Stellar Pathfinding

Stellar Pathfinding is a screen-based installation that watches the floor of the room it stands in and judges whether the people crossing it are performing a Daoist ritual. Everyone who steps into view is given the name of a star in Beidou, the Northern Dipper. The floor becomes the nine palaces of the Luoshu square. A panel keeps score — how much of the rite has been completed, which palace it expects next. Step correctly and the count rises; step anywhere else and it returns to zero. Nobody is told any of this. Most visitors are simply crossing a room, and find themselves quietly judged against a rite they have never heard of. Agency here has to be earned inside someone else's cosmology, and it can be lost with a single misplaced foot.