One-Meter Chain Reaction:
Exploring Distance, Imitation, and Connection
One-Meter Chain Reaction is a participatory system developed by Scrapheap Collective.
The work is structured around a simple spatial rule: participants are arranged in a linear sequence, each maintaining approximately one meter of distance from the person in front. Within this structure, movement is transmitted through chains of imitation.
What emerges is not a performance to be observed, but a system of continuous feedback, where gestures, timing, and bodily decisions circulate as signals across participants.
Imitation here is not reproduction, but transformation. Each body interprets, translates, and slightly shifts the movement it receives. These variations accumulate, generating a constantly evolving chain of embodied information.
Within this system, participants are not positioned as performers or observers, but as components within a distributed network of interaction. Human and spatial elements operate together, producing relational effects that are both immediate and delayed.
The work treats space not as a backdrop, but as an active condition that shapes and is shaped by movement, attention, and proximity.
Across different iterations in London, the system has been activated in various environments, each producing distinct patterns of collective movement and interaction.
In these settings, One Meter Chain Reaction functions as a mechanism for exploring how signals travel through bodies, how meaning shifts through imitation, and how collective structures emerge from simple rules.
One-Meter Chain Reaction will return in 2026 on an even larger scale—stay tuned!
— Scrapheap Collective/Dong
09/01/2025
09/01/2025