Concept

“You’ve made your house, now live in it.” is an interactive installation in which a physical miniature is directly linked to a virtual living space. The audience fills the room through choices they are presented with, and this becomes the VR resident's lived reality.

At the start, the VR resident is instructed to communicate by only writing one word (max. 6 letters) at a time on a small sign: a request for an object, food, or basic need. The audience tries to keep them satisfied and eagerly fill the house with items, but as the installation progresses, their decisions reveal unexpected consequences. The virtual world becomes polluted, and daily life in VR grows increasingly difficult. The audience, for example, will need to decide between food or heating, repairing a broken window or boarding it up with wood.

The sign, which began as a friendly communication tool, slowly shifts into a protest device: the VR resident who can still only write one word -“HELP,” “ENOUGH,” “STOP”-as their environment deteriorates under the audience’s consumption driven attempts to “improve” their life. They have almost no agency; their environment is dictated by an audience who believe they are helping.

Who is actually in control? In the end the experience is not dictated by the audience filling the miniature, but by the performers who will decide what choices the audience gets in the first place. Revealing there are three layers of hierarchy.

The installation exposes our vulnerability to consumerist impulses and how this can lead to suffocation, pollution, and a loss of autonomy.