Design Map · Eindhoven
Choreography of the Platformized Spectator
Graduation project by Juliët Nijland at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
‘Choreography of the Platformised Spectator’ explores how social media platforms choreograph the way bodies witness violence. Prompted by the circulation of graphic footage from the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the project examines how algorithmic feeds transform potential acts of witnessing into trained habits of scrolling, lingering and liking, numbing the user and turning them into a spectator. Using embodied observation alongside research into platform infrastructures and surveillance capitalism, the work shifts attention from violent images themselves to the physical behaviours they produce. A mirror-sized interactive screen enlarges the smartphone interface, requiring visitors to navigate a feed with their whole bodies while body-tracking technology determines what appears. By replacing graphic images with textual descriptions, the work exposes the hidden choreography through which platforms shape attention, participation and the capacity to respond to violence.