s t o r y t e l l i n g

THE HANDS CAN TELL A LOT

When I was a child, I would sit in wonder, watching my grandmother’s hands move through daily life. They were thin, covered in delicate wrinkles, with veins running like small rivers beneath her skin. Spots marked the passing of time, and yet, to me, they were the most beautiful hands I had ever seen. They carried stories—of care, of work, of love. I traced the lines with my fingers, feeling their texture, trying to understand what they meant.

I was fascinated by how the skin transformed over time, how expressions left imprints on the face. I would ask my grandmother to wrinkle her forehead, watching the lines appear and disappear. It felt like a secret language, a map of emotions and time. I would stand before the mirror, raising my eyebrows and furrowing my brow, hoping to see the same lines on my own face. I wanted to belong to that language, to carry those marks of time and experience.

As I grew older, my fascination deepened. The skin, the body—our very materiality—constantly shifting, recording our existence without words. Our bodies remember. Every crease, every scar, every stretch of skin holds a story. And yet, in a world obsessed with youth, these stories are often erased, hidden, or seen as imperfections. But I see them as history, as art.

This exploration of memory, transformation, and the body's silent storytelling has led me to my final project for Fabricademy: THE HANDS CAN TELL A LOT. This project is not just an artistic scenography; it is a conversation with time. It is an interactive SCENOGRAPHY that captures the ephemeral yet permanent imprints of life on our skin.

THE CONCEPT: MOVEMENT AS MEMORY

At its core, this project is about memory—not the kind stored in photographs or written in books, but the memory etched into the body itself. Skin folds and stretches, shifts and contracts, just like paper being folded into an origami shape. These transformations are not static; they are alive, responsive, and ever-changing.

The SCENOGRAPHY consists of two main components: a glove, acting as the controller, and a delicate structure made of bioplastic, folded in origami shapes, moved by motors. The glove, worn by the participant, becomes the input device, responding to their hand movements. As fingers bend and stretch, the bioplastic structure mirrors these motions—folding, unfolding, expanding, and contracting. It breathes like skin, like time moving through matter.

THE PHILOSOPHY: THE BODY AS AN ARCHIVE

In many ways, our bodies are living archives. They hold not only personal histories but collective ones. Hands, in particular, are tools of creation, of connection, of labor. They build, they comfort, they express. They are witnesses to our existence.

We often think of memory as something stored in the mind, but what if memory is also stored in the folds of our skin, in the way our muscles remember movement, in the subtle shifts of our physical form? This project asks us to reconsider where memory resides. It invites the viewer to feel the weight of time—not as a burden, but as a mark of existence, a proof of having lived.

The interaction within the SCENOGRAPHY is deeply symbolic. The act of wearing the glove and controlling the bioplastic is an intimate, almost ritualistic gesture. It reflects the way we shape and are shaped by time. It is about the body speaking without words, about movement becoming meaning.

THE EXPERIENCE: A DANCE BETWEEN PRESENCE AND ABSENCE

Standing before the SCENOGRAPHY, a participant puts on the glove. As their fingers move, the bioplastic structure responds—folding, unfolding, shifting like an aging hand, like skin stretching and relaxing. It is a silent dance between presence and absence, between what is seen and what is felt.

There is something deeply human about this exchange. It is about touch, about the impact we have on the world and the world has on us. The bioplastic shapes move as if carrying whispers of the past, as if revealing the invisible forces that shape our bodies over time. The scenography does not tell a single story; it allows many stories to emerge—each interaction unique, each participant bringing their own memory, their own body’s history to the piece.

THE MATERIALITY OF IMPERMANENCE

One of the most important aspects of this project is its materiality. Bioplastic, with its organic nature, does not last forever. It changes, reacts to humidity, to temperature, to time. Unlike synthetic materials designed for permanence, bioplastic embraces impermanence. This is essential to the concept—the body does not resist time; it moves with it, and so does this piece.

In choosing bioplastic, I am choosing a material that remembers, that transforms, that does not deny its own impermanence. It is a reminder that nothing is static, that beauty lies in change, in the process rather than the final form.

BEYOND THE SCENOGRAPHY: A REFLECTION ON TIME AND AGING

In a world that often fears aging, that seeks to erase its traces, THE HANDS CAN TELL A LOT is a tribute to time’s presence. It challenges the notion that change is something to be feared. Instead, it offers a space for reflection, for appreciation of the beauty in transformation.

This project is personal, but it is also universal. We all carry the marks of time, whether we acknowledge them or not. We are all shaped by experience, by movement, by the silent work of time on our bodies. This SCENOGRAPHY is not just about hands, or wrinkles, or aging—it is about life itself. About how we exist, how we transform, and how, in the end, our bodies tell our stories even when we can no longer speak them.

I invite people to engage, to move, to see their gestures take form in the bioplastic’s shifting patterns. To witness time in motion. To feel that their hands, like those of my grandmother, carry not just function but poetry. To understand that every fold, every crease, is a memory—a trace of a life lived, a story worth telling.

i n s p i r a t i o n

I find myself deeply moved by Isabelle Bonté’s Équation différentielle stochastique—an installation that goes beyond just art, connecting human experience with the chaotic forces of the economy. The way Bonté used the testimonies of PSA-Aulnay workers, captured at a time when the factory was closing and thousands were losing their jobs, really resonates with me. What strikes me the most is her choice to focus on the workers' hands as the physical memory of their labor. There’s something so raw and intimate in the idea of hearing these stories not just through words but through the touch of their hands, a powerful reminder of the humanity behind the headlines and statistics.

The connection Bonté makes between these personal stories and the concept of stochastic differential equations is something I find both haunting and profound. The randomness of the financial markets, with its unpredictable movements, parallels the randomness that can destroy lives when economic forces are out of control. This idea of chaotic systems affecting real people—the disconnection between what benefits the economy and what benefits the people—is something I feel personally in my work as I try to explore how art and technology can reflect society’s complex and often unfair systems. This installation reminded me of the power of storytelling through art, and it inspired me to think about how my own creations can humanize the often abstract, chaotic forces at play in the world, just as Bonté did with these workers' stories.