From Market Hall to Living Commons: An Interactive Día de Muertos at Esat Hâl, Ankara
This Día de los Muertos, we brought a full-body interactive game to a building that was very nearly demolished.
We are SolaSine, an interactive and immersive design studio from Ireland. For this project we worked with Mexican–Irish artist Kinmx and with ROOF, a design studio, community collective and placemaking initiative. The venue was Esat Hâl in Çankaya, Ankara: a 1980s market hall that has been reopened as a shared space for culture, craft and community. Using a Kinect infrared sensor and real-time skeletal tracking, we built a four-level game. The more visitors moved and played together, the richer the visuals became.
This post covers what happened on the night. It also covers the building that made it possible, because the building is a large part of the story.
The building: from Küçükesat Semt Hali to Esat Hâl
Esat and Küçükesat grew up as part of Ankara's new city centre from the 1950s onwards. Housing demand in the young capital was rising quickly and the city was expanding outwards. In the 1980s the municipality built the Küçükesat Semt Hali ve Çarşısı, a neighbourhood market hall and bazaar for residents' daily shopping. For years it was a familiar stop in local life: produce, conversation and errands, all under one roof.
Cities change, and the hall's original purpose faded. Part of the structure was converted into car parking to deal with the area's congestion. Eventually the building lost its function altogether and stood empty for years, waiting for demolition.
In March 2026, after strengthening and renovation work, Ankara Metropolitan Municipality (ABB) reopened it as Esat Hâl. At the opening, Mayor Mansur Yavaş said a city grows "not only with new buildings, but by keeping its past alive."
The new Esat Hâl includes:
Esat Hâl Art Gallery, which opened with Bir Cumhuriyet Kadını, an exhibition of work by the Republican-era artist and educator Nevide Gökaydın
Esat Genç Akademi, which runs free art workshops for young people preparing for fine arts faculties
Prof. Dr. Ruşen Keleş Library, built around the collection of the urban planning scholar it is named after
Ceramics and art workshops, a theatre rehearsal floor, shops for local makers, a design market on the terrace, and offices and studios for civil initiatives and cultural start-ups
The site covers roughly 14,250 m², about 4,600 m² of it enclosed.
A commons, not just a venue
What sets Esat Hâl apart is how it is run. The building stays in public ownership, but its management and use are opened up to cultural producers, local businesses and civil society. The municipality calls this a müşterekler, or commons, model. Its user community calls itself the Ahali, an old Turkish word for the people of a place.
The project points to European examples for inspiration: Stará Tržnica in Bratislava, Kaapeli in Helsinki, La Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille and Haus der Statistik in Berlin. Each of these is a disused public building handed back to artists and neighbours instead of being sold off or knocked down. The same idea is now being tested in Ankara as a possible model for other idle public buildings across Türkiye.
ROOF is part of that community. ROOF works through placemaking: it redesigns spaces through creative, participatory methods, built around what a neighbourhood actually needs and wants. It brought the Placemaking Festival to Türkiye for the first time, in Ankara, and it has supported projects at Esat Hâl such as the Goethe-Institut's Urban Utopias. Its shared space at Esat Hâl is where our installation lived for the night.
A mural for 75 years of friendship
Before the installation, the building had already received a new face. The Embassy of Ireland in Ankara, working with Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, invited Kinmx to paint a large-scale mural on the side of Esat Hâl. It marks 75 years of diplomatic relations between Ireland and Türkiye.
The mural shows two women, one for each country, lying across a Turkish kilim. The Turkish figure draws on Umay Ana, the Turkic mother goddess of fertility and protection. The Irish figure draws on Brigid, who is associated with fertility, spring and craft. Celtic knotwork and shamrocks run along the base. Anatolian kilim motifs, a crescent and star, and the blue of the nazar run up the side. Kinmx also pointed out that Brigid's red hair matches the red of the Turkish flag.
The mural was unveiled by Irish Ambassador Clare Brosnan and Mayor Mansur Yavaş. Brosnan called it a lasting symbol of friendship. Yavaş said the language of diplomacy can stay in official documents, but the language of art has no limits.
📽️ Watch the mural unveiling: Ancore Magazine on Instagram
The mural and our installation both came out of the same approach. Kinmx's practice is built around cultural exchange and the idea that every project begins with a relationship. That relationship, between Ireland, Mexico and Türkiye, and between an artist, a studio and a community space, is what led to Día de Muertos at Esat Hâl.
The night: Día de los Muertos at ROOF
Día de los Muertos is not a sad holiday. It is a time when families in Mexico invite their dead home: building ofrendas (altars) covered in photographs, candles, marigolds, pan de muerto and the favourite things of the people they have lost. It is about memory kept alive by the living, and that seemed a good fit for a building that had been brought back into use.
The evening began around a traditional ofrenda built inside the ROOF space, dressed in cut-paper papel picado and cempasúchil garlands. People brought memories and photographs of loved ones. Mexican, Irish and Turkish guests, neighbours, co-workers and friends all stood in the same room learning the same tradition.
Then the screen came on.
The installation: your body is the controller
From the start we wanted to build something that rewards participation. A visitor's movement shouldn't just trigger an effect. It should change what happens next. The more people interact, and the more they interact with each other, the more the world on screen opens up, until the group moves through to the next level.
