Masked space is an interior design project which examines the impact of technology on a sense of interiority for both human subjects and the spaces we inhabit.

My explorations for this research project are predominantly conducted with digital technology. I use digital media to discover the effect of technology on my own individuality, including memory and bodily experience. I explore the role technology plays in people’s lives.

We can not live without technology, technology makes us feel omnipotent and omniscient. In the book “Technics and Time”, Bernard Stiegler said technology is the essence of human, human history is a historical process of technology, from rock to the computer¹. Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has developed to a ruling power that people had nowhere to escape. Jürgen Habermas mentioned the concept of technical rationality is itself ideological, technology itself is the domination of nature and man, methodical, scientific, planned rule².
Like most of my generation we grew up surrounded by technology, Technology was growing up at the same time as we were growing up. In terms of my inhabitation of space, for the majority of my time I spend it engaging on various technologies and facing the different screens that are the portal to virtual spaces. Technology inhabits us. Technology stores our memories. We have forgotten how to handwrite; our childhood memories are held in and were engaged by TV and the computer. This project reflects how technology is changing our sense of self and space.

In this project I explore how advances in technology invade our interiority and change our sense of self within the private space of self within the private space of home. I use myself as the subject of this exploration with an awareness of current events and conditions affecting the state of society. I have used a series of approaches to explore the presence and impact of technology. I commence with a consideration of the inherently voyeuristic nature of technology in the dynamic between the observer and the observed. I disrupt the boundary between inside and outside through projection, documenting the shift scale through drawing. I use performance to reflect the impact of technology on my everyday behaviors and habits. The techniques of film and photography are used to narrate and reflect on these issues .
Working with and against technology to refocus awareness on proximity and our immediate surroundings within the site, attempting at the same time to link my subjective feelings to exterior conditions. Through this body of research, trying to recover a lost sense of physical relationships, and to establish a new possibile sense of interiority.

1.Stiegler, Bernard, Technics and Time: 1 the Faute of Epimethee. Stanford University Press, 1998, 50-51.

2.Habermas, Jürgen. "Technik und Wissenschaft als “Ideologie”?." Man and World 1, no. 4 (1968), 483-484.

Technology, Interior, VIrtual.

How does technology change our sense of self and space?

What does technology do to a sense of interiority in the subject and space?

This project starts with an “accident” happened to my friend since the audience will have strong resonances with my design covered by a story. I will also use a diagram to illustrate our privacy crisis in modern sociality.

My friend lives in an apartment, next to which is a building with a mirror-glass wall. One can see clearly what happened in both buildings through reflections on the glass. As a result, my friend and her neighbor can see each other through the glass. Her neighbor took advantage of the situation to sexually harass my friend by being naked with inappropriate behaviors. I used a diagram to show the relationship between the two people in their rooms.

Subjectivity should be set free, protected, and against the outside.Through this project I realize how fragile our interiority is. Even at home which is the most private space, our interiority is also easily invaded by the outside elements

Then I examined the privacy conditions in my apartment. The walls of my apartment are not sound-proof, so sounds transmit easily between my room and my neighbor’s room, invading each other’s space. Also, I live on the second floor, people can see my room without difficulty from across the street. All these factors are changing my behaviors since I feel being peeked and observed by people outside of my room all the time.
Because of a mirror, a man reveals his true self. Artist Dan Graham also uses mirrors as media combining visualization and cognition to highlight the voyeuristic.⁵
In the work Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Bisected, Dan Graham plays viewers' perceptions through mirrors. Using reflections to explore the voyeuristic. In the pavilion, audience observe one's own and others simultaneously.

5. Graham, Dan, Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Bisected, Perforated Stainless Steel, Liverpool, 2011.

Back to my home, I became aware that I might have been watched all the time. My home has various smart products, such as a homepod, smart security camera, smart thermometer, body sensor etc. When I got home, the device detected my presence, the body sensor responded, and the thermometer started to work from which I can see the temperature index. Having realized my “home environment” was perceiving information from me while I was perceiving the environment in my home, I want to see what information about memory devices are collecting and how technology surveils me.
I recorded videos and voices through different devices, such as mobile phone, camera, security camera, and laptop. Then I combined them into one film that shows my daily activities.Though analyzing all sounds and movements, I can see what factors have changed and what I and my room look like from the perspective of my smart devices.
With smart devices around, people turn into objects from being subjects, which raises privacy problems and surveillance capitalism. Smart products and social media companies are trying to take our data and use it for a whole variety of purposes. Companies classify and analyze us. Shoshana Zuboff said ‘Larry Page saw that human experience could be Google’s virgin wood’.⁶ Technology brings convenience to people and we can't live without our technology, which makes me think about the relationship between Voyeur and the viewer.

