What if we placed viewers inside the boxes instead of the performer?

This questions became the foundation of We Should Be Sleeping. Inverting the premise of Box Body and EMERGE:NCY, this project “places” the viewers inside the box while expanding into multichannel, multi-performer storytelling. Through a collaborative co-creation process, the piece explores the nightly routines of modern humans.

There’s an interesting dichotomy with social media: when we scroll Instagram at midnight, does it unite us or isolate us? Social media connects us across distances in unprecedented ways, yet it often replaces real-life interactions, stripping away significant nuances. Yet it is undeniable that nighttime screen time has become a shared ritual in contemporary urban life — one we all participate in, unaware. This inspired us to create a piece that captures the nightly routines of individuals on their phones, punctuated by fleeting moments of synchronicity seen only by the viewers, unknown to the individuals on screen.

To bring this idea to life, we built two contraptions to mimic common devices: a phone and a laptop. Using binder clips, cardboard, and a thin acrylic sheet as the screen (perfect for creating the realistic flattening effect of a finger tap), we crafted a deceptively simple yet effective DIY setup. We worked with each performer to recreate sequences based on their personal nighttime routines, so that it felt most natural to them. Finally, we overlaid a fictional interface tailored to each performer’s movements—everything from last-minute work emails to aimless Instagram scrolling and even playing fictional games suspiciously like Wordle.

Acting out these routines while staring into the void of a camera — laughing, texting, reacting without any real input - was no small feat, but the performers nailed it. Perhaps a testament to the years of muscle memory we’ve all built through our collective screen habits.