In Dust
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
We are hoping to create a virtual memory-scape using dust as the guiding metaphor for our relationship with the planet and with each other. Using dust’s ubiquitous nature as both an environmental force and a domestic presence, we will create a VR experience where people can input their own audio recollections and listen to other’s audio memories by wandering through a virtual world where each dust cloud tells its story.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
We are hoping to create a virtual memory-scape using dust as the guiding metaphor for our relationship with the planet and with each other. Using dust’s ubiquitous nature as both an environmental force and a domestic presence, we will create a multi-sensory VR experience where people can input their own audio recollections and listen to other’s audio memories by wandering through a virtual world where each dust cloud tells its story. The installation itself would be an immersive and interactive space equipped with a VR headset, recording the user's audio in real-time, providing people with a beyond audio-visual sensory experience. This project is meant to serve as a healing heterotopia, highlighting the role of dust, climate, and our constant interconnectedness in the real world. It is but a zeroing in on a reality that is ours, in which dust accumulates and travels, a powerful actor and witness of human and planetary histories.
Key objectives for sustainability
In modern society we become more and more exclusive. We only talk to people in the same social circles who share similar education backgrounds, religion, socioeconomic status, or political standpoint. This triggers empathy deficits which cause bigger problems that form thicker walls between people who are in different groups.
<In Dust> aims to bring people together and provides a common ground for audiences to actively become a part of the creation of the world. By inviting audiences to be a creator of elements of dust memory, the audiences become an active participant and listener. It will invite people to have more understanding of themselves that will ultimately shape deeper connections by being aware and heard of different human conditions.
This will give opportunities for people to become more connected to hear what other people from outside of their social bubble say which is essential for building a healthy foundation for society. Within the immersive environment with a sound(or audio) based communication system, people focus only on the memory of others, not the others as a subject. This co-created world by memory contributors will amplify the beauty of virtuality by guiding to a healthier dialogue with each other. The collected memories can potentially be a source of empathy in the world with disparities.The world will be filled and evolved by the constant input of people's memories, and the memories will be a mechanism for a novel way to communicate and generate discourse that we need in the world we are in now.
This Dust World can be a tool of gathering people’s voice, building empathy, and educating people about communities and caring for each other. Sustainability cannot be achieved without collective participation.
Moreover, through accumulating their memory in the Dust World, this project will show collective memories of ourselves which at the same time of individuals. These interlinked memories in
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
We are using dust as a tool to study our physical, temporal, and social relationship with the environment. Dust exists in our reality but refers to a world outside of our own time and space. “In Dust” is, therefore, a heterotopia, one whose existence is meant to highlight our global interconnectedness.
“In Dust” is a reminder that our personal and collective stories are inseparable from the environment. Our installation will be a secluded space equipped with a VR headset in which the physical and virtual environments are sensorially intertwined and co-dependent. In moving through these spaces, users can modify the flow of the virtual dust around them – which will be already partially guided by the direction and speed of the wind flows around the actual installation. The dust is a healing meditative space for reflection and exchange. Users, being actors and witnesses, can pick up dust particles, listen to the audio memories they hold, and add their own, thereby engaging with others’ memories and inscribing themselves in the larger system at play.
“In Dust” functions in cycles of death and rebirth, with increasing chaos in the movement of dust particles (which would be translatable in the physical world by increased airflow) until the world eventually collapses – only to be born again. The audio landscape and virtual environment similarly will become progressively overwhelming, as voices begin to overlap, the general volume increases, and the audio memories begin to decay. At its climax, the dust world will be a visualizing and physicalizing of a world over which control has been lost. When the dust world begins anew, control is re-established, and users find themselves once more in a relationship of equals with the dust world.
We are building a space that is an extension of our reality. A space for exchange, “In Dust” reminds us of the greater network in which we are operating – of the comfort and responsibility that that means.
Key objectives for inclusion
“In Dust” invites people from a variety of backgrounds to partake in a global conversation around memory and the environment. Given its dual nature as a virtual and physical installation, it serves as a multi-sensory platform that appeals to both our minds and our bodies in order to foster our sense of communal embeddedness.
Every human produces about 3.6 kg of dust a year. This dust, on the contrary to global dust flows like that emerging from the Saharan Desert, is not tracked. We do not know what we leave behind. This project aims to track human dust, and, in doing so, considers the weight and impact of every action we have. It is therefore a project meant for all those willing to engage in this discussion, inviting users to pause and reflect on their own life, that of strangers and that of everything that surrounds us.
In his book “We Are the Weather,” Johnathan Foer explores the importance of the individual voice and action in the collective struggle against climate change. Our actions, memory, and the dust we generate, are part of a global flow with collective consequences, a reality that distorts our sense of scale and challenges the boundaries between the individual and the collective. This is highlighted in our project by the interactive essence of our dust world. To survive, to be audible in the dust world without decaying, the memories we leave behind must be listened to and cared for. Otherwise, they will disintegrate, and be nothing more than infinitesimal semi-empty particles – that will eventually be swept away by the brewing dust storm. Actions require care, and care requires every single one of our efforts.
This project is a call for unification and inclusion, meant to showcase and deepen our existing global network. It is a tool for empowerment, a space for every voice to be heard, but also one for radical change. It is a re-purposing of dust as a vehicle for care and awareness, a daily reminder of those around us and of the world we walk in.
Innovative character
In Dust is a virtual space that creates a conversation between users. It is a new form of network, where your memories turn into virtual particles, but still, keep the emotional aspect of it.
