A São Paulo plaza got an 18-metre dome and a dance floor deaf visitors could feel

Backed by the São Paulo state government's culture secretariat through the ProAC ICMS and ProAC Direto programmes, Visualfarm wanted to reclaim an urban 'void' turned corridor and make social inclusion physical, with free entry and wheelchair accessibility.

From 23 to 28 November 2023, Visualdome projected 360° imagery inside an 18-metre dome, comparing the region's relief and vegetation before the discovery of Brazil with the occupied capital today, interpreted in LIBRAS (Brazilian Sign Language); Tactile staged a sensory dance floor where music and images translating sound frequencies were joined by the Tactile app transmitting the music's vibrations through each person's phone against their body.

Hundreds of people went through the free six-day run. Deaf visitors confirmed the core promise: Guilherme Felipe, the LIBRAS interpreter in the Visualdome video, said he felt and followed the music's rhythm perfectly on the Tactile floor. The project drew support from deaf-accessibility organisations including Acessibiliart, Surdo Mundo, ICOM, Instituto Santa Terezinha, Centro de Educação para Surdos Rio Branco and APASMA.

In late November 2023, the creative studio Visualfarm occupied Praça dos Arcos — the confluence of São Paulo's Paulista, Rebouças and Angélica avenues plus rua da Consolação — with two free immersive interventions. The plaza was chosen because it had become merely a pass-through point, one of the 'urban voids' the studio wanted to push back against.

The first work, Visualdome, was a partnership with the São Paulo state government's Secretariat of Culture, Economy and Creative Industries through the ProAC ICMS programme: an 18-metre geodesic dome, similar to a planetarium, projecting 360° images that compared the relief and vegetation of Brazil before its discovery with what stands today in the area occupied by the São Paulo capital. The video was interpreted in LIBRAS.

The second, Tactile, presented through ProAC Direto, was a sensory dance floor for deaf and hearing people to enjoy together: music and images translating the various sound frequencies were combined with the Tactile app, which transmits the music's vibrations through a phone held against the body. Deaf actor and LIBRAS interpreter Guilherme Felipe tried it on site: 'It was a new experience for me. I felt and followed the rhythm of the music perfectly.' Actress Cris Carniato called Tactile 'an immersion of the senses'.

Visualfarm's creative director Alexis Anastasiou said the intention was 'to build bridges between people with and without hearing impairment and between the Brazil of the past and today', adding that the city's spaces should not be written off as corridors: 'There is still time to create alternatives to degradation and increase people's conviviality.'

The accessibility mechanism is the artwork: the dance floor works by making sound tactile, so deaf and hearing visitors share one experience instead of one being accommodated.

The dome uses the city's own transformation — pre-discovery landscape versus today's megalopolis — as its content, tying the spectacle to reflection on urban occupation.

Free entry, wheelchair access and LIBRAS interpretation made the claim of democratic occupation of public space verifiable on site.

It is a state-funded culture programme betting on immersive experience rather than a conventional campaign to argue for reclaiming dead public space.

Inclusion lands when it is engineered into the experience itself — a shared floor where deaf visitors feel the same beat — rather than added as an accessibility footnote.

The interventions ran 23–28 November 2023 with hundreds of attendees; the source reports the activation as a success for inclusion and public-space recovery, with no follow-up editions recorded.