How it works:
Kinect infrared depth sensing picks up each person's full-body silhouette, even in a dim room.
Skeletal tracking follows their joints in real time, including whether each hand is open or clenched.
Gesture mechanics: clenching both fists releases traditional Mexican symbols into the scene, such as cempasúchil flowers, papel picado banners and wildlife.
Gameplay physics: petals, skulls, birds and butterflies collide with players' bodies, scatter and react.
Collaborative progression: shared interaction unlocks richer visuals and carries everyone forward to the next level.
Real-time generative visuals, built and run live in TouchDesigner.
Each participant appears on screen as a glowing calavera skeleton. Watching yourself dance as a skeleton turns out to be a good way to understand Día de Muertos without anyone explaining it.
Four levels through Mexican culture
The game's four levels each pay tribute to a different region and tradition of Mexican culture.
Level 1: The ofrenda
The first level brought the altar in the room into the screen: a traditional Día de los Muertos ofrenda covered in photographs of the departed, pan de muerto, papel picado, and floating calaveras that players could reach out and move.
Level 2: The Maya calendar
The second level placed players inside a Maya calendar with interactive Maya glyphs. Hummingbirds flew in to drink nectar from the flowers that players released into the scene. Here the game's ecosystem started to respond to what the players made.
Level 3: Tenochtitlan
Level three moved to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital built on a lake where Mexico City stands today. Aztec patterns and digital serpents reacted to every movement, and the city lit up around the players' bodies.
Level 4: Fields of cempasúchil
The last level opened into a field of cempasúchil, the marigold whose colour and scent are said to guide the spirits of the dead home. Petals blew around each movement, and butterflies rose from the players' hands. The butterflies were a deliberate choice. Every autumn, monarch butterflies arrive in central Mexico around the start of November, and they are traditionally seen as the souls of the dead returning.
Watch the film
Why this matters: creative technology and the commons
It's easy to see the Kinect, the skeletal tracking and the real-time graphics as the headline. They aren't. They are the means of getting a roomful of strangers to move together, to learn a tradition from another country with their own bodies, and to leave with a shared memory of a building their neighbourhood nearly lost.
Esat Hâl and projects like it point to how cities and culture can work together:
Urban space handed back. A building designed for food and daily errands now holds galleries, workshops, a library and community space. Public ownership with shared governance keeps it open to the people around it instead of turning it into another car park or development plot.
Co-working as cultural infrastructure. When designers, cultural start-ups, civil initiatives, young artists and local makers share a building, collaborations like ours happen naturally. A placemaking collective, an Irish studio and a Mexican–Irish muralist ended up building a game together because they were in the same place.
Traditional art and new technology together. A hand-painted mural on the outside and a sensor-driven game on the inside, both drawing on old symbols: Brigid and Umay Ana, cempasúchil and the Maya calendar. Technology works best when it carries tradition instead of replacing it.
Interaction as communication. A visitor doesn't need to speak Spanish, Turkish or English to understand that clenching your fists makes flowers bloom, or that the world grows when you play together. Interactive art can communicate across language barriers.
This is what we mean when we say SolaSine works where art and science converge. The most interesting work we do happens when technology is given to a community and an artist and they make it their own.
Thank you
Thank you to Kinmx for the invitation, the imagery and the generosity. Thank you to ROOF and the Esat Hâl community for opening their doors. Thank you to the Embassy of Ireland in Ankara and Ankara Metropolitan Municipality for supporting cultural exchange that people can actually walk into, and to everyone who came, built the ofrenda with us and danced as skeletons.
If you are planning a festival, cultural programme, brand activation or community space and want to explore interactive installations, projection mapping or motion-tracked experiences, get in touch with SolaSine.
Related reading: From the Jungles of Mexico to Dublin: Bringing Spaik45 and Harry Clarke Back for Day of the Dead
Frequently asked questions
What is Esat Hâl in Ankara?
Esat Hâl is the former Küçükesat Semt Hali ve Çarşısı, a 1980s neighbourhood market hall in Çankaya, Ankara. Ankara Metropolitan Municipality renovated it and reopened it in March 2026 as a cultural commons with an art gallery, a youth art academy, a library, workshops and spaces for civil initiatives and local makers.
What is ROOF Ankara?
ROOF is a design studio, community collective and placemaking initiative based at Esat Hâl. It uses participatory design to reshape spaces around community needs, and it brought the Placemaking Festival to Türkiye for the first time.
Who is Kinmx?
Kinmx is the Mexican–Irish artist Kathrina Rupit. She creates public murals, material-led installations and cultural-exchange projects. In 2026 she painted the Ireland–Türkiye 75-year friendship mural on Esat Hâl for the Embassy of Ireland in Ankara.
How did the interactive Día de Muertos installation work?
A Kinect infrared depth sensor tracked each participant's skeleton in real time. Hand gestures, such as clenching both fists, released traditional Mexican symbols into a UnrealEngine scene with physics. Shared interaction unlocked richer visuals and moved players through four levels: an ofrenda, a Maya calendar, Tenochtitlan and a field of cempasúchil.
Can SolaSine create an interactive installation for my event?
Yes. SolaSine designs interactive installations, projection mapping and immersive experiences for festivals, museums, brands and community spaces. Contact the studio here.
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