Concept:

Commercializing Self-Expression/
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Its the future. Not the "future is now" of the tech-elite, but good old fashioned future. Nanotech has lived up to its promise, technology is ubiquitous, the material becomes transient. So then, the transient shall become material. Cellular homes become the next "in" thing; a synthesis of a back-to-nature mentality and a hoola-hoop style fad. Designed using 3-dimensional scans of the buyers own cells, the cellular house becomes the ultimate in self-expression.

With the bondage to cities and commercial centers cut by the Nano revolution, people begin to move out. A nomadic paradigm is reborn as participants seek out a "real" experience in the natural environment. Millions purchase cellular housing and seek mother nature in her glorious, dying years.

The Most Beautiful Metaphors are Unintentional
Organized into larger units, breaking apart and reforming in chaotic patterns, the cellular nomads live up to a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. They form organs, reproduce, and split off. The micro environment of the internal explodes on a macro scale. The irony that mankind begins to enact the dress and custom of a virus (rather than simply the effects of one) is noted by many. But why theorize when you can dance at the end of the world.

Romantic notions of nature or wilderness are quickly lost, as the mundacity of day-to-day life sets in. The cellular nomads begin to re-form the social and architectural struggles that they have attempted to escape. Villages form by accretion. Travellers set up, live, for years, and leave in a matter of days. It is the formation of organs. Specialized forms for specific tasks. Evolution

My Questions/Issues/Quandaries

The similarites between the Macro and Micro environments.
How accurately does a telescopic view represent a microscopic view?
Is it many concentric rings of (functionally) identical participants, or do things seem to look the same when you have to zoom in or out far enough to bring them into view?
Precedent/Inspiration: Powers of Ten- Eames Office (www.powersoften.com)

Commercialized Identity/ Self-Awareness Through the Material
How far will it go?
The cell-house idea is satirical and genuinely hopeful. Art, self, and possesion collide and recombine and blur. Will the distinctions be broken down? Will they become irrelevent?
Precedent/Inspiration:The usual suspects-Media Criticism, Pop Art, Post-Modern theory

Good ol' Fashioned Science/Science Fiction
Having fun at the intersection between speculation and the (often stranger) realities that shape our environment
Precedent/Inspiration: Engines of Creation, Nanosystems-Erik K. Drexler
William Gibson.

Neo-Nomadic Culture
Why so compelling all of a sudden?
Why do I want to want to throw my cellphone away and run off into the mountains?
Precedent/Inspiration: Tales of a Female Nomad- Rita Golden Gelman
(not a good book, but strangely compelling)
The Practical Nomad 2 Ed : How to Travel Around the World- Edward Hasbrouck

 

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