Bonded: Side Quests

Description

Bonded: Side Quests is a portable interactive sculpture that investigates how a personalised computational object can organise an occasion for mutual attention.

The work combines an animated avatar, motion sensing, sound, and a collection of one hundred Side Quests: short instructions for activities involving two people. The figure addresses its recipient by name and responds to lifting, tilting, shaking, and gentle rocking through changes in animation, language, and sound.

Shaking the sculpture introduces an invitation to play, cooperate, make something, or share a reflection with another person. A familiar figure becomes the intermediary through which a shared activity is proposed.

Developed within Bonded Studio’s inquiry into recognition, loneliness, and the quality of connection, the sculpture addresses a particular situation: two people are already together, while the possibility of attending to one another remains open.

The work gives that possibility a physical form. The object can be held, carried, and activated within everyday circumstances. Its instructions provide a common point of departure; the participants decide whether to proceed and how to respond.

Through this relation between personal address and mutual participation, the sculpture examines what an interface can contribute to an encounter whose significance depends on another person’s attention.

Conceptual Framework

Physical proximity establishes an opportunity for relation. The experience of being understood depends on what occurs within that proximity.

The sculpture takes this distinction as its central problem.

Its first exchange is specific and repeatable. A name, a familiar image, and a movement-responsive figure establish a recognisable mode of address. The Side Quest then introduces a situation whose development depends on two people.

The work places these forms of response within a single encounter: the object reacts to a gesture; a person receives another person’s expression, action, or hesitation.

A programmed response can acknowledge an input. An interpersonal response can acquire significance through the way someone understands, accepts, or attends to what is offered.

The sculpture stages the passage between these relations. Its artistic question concerns the conditions under which an invitation becomes an experience of mutual presence.

Research Context: The Quality of Connection

Bonded Research Lab’s October 2026 report describes an anonymous online survey of 238 participants. Within this sample, feeling heard by people close to them was more closely associated with loneliness than the number of people in whom they could confide.

The report also identifies a gap between available conversation and desired depth: 84 per cent reported at least a slight gap, including 38 per cent who described it as noticeable or large.

When asked what most helps a conversation become meaningful, participants most frequently selected feeling listened to, followed by feeling safe and unjudged.

These findings locate a question within existing relationships:

What makes time together feel responsive to the people sharing it?

The sculpture develops an artistic response to that question through shared activity. Its prompts offer material for attention, while the encounter depends on how the participants receive one another.

The survey is observational and describes those who took part. It informs the work’s inquiry; the sculpture’s effects remain to be examined.

Form, Identity, and the Body

The avatar carries a history within the artist’s practice.

In Nostalgie World, visitors encountered generated characters and selected figures with which they identified. Bonded Studio extends that proposition through avatars assembled by the person they represent.

The sculpture brings this authored image into a handheld object.

A representation associated with the recipient becomes an animated figure that can be carried, greeted, and gently rocked. The image occupies an ambiguous position between a presentation of the self and an apparent companion.

The personalised dedication adds a further relation: an object made by someone, for someone.

Its sculptural body holds these forms of address together. It gives a chosen image a physical place in the recipient’s life, while making that image available as the starting point for an encounter with another person.

Gesture and Responsiveness

The movement vocabulary gives the figure an apparent sensitivity to handling.

A lift produces a greeting. A tilt changes its animation. Gentle rocking activates a concealed affectionate reply. Motion is registered by the sensor and given an emotional vocabulary through captions, images, and sound.

This relation makes the interpretation of a gesture perceptible.

Bonded Studio’s research foregrounds the experience of being heard. In the sculpture, a responsive figure introduces that concern through a simpler exchange whose rules are repeatable.

The difference becomes significant when the instruction passes into a shared activity. A person’s willingness, understanding, and response cannot be specified by the same rule that produces an animation.

The work places the familiarity of programmed acknowledgement beside the uncertainty of being received by another person.

Play and the First Move

Bonded’s research identifies difficulty finding the right moment, uncertainty about how to begin, awkwardness, and fear of a response among the barriers participants reported.

The sculpture gives beginning a small procedure.

One person shakes the object. A prompt appears. The proposed action is available to both people as something they can consider together.

The object supplies the wording of the invitation. The participants retain responsibility for its acceptance.

The game-derived term Side Quest gives the activity a modest place within everyday life. Participation can begin through a small shared undertaking, without requiring either person to declare a need for greater closeness.

The three categories make different forms of encounter available. SPARK proposes brief playful actions; SYNC introduces cooperation; OPEN UP invites more reflective conversation.

These modes allow the work to approach connection through doing as well as speaking. Personal disclosure remains one possibility among others.

Attention and Duration

The sculpture gives attention an initial focus and proposes an activity through which that focus can be shared.

This operation develops Bonded Studio’s intention to make the interface a passage into an encounter. The screen carries an invitation whose continuation extends into the participants’ circumstances.

The twenty-second display interval establishes time for reading. It leaves the duration of the activity to the people undertaking it.

When the character returns, the encounter may still be developing. The display’s timing and the participants’ experience proceed on different terms.

The figure remains available for further interaction. This preserves a tension within the work: the same character that proposes a shared activity can continue to attract attention to itself.

The direction of attention is therefore negotiated through use. It remains possible to attend to the companion, to the task, or to the person sharing it.

Chance and Mutual Choice

The one hundred prompts are presented in a shuffled order, with each appearing once before the collection is reshuffled.

This version leaves the order of encounter to chance. The categories do not constitute a compulsory progression toward greater disclosure.

Participants can undertake a task, adapt it to their circumstances, or request another.

The option to pass gives different degrees of willingness a place within the work. Declining an invitation can preserve the conditions under which another becomes welcome.

Mutuality remains an agreement between people. The software proposes a situation; participation determines what becomes shared.

System and Interaction

The work employs an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, a 1.69-inch LCD, an accelerometer and gyroscope, a buzzer, and a rechargeable battery.

Movement is mapped to programmed animated states, captions, and audible responses. Sustained shaking activates the quest sequence. Gentle rocking activates a separate concealed response.

Personalisation is configured through stored names, a nickname, a title, and a maker’s dedication.

The system displays instructions and returns to the character after the reading interval. It does not verify completion of the activity.

Its computational structure organises the invitation. The resulting encounter takes place through the participants’ actions, interpretations, and responses.

Collective Context

The sculpture carries a private dedication into situations that can involve other people.

Its portability allows the work to enter shared time beyond the exhibition setting: an ordinary pause, an evening together, or a moment when neither person has proposed what to do next.

The question of connection is situated within these specific circumstances. The work assumes another person is available and leaves the nature of that relationship open.

Its contribution lies in making the beginning tangible. A gesture calls up an invitation; an invitation asks for mutual attention; the encounter acquires its meaning through what the participants make possible for one another.

Mediums

Title: Bonded: Side Quests
Year of Creation: 2026
Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 2.5 cm
Materials: ESP32-S3, Gyroscope sensor, PLA, Aluminium
Technologies: algorithmically generated side quest activities, microcontrollers, electronic components & sensors, programming in Node.js, C++, 3D printing.
Related: The Architecture of Human Attention, The Psychology of Value, The Illusion of Choice, The Physics of Meaning