Handling Parakeets by Politecnico di Milano

“Handling Parakeets” is a project realized during the Final Synthesis Design Studio course at Politecnico di Milano, by Master’s Degree students in Communication Design. It has been worked on from the start of October 2024 to the end of January 2025 and will be exhibited at MEET | Digital Culture Center in Milan from February 22nd, 2025. It is meant to be bilingual, Italian and English.

The project consists of an interactive installation that reveals the centrality of the human role in the presence of parakeets in Italian cities (in particular two species, monk parakeets and ring-necked parakeets), caused by their importation into the country as pets. Visitors of the exhibition can explore with their hands the data taken from listings regarding the parakeets’ trade and uncover their relationship with humans.
The installation is composed of 2 main elements: a pedestal, containing all the information necessary to understand the context of the experience, and an iMac, where the web-app runs.

The project is based on an analysis of the online parakeet trading market; the listings have been extracted between November 1st and 5th, 2024, from Facebook, Telegram, Subito.it and other 12 specific and non-specific platforms.
Of the total 885 listings scraped, 114 contain photographs where, other than the parakeets on sale, human hands are visible.
This sample of listings is subdivided into 7 collections depending on the way the hand interacts with the parakeet and, most importantly, its pose. The descriptions are also taken into account to find out what makes these interactions meaningful.
The hand becomes an unmistakable symbol of the relationship between people and parakeets, uncovering the way these animals are perceived and treated. In the experience, the user is able to explore these collections and come into contact with the data directly through the movements of their hand, establishing a direct connection.
Each collection is structured like a series of short stories; by imitating one of the 7 poses, visitors “access” the corresponding narration. By hovering on one of the images that gather around the center of the screen, the description of that listing will appear along with a voice narrating it.

The interactive elements are achieved by employing Google MediaPipe’s hand recognition API and allow visitors, one at a time, to explore the Parakeet’s market moving their hand like a cursor.
The experience is divided into 3 sections:

A screensaver greets visitors and suggests moving their hand;
Then, after a hand has been detected continuously for 5 seconds, a video tutorial will start, detailing the topic at hand and giving a quick tutorial on how to tackle the experience;
Once that has ended, the whole market appears on the screen; each one of the 885 listings is represented by an image, divided into the platforms they were taken from;

From there, users are free to experiment with the 7 poses and access and exit the collections.