The curtain provides a material model for this negotiation. It does not simply alternate between visibility and invisibility. It can be open, closed, sheer or partially drawn. It can reveal that somebody is present without making that person completely visible. It regulates a relationship between exposure and concealment rather than resolving it into either condition.
Within Breathing Room, this becomes a proposition about technological responsiveness as well. A responsive environment does not necessarily need greater knowledge of a body in order to respond to it. The sensing system is deliberately limited: it detects a crossing rather than identifying a person. This can be understood not only as a technical limitation, but as a question of sufficient legibility:
What is the minimum that must become perceptible for a relationship to take place?
Minimal sensing is not inherently ethical. As the previous section established, even a simple count can acquire authority once a rule determines what that count is allowed to do. A system may know very little about a person and still constrain them. The question therefore concerns not only how much information is collected, but what that information is for, what authority is attached to it, and what possibilities remain within the relationship it produces.
This is where responsiveness becomes an ethical rather than merely technical problem.
A surveillance system is responsive. An access-control system is responsive. A recommendation system is responsive. Responsiveness alone therefore cannot constitute care. What matters is the relationship produced through that response.