HIDHUD
A wish becomes an encounter.
An intimate ritual in sound-based augmented reality.
Hidhud begins with a handwritten wish. Outside a darkened room, a visitor pauses to write. Inside, wearing headphones, they sit opposite Nir Jacob Younessi. Their words become the starting point for a shared world of voice, sound, movement and shifting light.
A word may become a song. A gesture may reshape what we hear. Voices return in unexpected textures and resonances, and the room seems to breathe around the people within it. Each encounter is improvised in response to the person present.
A wish can hold a private longing, an uncertainty, or a hope for someone else. It can be serious, playful, small or difficult to put into words. Offering it creates a moment of attention: something personal becomes something we listen to together.
Watch the beginning of an encounter
Write. Meet. Leave a trace.
01 / WRITE
Outside the room, paper and a pen invite you to pause. Write a wish in your own words: a longing, a hope, something you want to offer to the world.
02 / ENCOUNTER
Put on headphones and enter the darkened space. Seated opposite Jacob, your wish begins an improvised exchange. Voice, movement and light respond to the meeting as your own voice becomes part of the soundscape.
03 / GATHER
The encounter ends; the handwritten wish remains. Each note joins a growing collection, carrying the trace of a meeting that will never happen in quite the same way again.
A growing collection of human wishes
Around 500 handwritten wishes have been gathered through Hidhud. Each keeps its own handwriting and desire, while finding a place among the hopes of people its author may never meet.
A private wish becomes a shared moment, then part of a collective memory. Across languages and places, the collection holds these distinct lives together.
The instrument behind the encounter
Hidhud unfolds through HED (Echo), a sound-based augmented reality system developed by Nir Jacob Younessi. It listens to voices and sounds in the room and transforms them in real time.
Breath, speech and gesture become material for an intimate musical exchange. Technology opens a space for listening, while the wish and the people present give each encounter its direction.
Created and performed by Nir Jacob Younessi.
