This is a newly proposed artwork for Spokane Interactive Art Laboratory Residency Washington, 2021-Spring Residency
Media : Interactive game in a cross-device WebXR (WebVR-Mobile AR) environment
Media Sound Art by Paul Bazooka
<Chandra’s Signal> speculates how the natural environment and biodiversity still functions as a large capital in a near future. Inspecting the multilayers of remote surveillance system powered by virtual-real networks, the artwork reimagines the possibility of human affordances to counterbalancing such system.
Chandra (they/them), the protagonist as played by audiences, are interplanetary network environment manager living in a near future, authorized with a certain degree of access to bio-resources in the universe. Remotely accessing the planets in charge, Chandra perform a set of labor such as mining, monitoring, recording the planetarian’s production and use of resources, for which Chandra earn ‘income’ from a higher-level authority. What Chandra see through their monitoring tools and how they react, however, are tracked and manipulated by the system they engage in. Upon their own choices, Chandra (un-)intentionally creates a survival toolkit and distributes a request for rescue (SOS) message to the entire planetary network.
The technical setting of this artwork comprises 1) WebVR (interactive game) and, 2) mobile-based AR (monitoring tool). They serve as audiovisual diegeses, inter-connected via cross-device interactions. In this setting, <Chandra’s Signal> intends to constantly re-situate the audiences (Chandra) amid the indeterminate states of being colonized and/or colonizing; of being autonomous and/or subordinate to a pre-designed labor and belief system; and as a contemporaneous person in AD 2021 who receives the SOS message sent by Chandra themselves.