie). This project was formed in response to an international urban design call for winter urban spaces, a time when prolonged cold empties the streets of excitement and life. A collection of fifteen illuminated and sound-making see-saws, in different sizes, are activated by the movement of people’s bodies and transform the space from stillness and darkness into motion and brightness. This work was later exhibited in various cities around the world and received the Canadian Urban Design Award and the AZ Award.
At its simplest level, “Impulse See-Saw” is a play-based experience; but on a deeper level, it turns the body into the axis of connection between human and space. The audience, in order to activate it, is compelled to bring their balance, weight, and physical presence into play. Here, the body is a means for forming connection and movement, whose output and response are light and sound. Each see-saw, by itself and depending on its length, has a different motion and vibration: the longer see-saws are soft and calm, while the shorter ones are faster and more unstable, and as a result, they have a quicker rhythm. This variety in sound and size makes the public space not only visible, but also re-sensed as part of everyday life, and it creates a new feeling and experience, a space that, in the cold of winter, becomes alive and creates life. 
From the perspective of the “bodily and sensory interaction” theory that Zhou presents for interactive works, “Impulse See-Saw” scores highly on the axis of physical engagement, because without physical participation, the work is meaningless. However, on the axis of deep bodily feeling, it can be said that the kinetic experience is strong, but the light and sound feedbacks are sometimes reduced to a level of spectacle and visual attraction. The audience’s interaction with the work also becomes predictable after several rounds of play; therefore, there is a risk of “interaction inflation”, a situation where the appearance of interaction remains but the depth of experience decreases. However, the need for cooperation between two people on each see-saw adds a social and relational aspect to the work that to some extent compensates for this weakness.
The main strength of this work lies in creating collective joy, a joy separated from consumption and arising purely from being with another person. Through the language of play, “Impulse See-Saw” separates the city from the logic of economic and political life and turns it again into a medium for building relationships and shared human experiences in common space. Although one can criticize its repetitiveness and performative nature, this project is certainly one of the most successful examples in the field of urban and interpersonal interactive design, showing how the simple movement of going up and down, driven by two opposing yet connected forces, can become a metaphor for coexistence, social balance, human warmth, and also a new and different understanding of urban space and human connection in the cold of winter.
