Dis(kin)Orientation
Helping strangers orient themselves to Italy

my first week in IDII, we had a one week workshop with Steve Diskin on disorientation. the brief was designing analog objects to help newcomers to IDII to orient themselves to living in Italy.
the aim of our group was giving the newcomer an experience, a little taste of the italian language-hand gestures. all of us being strangers in italy, the one thing that caught our attention was the excessive amount of hand gestures used by the italians. people were supporting their conversations with body language, gestures; even using nothing but the gestures and some of them didn't really make sense to us at all.
doing research on the web, through some Survive-In-Italy books and asking locals, we came up with a couple of gestures that could be interesting and useful. the challenge was showing how the gesture was made, the speed of the gesture, etc. so we decided to go for our project Mani in Mano, meaning 'hand in hand' in italian: a little bit of sculpting, we made 3 moulds that people would grab and their hands would take the form of the gesture. we supported our clay moulds with springs and arm supports, and little indications saying what the gesture means.

a) what are you talking about? b) they get on well/they are in love c) your wife is cheating on you