My final project will entail creating a 3d topology of pittsburgh, on which a slime mold will grow to simulate the process of gentrification driven by local tech culture. The slime will be fed by a plotter dispersing Soylent. The map will be fed to allow the biomass of slime to grow into a ‘gentrified state’, approximating the current distribution of gentrified areas across pittsburgh. Finally, there will be an interactive element in which a user takes on a persona of a CMU student/faculty, Google employee, Oculus employee etc., and chooses a location of where the would like to move into Pittsburgh. Their choice will feed the map, elucidating our personal participation as members of the CMU community in the process of gentrification. Depending on viability, projection mapping will be incorporated into the interactive element.
I will be collaborating with Aman Tiwari on this work.
I am inspired by
as well as Dana Cupkova’s project Medusa
http://www.epiphyte-lab.com/research/medusa/