Most people think coconut is hard to open. I have a specific tool that can break a coconut’s shell easily. I gained interesting insights into voyeurism and surveillance capitalism through the process of opening the coconut and observing the inside.
I placed cameras in different places to observe the coconut from different angles. For example, I put a camera in the coconut as if I were observing the coconut from the inside. Different angles of observation through camera enabled me to highlight the difference and similarities between subject and object
When I was watching the inside of the coconut, the relationship between me and coconut is like a voyeur and viewer, which was also analogous to technology invading our interiority. We open the coconut shell for juice and meat we need, which is like the voyeur needs his victim. I used a dynamic diagram to show the relationship between the two.
After I opened the coconut, I also destroyed the inside of the coconut and the coconut is unable to reproduce seeds anymore. Like technology invading our interiority. In the video, when I was watching the coconut, its objectivity stood out.
In the movie Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock also discussed the voyeur and audience is interdependence. When we watched the rear window, two kinds of peeping happened inside and outside of the movie. On the inside, the protagonist can not control his desire to peep on others, we as audience, also like voyeur to watch the character's life follow the camera.⁷

7. Hitchcock, Alfred, Rear Window. San Francisco, California, USA, 2011.

I live on the second floor of the apartment building; I often watch the pedestrians walking around through my windows. I am a voyeur at this moment. While I was quarantined at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was thinking how to “invite” strangers to my home.
Before the quarantine, pedestrian' movements and my interactions with people coming to my place were recorded through video cameras. During the quarantine, I also set up body sensors outside my window to catch the trajectories of strangers. By projecting all of the images and videos I collected to the wall in my room, people were “invited” to my home.
Nowadays the physical relationships between people are disappearing gradually since more and more people are using apps to order food and meet new people. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, we all stay at home, which makes building physical connections even harder So I made a special connection with strangers through this way. Meanwhile it is reconstructing space: The rhythm, light and color of my room depend on data I collected from strangers outside. I was using technology to remove the boundary between the inside and the outside of my home.

In this chapter, as a conscious subject, I will explore how our interiority affects exteriority, study how technology makes us lose in place, and question what has changed between subject and object in front of technology. Then, being present to the physical world and projecting myself to different size reverse the subject and object through technology. In the end, I will use technology to create new experience, study my own activity and body, and try to merge subject and object together.
The symbol of home as a shelter becomes more prominent during the pandemic.. Safety and privacy are features of home, which are more pronounced when it comes to external dangers. Our personal memories and imaginations can be settled down at home, but the inside and outside can be reversed. Family and the universe are constantly interpenetrating into each other. In the book the poetic of space, Gaston Bachelard said,
whether in the house or in the universe, the dialectics become dynamic. House and space are not merely two juxtaposed elements of space. In the reign of the imagination, they awaken daydreams in each other, that are opposed. ⁸
The scale of the situation starts from home, then extends to the outside to explore the surroundings that are overlooked by people now.

8. Bachelard, Gaston, , Author, Jolas, Maria, Danielewski, Mark Z, and Kearney, Richard. "House and Universe." in The Poetics of Space. London, Penguin Classics, 2014.

Stay home.

Now, we are living in the age of “Peep Culture” that is steeped in technological change and enabled by technology. With the development of social media, people love to share anything in their lives and I feel the same way⁹. As I mentioned, I lived on the second floor. Sometimes I am like a voyeur watching people, thinking how it feel if all pedestrians pay attention to me
At first , I projected the words “stay home” onto the street. Some people looked up when they saw the words on the ground, But other people ignored the words since they were focusing on their phones or something else.
Then I projected live videos of my room on to the street, which included me and my activities in the room.
Projecting my private room to the public space via technology erased the boundary between inside and outside. It has reversed the relationship between home and street: My private inside space permeated into the outside and my home has become a place where strangers were always watching while I was watching pedestrians through my windows. In this dynamic tension relationship, the inhabited space transcends geometric space.

9. Niedzviecki, Hal. "Introducing Peep Culture" in The Peep Diaries : How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors. San Francisco, City Lights Books, 2009.

No more stay home.

Despite the pandemic is affecting our daily life, I am still able to explore places that I want to. This project aims to discover how technology makes us lose in palace.
Although I am lying at home, I am still anywhere in the world by utilizing technology,
We face different screens every day. A screen is like a window and scenery to us. A screen reveals parts of the world, but it does not turn the world to the object. We are like passengers who use screens for sightseeing, to go to various places in the world. Nevertheless we can do nothing. For instance, we cannot touch or feel objects, like my posture in the video.
In the third interval, Paul virilio said,
Technology it does not involve pushing us beyond the dromosphere of embodied engaged activity proper to the human form of existence¹⁰.
I took videos in which I lay on the ground at different places. As the background location changes, my body size and place are changing too.
Technology has changed our bodies, memories and the way we act. Henri Bergson said, because memories allow us to engage in the world in a practical sense. But our childhoods were filled with televisions and tablets. Personal memory, which should be the most intimate interiority, is caught up in processes that come from the outside¹¹. and it has changed our relationship with the world.


