Artist Shani Ha placed this unique interactive art installation at a street corner bistro in New York City. It's called Table for Two. Half of the two-person table is inside the restaurant. The other half is outside. If you sit down at one end, you can choose to interact with the person on the otherside or just look at your own reflection in the glass.
The project is a commentary on how we can be alone in the midst of so many people. Ha writes:
New York is a very crowded city yet so many people are alone. In a city where more than half of the population is single, everyone seems eager to meet someone even if we keep on ignoring people around us, in the real life. Dating/meeting apps and websites are exploding. Most of our interactions happen behind a screen via texts, e-mails, Skype, Tinder etc. Virtual communication is slowly taking the place of our human interactions, accentuating egocentricity over empathy.
Screens have invaded our everyday life becoming our main medium to communicate. In the same way, the glass that crosses through the table and separates the two seats becomes a screen that both connects and isolates, and through which people get to communicate spontaneously.
The installation questions our relationship to otherness, social-isolation and everyday co-presence situations in New York. By inviting the public to use the piece and sit at the table; the artist allows experimental forms of interaction and communication between viewers; passer-by and clients.
-via Fubiz