Scott Snibbe's Boundary Functions is an interactive work that shows the "personal space" between people by drawing boundary lines between them. I chose this work because I like how Snibbe uses a simple algorithm to highlight and unspoken social convention, but I also chose this work because I believe it falls short in some regards. Maybe I am coming from a jaded perspective looking back from 2019 to the technical concepts of the year I was born, but Boundary Functions seems in practice to be just an algorithm to draw lines between people. I probably would not make an immediate jump to "personal space" if I were to step on the platform myself. There's a snippet in the video where children are playing on this platform thinking no more of it than as a bunch of pretty lights, which I find telling. I guess what I'm getting at here is that the idea of "personal space" seems superimposed upon the actual interactions encouraged by this installation. But perhaps that's the point; social conventions are really just superimposed on our interactions.