10. Virilio, Paul. The third interval: a critical transition'. In V. Andermatt-Conley, Rethinking Technologies, London, University of Minnesota Press, 1993, 3-10.

11. Roffe, Jon. "6. Rhythm and speed" in Interior design from the inside out, Melbourne: RMIT interior design, semester 1, 2020.

As the easing of restrictions, I was able to participate in real life activities. I went outside, projecting different sizes of me to the proximity.
Now, our surroundings are gradually digitized. People use phones to order food instead of going to the restaurant and supermarket, we perceive our surroundings by different applications, mapping and social software. We just focus on two spaces now: our home and the world. The proximity is vanishing.
I projected images of myself to the surroundings, to the inside of buildings, to a different object, tables and chairs, to the restaurant I always dined in before, but now is closed.
This time, everything is static, but my body image is moving, I am becoming hyperlocal which means my “body” can go wherever I want, but it depends on my physical body location. In the book The Primacy of Perception, Merleau-Ponty said,
“Everything I see is in principle within my reach, at least within reach of my sight, and is marked upon the map of the ‘I can’¹²”
My body image is still in the map of the “I can”.
Through projecting “myself” to different surfaces, meeting different objects and materials, I have become an object. Tables and chairs were holding “me” and my “body” was also like a ruler which was measuring different objects. Subject and object intertwined: When the subject is present, the object comes to life. If nothing is in the space, my “body” will not exist. Thus, we cannot clearly separate ourselves from the world.

12. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and Edie, James M. The Primacy of Perception : And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1964.

As the subject at home, I find my objects that I can touch freely are all around me which makes my home a map of “I can”
In this project, I am focusing on my haptic sense, returning agency and the body to technology. I depicted my object, chair, pot and keyboard etc. through technology such as a VR headset. Through my hand, the object is shaped and transferred in the 3D world.
After drawing, I used a 3D printer to print my 3D models, switching from virtual to physical again, I then put compare them with each other.
Then I traced my whole room through my body, including walls, corners, the lamp and the table etc., all of which were traced into a 3D world by me.
Every object I am tracing changes with my body size and movement. The model is made by a human dimension, The lines on the model in the 3D world reflect the texture of the physical object. If the material of an object is hard, the line will be straight which contrasts to curved lines that correspond to soft materials. Every object also depends on my perspective, embodiment sight and touch, all of which are connected. Also, objects have handmade quality in the 3D world.
Like Merleau-Ponty said, body exceeds subjectivity versus objectivity, presence versus absence. “I am my body”. My body is intentionally opening to the world, experiencing meaningful things in the first place¹³.
The presented object that was drawn through my body blurred the boundary between subject and object.

13. Diprose, Rosalyn, and Jack Reynolds. Merleau-Ponty: key concepts. Routledge, 2014, 111.

I am my body.

Continuing to use VR, I aimed to use technology to draw my inside body. I bind a controller to my arm, so when my body is moving, the inside of the 3D world also generates shapes following my movement. I created a space when I was moving in my home.
To drawI drew out my daily routine at home, including sitting in front of the desktop, cooking in the kitchen and resting, Resting on the bed.
My body is not just in space, but inhabits space by moving through it. To, which creates an opening space through my body movement.
I exported the movement of my “inside of body”, and combined it with the drawing of my room I created using my body. to the drawing that is my room by my hand to the one image.
Merleau-Ponty said, My body lives in surrounding objects, and my body has the ability to connect objects through movement¹⁴.

14. Diprose, Rosalyn, and Jack Reynolds. Merleau-Ponty: key concepts. Routledge, 2014, 118.

Following the last project, I used VR to draw a Federation square. But it feels completely different outside sinceFederation square is too big to be captured as a whole in the VR headset. When I tried to draw, my headset perspective often switched to another angle randomly. As a result, I drew part of the federation square.
I captured the shape of stools, the texture of stone and metal. In addition, there are a lot of screens in Federation square, so I also tried to draw them out, but, due to electronic interference, my controller did not work
The final model is shaped by different perspectives and a series of glitches.
In the same way, I traced the movement when I went upstairs in Fed square. The shape and space were generated based on my body and movement.
Finally I combined two spaces which are federation square through my body and my body movement in the space together.