During the six days the interactive installation was on show, for a few hours every day, the people wandering around the Christmas market were invited to get inside of the container, while three fans would be blasting around the snow-looking styrofoam.

The container established a peculiar relationship between the people that would enter it, and those who were on the outside: while both would be looking at each other through a glass, the ones on the inside would become part of a snow globe kind of attraction, one of the most iconic holiday souvenirs. In this case, the people are the life-size miniature; once one enters the space, it becomes the focus of the attention, and those who surround this exhibition cabinet would be “consuming” it.

The styrofoam was collected from wrappings of products; this aspect also brought into play the polluting aspect of consumerism, while making the container resemble a big packaging. This being in the context of a Christmas Market, it was a great opportunity to work with a very specific environment (holiday shopping, shiny objects, expensive goods, traditional symbolism), therefore having definite expectations and attitude from the public. A market is a place where people go to shop and consume a romanticised idea of a holiday. The snowy aesthetics attracted many passer-byes that wanted to take pictures in it, while they would end up posing in a pile of polluting trash. Many commented: “This is the only snow we’re gonna have in a few years!”.

This double perception (on one side the magical snow globe where kids were playing; on the other the sad waiting-room-looking cold space with garbage being blasted all around, and the people inside being displayed like zoo animals) was the core of this work.

The public’s reactions and was really relevant for this project and the response majorly exceeded what we had anticipated.