“If It Was A Dance Scene” is a kinetic installation that transforms an assembly line into a dance floor — a mechanical choreography of metal parts suspended above a moving conveyor belt.
In a world fixated on efficiency and measurable outcomes, the invention of the machine was heralded as the liberation of human welfare: a guarantee of stable production, a promise of abundance. Instead, it installed a perpetual motion — production begetting more production, constant movement with no inherent goal and no satisfaction. Where labour once united people, forming communities around shared rhythm, it now separates them by measurable metric. This shift has hollowed out our ceremonies as well. Inspired by Byung-Chul Han’s The Disappearance of Ritual, the work reflects on how the ritual of celebration has been severed from the movement of production — milestones reduced to numerical achievements and ostentatious displays, performance substituted for meaning. This is my attempt to reclaim the machine as a site of celebration, and to reinvent the ceremony.
Eleven metal parts are suspended above a conveyor belt operating in a continuous back-and-forth motion. A magnet beneath the belt draws the parts along with it, generating a soundscape of clinking and clattering metal — a mechanical performance. The installation draws an ironic parallel between the repetitive gesture of industrial labour and the repetitive gesture of contemporary dance: both caught in the same monotony, separated only by the frame placed around them. Through its perpetual motion and rhythmic interplay of magnetism and metal, the work proposes a different measure of productivity — one that produces only sound and movement, endlessly, for no output at all.
The installation is composed of a motor, metal components, a belt module, and aluminium profiles. An Arduino Uno runs a preset program controlling the belt’s rhythmic motion. The belt and motor bearings were designed in Fusion 360 and 3D-printed; the hanging metal elements are arranged in a grid for structural stability. For the sonic dimension of the piece, I drew inspiration from Sizhu Li’s work Moonment, which shaped my approach to generating a spatial soundscape from metal.
