A networked, two-person mixed reality installation, obfuscating abstract digital labour as ersatz gardening to ease the minds of the future remote workforce.
The project explores future roles of the freelance, remote-access workforce, where their home and workplace may become blended into one, as we gain the ability to ‘long-distance space’ through growing virtual technologies. Supported by the Netherlands Stimuleringsfonds for digital culture and MU Hybrid Arthouse, the experience centres around one shared virtual space capable of being split over multiple physical locations, where access to the space has become embedded in two specialised MR objects. Act II is concerned with how, through designing for mixed-reality, you can expand your perception of your body, and abstract banal working activities into something more physical and intuitive, which also taps into multiple senses.
Participants equipped a watering can or rake, and sought working fulfilment and comfort by conducting a virtual gardening session together with a distant partner - perceiving the ends of their tools as an extension to their limbs, and forging improvised communication methods that didn’t solely rely on a spoken language. Yet the real effect of their actions on the wider world remained veiled and remote, much like themselves.