一杯之前——调酒感官交互装置 Original

Someone is shaking a glass. The sound of ice, the swirl of color — red, then orange, appearing and disappearing. The anticipation begins before the first sip ever arrives.
Before the First Sip is a multi-sensory interactive installation that uses cocktail-making as a narrative vessel to explore the physical and psychological experience of waiting and expectation. The work unfolds across three spatial layers: an ambient scent field created by naturally evaporating rum; a glowing acrylic enclosure that serves as the sole visual anchor in a darkened space; and a hand-illustrated cocktail menu that acts as a tactile interface, inviting the audience to reach out and choose.
At its core, an Arduino UNO connects four capacitive touch sensors (TTP223) to four independent mist modules. When a finger makes contact with a menu item, colored mist is gradually released — the longer the touch, the higher the misting frequency. Mist collects inside the transparent enclosure, then slowly spills through its edges. Each color encodes a taste: green for bitterness, yellow for sourness, red for spice, pink for sweetness — flavor rendered as sensation rather than substance.
The mist fades. Nothing remains. And with it, so does the anticipation. Grounded in embodied cognition theory, the work transforms the abstract psychological state of "expecting" into a tangible bodily experience — inviting audiences to feel what it means to wait, before the first sip ever comes.
Institution: School of Design, Nanjing University of the Arts
Faculty Advisor: Yu Xi