As part of our social design studies, Jan-Phillip Ley and I explored how the concept of the flâneur translates into virtual space. Both of us, uninterested in Vienna’s vivid nightlife, asked ourselves: What could be the alternative?

How could we experience the solitary hours after dark? How could we connect to the city at night without being physically present?

Gradually, a narrative emerged—one of the lonesome online watcher, the virtual flâneur, the voyeur.

We prototyped a helmet equipped with a live-streaming smartphone camera and conducted an experiment in the city. While one of us walked through the urban space, the other, from a remote location, guided their movement via an online chat, observing the streets through the camera feed.

One became the other’s eye into the night.

This dynamic raised questions of trust and vulnerability, power and control, cooperation and submission. Who was truly in control—the walker or the observer? How did the physical and digital realms intersect in shaping the experience of the city? Through this experiment, we explored the shifting boundaries between presence and absence, autonomy and dependence, visibility and invisibility.