HOWL FOR CHANGE

Mixed-Reality Installation About Bias, Visibility, and the Courage to Speak Truth

Howl For Change was a participatory artwork that invited audiences to explore how bias is formed, challenged, and dismantled. The project centred on an augmented reality mask that allowed participants to speak freely while their identity remained obscured, only to reveal their true face in a single cathartic gesture when they howled. This act of rupture transformed anonymity into agency, pairing vulnerability with self-determination.

Alongside the AR artwork, a mixed-reality installation extended the experience into a collective, room-scale expression of the same idea. Across both modes, Howl For Change examined how narratives are projected onto bodies, and how powerful it can be when those narratives are disrupted or reclaimed. The work blended AR, installation art, and social storytelling to create a space where truth could be voiced without fear.

Howl For Change
2018

  • Elements Arts Festival, New York, USA

  • At the core of Howl For Change was an augmented reality mask that enabled participants to record a short message while their face remained concealed behind an oversized golden wolf mask. The anonymity created emotional safety, allowing people to voice truths they might not otherwise share.

    The moment they howled, the mask burst apart, revealing their real identity for the remainder of the recording. This transformation—half-playful, half-disarming—symbolised the release of a truth that had been held behind the façade.

    Each recording was added to a 360-degree browser gallery, where audiences could explore the videos through a VR headset or directly on a computer. The gallery became a constellation of individual voices, each revealed through the participant’s chosen moment of courage.

    The installation version of Howl For Change invited audiences to inhabit the wolf figure at room scale. Using a Kinect tracking system, each visitor’s body was transformed into a stylised wolf avatar projected onto a large screen, encased in a faceted golden mask that refused easy categorisation of identity.

    As in the AR artwork, visitors were encouraged to speak or howl. When they did, the avatar mirrored the gesture and then shattered into fragments, briefly revealing the visitor’s real face before dissolving back into abstraction.

    The installation offered a shared, performative version of the core idea: that truth often requires a moment of rupture, and that technology can mediate that moment in a way that feels both safe and impactful.

Across its forms, Howl For Change reflected Skye Von’s artistic interest in how technology can surface, challenge, and soften the narratives we place on one another. By allowing participants to mask themselves and then choose the moment of revelation, the work approached bias not as a topic to explain but as an experience to feel. Whether encountered through an AR mask, a 360-degree video gallery, or an immersive installation, Howl For Change invited participants to interrupt a stereotype, reclaim a narrative, and speak a truth that might otherwise remain unheard.

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