No Public Restrooms is a public space occupied by toilets, objects that are often — but not always — privately owned and used. Their original watery function is not available. The seats’ triggered behaviors invert a personal encounter into a public display of light, sound and fog. Audiences are invited to consider how their and others’ privacy and access depend on physical, personal, and social circumstances.

No Public Restrooms was exhibited at BLINK: a light-based art festival in Cincinnati, Ohio with an estimated 1.25-1.5 million attendees.

On top of the “weirdness” of these privately-used objects in a public park, we made the piece even more provocative by arranging the toilets to create especially peculiar relationships between people as they interacted with the piece.

Sitting on a toilet triggers fog, light, and sound effects. Each group of toilets has a different series of sound effects (the 4 different sound sets were: a baseball game, traffic, dropping a bomb, and a timer).

This piece is truly for everyone. I watched people of all ages explore the installation. Young people stuck their hands and heads in the bowl, older people let their potty humor loose, and everyone laughed. It’s irreverent and unusual to ask someone to take your photo while sitting on a foggy toilet in a public park!

I enjoyed watching the creative—often unexpected—ways people interacted with the piece. It’s high praise to see your work move others to creativity.

I could create a whole documentary about the process of creating this installation. But for now I'll share these two videos. This video shows us creating the very first prototype. It was really low-tech. We bought a secondhand toilet online (unused!), borrowed a fog machine, cut up a garden hose, scavenged a variety of lights, grabbed a bluetooth speaker, and started playing around.

And this is the magical moment we knew we were onto something. It's a good sign when you can't stop laughing.