garrett-laroy-johnson/mutual-space

Following the world-building spirit of Guattari?s Three Ecolo- gies (1992), Kropotkin?s Mutual Aid (1902), and Murray Bookchin?s social ecology (1982), I pursue this reclaimed notion of debt in the design of an experimental and experi- ential immersive media environment called Mutual Space. Mutual Space responds through floor projection, multi- channel sound, dynamic lighting and other physical-digital assemblages to bodily gesture sensed using computer vi- sion and signal processing techniques. Bodies sensed by camera deform a fluid simulation (projected onto the floor). Actions like moving, speaking, sitting, napping etc. in this environment effect forces in the fluid system, which carries clusters of colored particles projections across the floor. The fluid system and these particles act as a ?prototypi- cal? non-discretized ledger. For example, if reading light is needed, we may gesture to push the illumination particles over the reader. Our gestures in turn create new particles for other uses, like powering a cooling fan or watering a plant. Without predefined actors, ensembles of fleshy bod- ies and media transact and exchange continuously. Rebuk- ing the quantization of value and debt as obligation, this experimental work explores an embodied post-scarcity eco- nomics in which collectives are strengthened by accumula- tion of heterogeneous mutual indebtedness.

Max