A participatory installation, commissioned by the City of Boston for HUBweek and ILLUMINUS -Nuit Blanche, Projective Dualism 2.0 seeks to explore the difficulty of privacy, anonymity, responsibility in cities that are subject to surveillance. Any member of the public can enter a “pod” and speak to the city at large: to express their opinions, hopes, complaints, or mundane observances via internal microphones. Yet his or her audio will be randomized, preserving anonymity but allowing for self-reflection. The project is also to question how social engagement is beyond the physical sphere.

CONCEPT:

Invisibility in both our physical and digital cities often allows for perceived anonymity, creating comfort or discomfort depending on the behavior we hope to highlight or hide. Though, due to ever increasing surveillance in our metropolises and online information megacities, invisibility is merely an obsolete concept we continue to cling to in the spaces where we interact.

Projective Dualism 2.0 is inspired by René Descartes’s illustration of dualism, and the theory of ‘dualism’ within the philosophy of mind. In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical, or that the mind and body are not identical [1]. Operating around the reflexive undertone of one-way modular mirrors and sensorial projections of color and light, the installation is to question the unjuried and uncensored physicality that manifests the paradoxical psychological construct of society has cultivated surrounding privacy, anonymity, and oftentimes, responsibility.

Dealing with the objectification of the architectural object, and the classification of citizenship and identity in the every more interconnected Internet of Things (IoT) system within the digital and physical urban forum, this installation is to question the computational ecology of understanding the opposing internal struggles of the passive / active natures of being within public / private society.

The objective is to inspire creative thinking and collaboration among interaction between the body and the mind, to question whether the daily machines in the digital age of computation has increased the digital ecology which breeds innovation and delivers IoT solutions. Does technology question whether IoT will positively / negatively impact us by making business processes more / less efficient, and would robotics and technologies be destroying / improving the autonomous quality of life. As we proceed into the digital age of architecture, are better insights gained through cognitive computation coupled with business intelligence, or, is technology nestling itself within us and between us changing the landscape of how we look upon ourselves.

Reference: [1] Dualism – Philosophy of Mind. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2003. Web. Retrieved from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism

ILLUMINUS CURATOR’S STATEMENT:

JUTTA FRIEDRICHS

“Leaving the parking deck down the stairs and onto the street the visitor encounters a crowd of people observing a glowing freestanding pentagonal room. Inside Wendy W. Fok’s Projective Dualism 2.0 they are watching other visitors glimpse reflections of themselves multiplied in the crystal texture of five one-way mirrored walls. Upon entering this confined space, the observer becomes the object. Captivated by the intimate reflections of herself, she may well be inclined towards another kind of reflection: the selfie, projecting her image into a larger virtual space shared with an audience of millions, as the small 10’ x 10’ space expands into infinity. Wendy W. Fok explores questions of governance and property of our own images, as we share and consume in digital space that reaches far beyond our sight and control.”

PROJECT TITLE:
Projective Dualism 2.0

AWARD:
ACADIA 2015 – Project Award

PROJECT DATES:
4 – 10 October, 2015 – Boston HUBweek (ILLUMINUS – Nuit Blanche)
20 October, 2015 to 9 December, 2015 – Reed Gallery, Cincinnati OH (Eco Diversity ACADIA 2015)

CREDITS:

Design Lead:
Wendy W Fok

Production Consultant:
Kris Kohl

Design Team:
Tom Ishida
Natalie Rodriguez

Production Team:
Kevin Pham
Eunice Wong (Boston)
Hernan Bianchi (Boston)

Project sponsored and fabricated by:
DAZIAN

CLIENT:
Boston HUBWeek – ILLUMINUS
Reed Gallery Eco Diversity – ACADIA 2015

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