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Channel: SpaceCollective: Designing Science Fiction Scenarios
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The room and the Room

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A distance that used to be maintained for ages has been covered. The distance that separated epic protagonists from their object of desire; the distance that produced the narrative. The Real and the Imaginary -once residing in separate universes- can now be unfolded on the same slab. The only thing that prevents those two worlds from bleeding into each other is the intermediary wall. There is only this one door you can use to reach the other side of the wall. Two windows give us an inside view of the Room. The Room is advertised as “a reservoir of a malleable plastic medium that translates any human desire into a material utterance”. It became evident at some point, that all scientific discourse and artistic endeavors would eventually lead toward the composition of such a prima materia*, an utterly undifferentiated matter, a molecular arena for design. The Room beyond the wall is made from an aggregate of nanotechnological particles of such complexity, so that a perfect simulacrum can now be purchased for domestic use. There is nothing the Room can’t provide for you. This pool of particles can take any shape to fulfill your plastic impulses. It is not a hologram, nor a projection, but a reification: fantasy can now be manifested in palpable matter:

-It can take the shape of an ideal house.
-It can become a musical instrument, a kitchen, a theme park, or a bathroom.
-It can become a sexual object.
-It can bring to life a deceased beloved one, or summon an unattainable role model.
-It can imitate the soothing ripples of the vast ocean, the light breeze of the countryside, as well as the rocky surface of a cave.
-It can print new unseen substances in spacetime; it is a tool for the philosopher and the scientist.
The room before the wall is an impermeable enclosure, an ascetic place insulated from the ravages of desire. The desire there is extracted, filtered, collected and archived. Everything that is not taking place inside the Zone of the Room, is bound to be restrained in this degenerate space “behind the cameras”, the control room of epithemia. Gauges, levels, screens, buttons, circuits populate this room. The rust, the dust, the mechanical sounds, the dullness of the four-dimensional space reside here.

Below the brochure, there’s a paragraph in Helvetica 7pt (almost illegibly small) that states:

“Costumers should be advised that the company is not legally responsible for any given shape or form that could potentially harm the user, mentally or physically”





* “Id-Machine, a mechanism that directly materializes our unacknowledged fantasies” Zizek S., The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, 1999: 301
* an alchemical element, the primitive formless base of all matter.

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