Shaahkar Siddique is an artist working at the intersection of human behavior and technology. He is interested in extensively charting design-led customer engagement strategies that brands deploy to interact with the new-age customer. Shaahkar joined Experiential Design Lab, a strategic design firm, in 2012 and has since worked on projects ranging from multimedia immersive experience centres, to strategic design, which involves designing experiential retail strategy for brands.

His work Surface Tensions looks at mapping roads to keep a near-real-time log of all the potholes, bumps, and other surface anomalies (of the mapped road). Once the relevant mapping is done, the idea is that upon request, the data derived from the mapping exercise would be used to feed an actuator installation that would simulate the physical feeling in the mind of the participant, of experiencing a surface anomaly while being at one location, thereby creating the experience of being on the mapped road. At certain intervals during the duration of the installation, certain performative possibilities that arise out of the collected data (possibly in real-time), could be explored. The exact flavour of these performances is decided as and when the mapped data reveals itself.