Handshake

On the first Friday in October I went to Terrain in Spokane Washington. I had a lot of fun, this was something I had never experienced before. I thought it was really interesting to see different people from all walks of life at this event, there were young people, old people, sophisticated people, hippies, etc. I also liked seeing different types of artwork from different levels of artists. There were very advanced pieces of artwork to school projects and everything in between. The music was really loud so I thought it kind of tampered the experience. I did a social experiment with a random stranger that lasted for about three minutes and it was really exciting to get to know and meet someone you wouldn’t normally ever cross paths with. This social experiment was called Handshake, a Social Experiment and Community Building Exercise and was created by Ryan Oelrich and Robert Thompson. I wouldn’t have thought of this as art but in a way it can be the art of making new relationships with people. The set up had two tents and people would go into a little dark room, shake hands with a random stranger and then talk for three minutes about whatever you wanted. While talking you would try to draw a picture of what you thought the other person looked like and at the end of the three minutes you would meet the stranger and exchange the pictures you drew. The ages of the participants varied from young kids to older adults. The creators wanted people to be more unified together and on their paper it said “#spokanebettertogether” which was a part of their mission to bring people together and create a better and more involved community. This experiment did not have a lot of materials or hours of tedious painting or drawing but it involved a lot of people and these people had to be willing to do the experiment. It was really crowded at Terrain and I noticed that most people would just walk past the booth or ignore the employee that was asking people if they wanted to be a part of the experiment. I participated in this experiment and was paired up with a mom who probably in her early 40’s and it was really interesting to hear her talk about all the colleges she went to and then for me to explain that I am still in college. I felt a connection with this experiment and event because I participated in it and explained it to people who weren’t at the event, but I think the creators could have done more to really involve the whole community or something to display this experiment to the community. Maybe they could have traced every participant’s hands because it was called handshake and then use all those hands to create a bigger piece of work to promote bringing the community together. I wonder does this booth only get set up at art events? Can it be done on a bigger scale with even more people to make an even greater impact on the community?