Main Idea / Concept

Our project, Echo, responds to a speculative world where empathy has been systematically erased. In this imagined society, the ruling powers realized that when people care for one another, when they empathize and connect, they become harder to control. Acts of empathy were redefined as weakness, gradually suppressed, and ultimately censored. Emotional expression became suspicious, and numbness replaced human warmth.

Echo is our quiet form of resistance. It is a campaign and a movement that does not confront openly, but instead creates spaces where people can feel again. The project explores the power of subtle emotional activation, asking: What happens when we awaken the part of ourselves that has been silenced?

Process

Our process began with a conceptual exploration: imagining a society where empathy was erased because it threatened control. We studied how historical and contemporary systems suppress emotion through propaganda, censorship, surveillance, and social pressure. This research shaped our narrative of a world where feeling is considered dangerous and connection is forbidden.

From there, we shifted into design exploration. We asked ourselves: How can design awaken a feeling rather than explain it? We focused on creating a journey that guides visitors through emotional transformation from suppression and numbness to recognition and shared empathy.

Key aspects of our process included:

Symbol Research: We studied the cultural role of masks as tools of anonymity, ritual, suppression, and transformation, and developed them into the core symbol of our concept.

Sensory Exploration: We explored how light, texture, and sound can evoke emotional states. The use of veils, dim, narrow passages, and later warm light was designed to physically simulate the movement from isolation to awakening.

Interactive Prototyping: We experimented with mask interactions, reflective questions, and symbolic actions like marking another person’s mask to create a participatory and intimate experience.

Sound and Music Development: Recognizing the emotional power of sound, we composed our original music to accompany the visitor’s journey. The audio evolves through the stages of the installation, moving from mechanical suppression to emotional release.

Spatial and Experiential Design: We designed a single-room installation that unfolds in stages, prototyping circulation, transitions, and the emotional pacing of the visitor’s journey to ensure that each step contributes to the final sense of reconnection.

Testing Narrative Flow: We refined the temporal sequence of actions, wearing the mask, entering the hallway, hearing propaganda, encountering emotional triggers, and marking masks, to maintain a clear emotional arc.

Our process was not about gathering numerical data but about exploring emotion through design. By combining research, sensory experiments, and narrative prototyping, we created a cohesive experience where every design choice, from light and sound to objects and participation, serves the goal of reawakening empathy.

Final Outcome

The outcome of our project is Echo, a mobile immersive installation that unfolds within a single room, transforming it into a journey of emotional reawakening. The design combines space, light, sound, and interaction to move participants from suppression to reconnection.

The room is bathed in red light, evoking both tension and emotional intensity, the color of alarm, but also life and feeling returning. Long, vertical veils of fabric hang from the ceiling, creating a narrow, maze-like passage that visitors walk through wearing white neutral masks. This physical constraint and partial blindness evoke the experience of living in a society where perception and empathy are limited.

As visitors move deeper into the space, they encounter cubic blocks that can be touched or sat on, and printed prompts and questions scattered across the floor, gently guiding them toward introspection: reminders of human vulnerability, memory, and care. The room is filled with our self-composed music, which begins with mechanical and distant tones and gradually becomes warmer and more human, mirroring the emotional journey we want participants to experience.

In the center of the room, our awakening space, visitors are invited to mark each other’s masks with words, drawings, and colors. This quiet, symbolic act turns the mask from a tool of suppression into a canvas of shared emotion and empathy, making the invisible visible.

At the end of the experience, visitors remove their masks and hang them on the wall near the exit, creating a collective display of emotional traces. These marked masks form a “Wall of Echoes,” a silent record of all who have passed through, leaving behind visible reminders of reconnection before stepping back into the world outside.

The entire installation is portable and modular, designed to fit into a suitcase and travel to different locations. Each time it is reassembled, it quietly spreads empathy, leaving echoes of feeling wherever it appears.

Reflection

Echo is a reflection on the fragility and strength of empathy in a world that often rewards detachment. It is not a spectacle but a tool for emotional education and quiet resistance. By guiding visitors through a sensory and participatory experience, moving from numbness to feeling, from isolation to expression, the project allows them to rediscover something deeply human.

Through this project, we discovered that design can awaken emotion without words, bypassing logic to reach the core of human experience. It reminds us that empathy is strength, feeling is resistance, and connection, even in silence, can travel, multiply, and endure. One suitcase, one echo at a time.