You’ll recognize these gestures because you make them every day

We gesture every day. We swipe to unlock, tap to click, and pinch to zoom in on a photo. We used to turn keys to dial on a rotary phone, but that gesture died a long time ago. With new technology comes new ways to interact with it, and most of the time, we don’t realize what we’re doing. This isn’t the case for Phil Sierzega and Charlie Whitney, two artists based in Brooklyn. They’re well aware of the gestures they use to operate their devices and think those mini actions warrant attention. Some people view gestures are “meaningless,” but Sierzega and Whitney see them as a sign of the times. This weekend at Panorama, they’ll be amplifying the display of gestures with their installation titled “Giant Gestures.”

Festival attendees will use massive foam hands to play games on an equally massive tablet. The way they move the hands won’t be subtle. Giant Gestures isn’t a memorialization of how we interact with technology today, but rather a “reinterpretation” of it, the artists said. The gestures change meaning when taken out of context, and users will recognize what basically amounts to a daily performance. Maybe a swipe won’t seem so simple anymore.

Giant Gestures will live at The Lab, a 70-foot dome that’s part VR theater / part art gallery / part presented by The Verge. You can read more about The Lab here, and you’ll be able to see it when Panorama kicks off on July 22nd.