A Cluster Of 17 Cases: Online

This interactive experience explores how 17 guests of Hong Kong’s Metropole hotel contracted the SARS virus on February 21, 2003. Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr, and Nick Tandavanitj are founders of the digital art collective Blast Theory. They conceived this piece in 2018 when they were artists-in-residence at the World Health Organization in Geneva. Their project began as a physical installation featuring a scale model of the hotel’s ninth floor. In this new virtual work, a tiny camera moves through the eerie halls and empty rooms of the scale model. Visitors to the virtual hotel choose a random room and follow the ordinary experiences of a guest—and learn what happened to them at the end.

This digital content supplements the physical exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics, curated by MASS Design Group and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Supported by Wellcome as part of Contagious Cities.