Seen from the air, Venice is full of gardens. But on the ground they are hidden from view.
This installation aims to give you a sense of the existence of these hidden gardens,
while avoiding any problems of privacy.

Secret Garden project raises questions about public versus private space in a urban context like Venice.

The main project’s aim is to focus on the possibility to getting enough people to partecipate in the discovery of those kind “of missing links/hidden signs” here in Venice. The garden is the first step in this perspective…

Who is it for?
Potentially everybody, especially who likes to find surprices all around Venice!

Where is it? 

How does it do this?

It could be that somewhere on the wall,
the window becomes an eye able to displace our vision, and you only need to look in…

The prototype...
In order to set up Secret Garden project, first I looked for gardens all around Venice.
For an entire month I was monitoring all kind of people’s experiences inside the garden (the public ones) after while I was trying to get more feelings from that kind of secret gardens behind closed doors!
Since I found a nice rounded window on the wall of one abandoned garden.
For his peculiarity this last was one of the few windows I never saw and I am sure, not by chance, following his shape, someone painted it with an eye!
From that moment I started working with the idea to break the wall of secret through a simply glance!

How you can see from the picture below the final prototype was an optical box where one hole was inviting to look inside.



In the video it's possible to see the vision inside the box.
 

What about the viewer's behaviour?
Through the window you can see the mirror of yoursef afterwhile, detecting your movements, the web cam gives to you the possibility to play with a “wind flower”, but…
if you are looking too much closer…
a garden monster appears…


Pepper’s ghost helped a lot in developing this project.
Pepper’s ghost is an optical effect which produces a shifting scene of real things, illusions, imaginary fancies and deceptions.
A simple way to build Pepper’s ghost is using simple materials like a wooden black box and a sheet of plexiglas (into the box at a 45-degree angle).
But, in setting up a Pepper’s illusion, I understood that the lighting requires experimentation and adjustment.

Credits: Secret Garden is still a prototype, developed at IUAV University in Venice with professors Gillian Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor in collaboration with Durrel Bishop and Davide Rocchesso.

Software used: BlobDetection (Processing libraries).

Stuff used: a mac, a webcam, a monitor, a sheet of pexiglass, a big black box.

Brainstorming, sketches and project development: Giovanna Nicosia.

Prototype’s problem solving: Giovanna Nicosia.

Code: Giovanna Nicosia with help of Davide Rocchesso.