Hemispherium: 7 Paradoxes

This project is currently in development.

Hemispherium: 7 Paradoxes is an ongoing research project composed of seven interactive installations, each dedicated to a speculative societal future paradox. The works examine how contradictions shape human perception, culture, digital rights, and collective futures. Rather than proposing solutions, the project creates structured situations in which visitors are asked to remain with tension, ambiguity, and imbalance as defining conditions of contemporary life.

Each paradox is articulated through an interactive machine that combines spoken guidance, eye-tracking, and tactile input. The installations are rooted in the lineage of Interactive Imagination Compositions, extending this practice from purely audio-based and spatial scores into machine-mediated encounters where imagination, bodily presence, and computational systems directly influence one another. The voice does not instruct outcomes, but frames an inner process that unfolds through attention, choice, and perception.

Concrete interactions vary per installation. In one scenario, a participant’s gaze gradually redistributes virtual resources on screen, revealing how prolonged attention amplifies inequality rather than balance. In another, visitors are asked to choose between personalized outputs and collective stability, with their decisions subtly reshaping the system for the next participant. Elsewhere, slow eye movements and minimal hand gestures modulate a synthetic environment, exposing the tension between mental optimization and performative self-control.

The project is developed through residencies, iterative prototyping, and long-term collaboration. Each phase foregrounds process as much as outcome, allowing audiences and partners to encounter not only functional installations, but the questions, constraints, and ethical uncertainties that drive their development.

The seven paradoxes currently under development are:

A: Universal Basic Income, Resource Distribution Paradox
B: Post-Scarcity Governance, Meaning Scarcity Paradox
C: Hyper-Personalization, Individual vs. Commons Paradox
D: Attention Autonomy, Stimulus vs. Control Paradox
E: Space Extraction, Ownership vs. Collective Frontier Paradox
F: Mental Health Optimization, Resilience vs. Performance Paradox
G: Synthetic Food, Natural vs. Engineered Sustenance Paradox

Production and development: Kunstenwerkplaats, Brussels, BE
Coproduction: C-TAKT, Pelt, BE, Werktank, Leuven, BE, GUM, Ghent, BE, WASP / 4Culture, Bucharest, RO
Research and collaboration: IMPAKT, Utrecht, NL, Constant vzw, Brussels, BE

With the support of Flanders State of the Art