The art form, explained by BREAKFAST

Interactive Art

Interactive art responds to you. Walk up to one of BREAKFAST's works and it senses you're there — thousands of physical elements shift their motion to meet you, in real time, with no screens and no projectors.

BREAKFAST has been building interactive kinetic artworks since 2012. Interwoven Existence became the first interactive kinetic artwork shown at the Venice Biennale; Time Capsule Over Manhattan was commissioned as a permanent work for Rockefeller Center in 2024.

What is interactive art?

Interactive art is any artwork that changes in response to its audience. Where traditional art asks you to look, interactive art notices you looking back. The viewer isn't outside the work — their presence, movement, and gestures become part of its composition.

Much of what's called interactive art today lives on screens. BREAKFAST's version is physical: kinetic sculpture — flipping discs, rotating blocks — whose real, mechanical motion is choreographed by what's happening in the room. When a piece mirrors your silhouette in thousands of moving parts, the effect is closer to standing in front of a living thing than in front of a display.

How the pieces sense

Each interactive work watches the space in front of it through a depth array sensor — a component that reads the room as a field of distances rather than a picture. Software interprets what the piece senses: a person arriving, an arm raised, a crowd flowing past. That understanding is translated, live, into motion across the work's surface.

In most works the response is ephemeral — it happens and it's gone, with nothing recorded or stored. The Time Capsule series inverts that: each piece saves low-resolution silhouettes of its interactions locally on the artwork, replaying moments from its own history between visitors. A Time Capsule that has hung for years carries thousands of them — a slowly deepening archive of everyone who ever stood before it. Nothing ever leaves the piece.

Presence changes spaces

Interactive art earns its place in busy spaces because it converts foot traffic into engagement. In a lobby or hotel, a responsive artwork becomes the spot where people pause, wave, bring someone back to. Traverse set that template — sixteen feet of flip-discs answering every passerby — and its successors now greet visitors in headquarters and public buildings worldwide.

The same interaction scales down to the home. Many of BREAKFAST's collector editions are fully interactive: Portraits works turn a wall into a mechanical mirror, and smaller Time Capsules quietly collect a family's history in silhouettes.

Interactive art questions, answered

What is interactive art?

Art that responds to the people in front of it. In BREAKFAST's work the response is physical — thousands of mechanical elements changing their motion as you approach, move, or linger.

How do BREAKFAST's artworks sense people?

Each interactive piece senses the space in front of it through a depth array sensor. Software reads the shapes and movement it senses — a silhouette, a wave, a crowd — and folds them into the artwork's motion in real time.

Is anything recorded?

In most works, nothing is recorded or stored — the response happens live and disappears. The Time Capsule series is the deliberate exception: it saves low-resolution silhouettes locally on the piece itself, building a growing archive of everyone who has ever interacted with it. Nothing ever leaves the artwork.

Where does interactive art work best?

Anywhere people pass or gather: lobbies, headquarters, hotels, museums, retail flagships — and homes. Interaction gives a space a reason to slow down; pieces become meeting points and landmarks.

Can I commission an interactive installation?

Yes. BREAKFAST creates site-specific interactive commissions at every scale, and many catalog works are interactive out of the box. Start an inquiry and someone from BREAKFAST's team will be in touch.