Xiaoyi’s Home — Immersive Tenement Museum
As time flies to 2122, the whole world has experienced a huge change in the living style. Due to the over-exploitation of natural resources by mankind over the past hundred years, the remaining natural resources have reached a very dangerous moment. Therefore, the government has been trying to instill an extremely simplified and standardized way of life and living environment into people’s lives and hearts. Furthermore, Since the global pandemic that began in 2020, the world has seen one infectious outbreak after another in the intervening decades. To stop these serious social, economic, and political problems caused by epidemics, people have chosen to increase their “social distance,” even among their loved ones. Because of this, people are becoming more and more distant from each other, and more and more people are choosing to live alone. As people become more comfortable with living alone, they do not need to learn to build a lasting relationship with others, which leads to a large extent to their loss of the human empathy instinct. In order to deal with this kind of negative phenomenon for human development, the government has joined hands with scientists to invent a special bed.
The special bed is also called Dreaming Tour Museum. It is an installation that if the user lay on this bed, it can allow the user to trace back to 100 years ago when people were still in the life living with groups, such as family, friends, classmates, etc., in the “dream”. During the period of enjoying the “dream”, the user will be randomly put into the home of one person who actually lived 100 years ago, and is allowed to experience the day as any family member, including human members, animal members, and plant members. As for the day the user is being put, it is also randomly chosen by the Dreaming Tour’s system. This kind of dream will only last for about 12 hours once and be available one time per week because the government is worried about the consequence that the people will be addicted to this installation and do not want to get back to reality.
Alex, the common girl who lives in the time of 2122, is preparing to start her favorite time of the week. Lay on the bed, and she soon falls asleep, and begins her journey “dream tour”.
“DING!”
“Hi, Alex!”
“Welcome to your Dream Tour Museum. And today, we choose the room where Xiaoyi (Mia) has lived. Oh, she is a very lovely girl. By the way, who do you want to choose as your identity for this trip?”
“Xiaoyi’s father/mother, her grandpa/grandma, her sweetie sister (a cat called Jin Taiyi), her favorite flowers, or just be herself, or anyone else?”
“Em… Ok, I will be Xiaoyi, just herself. It seems to be really interesting!”
“Good! ‘Xiaoyi’, welcome back to your room! Plus, I will always be with you. If you have any questions, just say ‘hey, Ada!’ I am happy to help you with clarification!😀”
After determining the identity for her journey through the communication with Dream Tour Museum AI system, Ada, Alex finds she is in a totally new environment. To be more precise, she is in a bedroom, laying in a bed, wearing comfortable pajamas, however, all of them do not belong to her.
“Yeah~It seems I have successfully logged in,” Alex whispers.
Before she opens her eyes, she hears a voice that seemed to be calling out to her. “Xiaoyi! It’s time to wake up! Don’t forget that today is the once-a-week cleaning day!”
“Hey, Ada!”
“Yes, I’m here! Any questions?”
“Show me the photos of each family member and their relationships. It will be helpful if you can provide the information about the layout of Xiaoyi’s room.”
“Sure!”
“Oh~ I see!”
“Okay, Mummy! I’m getting up.”
Alex gets a rough idea about the basic information about Xiaoyi’s room, and she is going to get out of bed. As soon as her foot hits the floor, a sound of the ocean comes through. Then with each step she took, a burst of ocean waves utter.
“Oh! Wow!”
“Haha, it seems that you also get shocked about what you have done.” Xiaoyi’s mother laughs, “When you first told me that it was the project you have done for your exhibition class, and made me try it, I also got shocked. Though I really love the ocean wave sound, it’s a little bit loud. Maybe for tomorrow, the sound will be softer as it’s going to be the sound of grass. ”
“Hey, Ada. What’s that project?”
“It’s an interactive furniture installable called ‘里世界–inside world’. It’s trying to tell an idea that the world we feel we exist in may not be the real world, or perhaps we may in fact be living in another world. ”
“Wow, cool~”
After finishing the breakfast prepared by Xiaoyi’s mother, Alex is going to start her room cleaning, because Xiaoyi’s mother just tells her that everyone should clean their own space, and clean the public space together with assigned work. Therefore, Alex should better to start her cleaning work as soon as possible, as she later has to be responsible for the sweeping and mopping for the living room, bathroom, and kitchen. However, as a modern 2122 person, she has never done the housework before, because all of those kinds of work are done by the housework AI machine.
“Hey, Ada! What should I do for housework?”
“I suggest that you’d better try the iPad placing on the desk, and search your questions on the video app called Bilibili which is one of the most popular apps at the time of 2022 and provides plenty of the information, including housework videos. You can also try it after finishing your work!”
Thanks for the advice from Ada, Alex successfully grasps how to do her cleaning. And during the process of cleaning, Alex gets more insights into the living environment where a common 2022 girl lived.
Unlike their 2122 home, where the layout, decoration, furniture and style of each hot room are uniformly the same, each person’s room in 2022 xiaoyi’s home has its own unique personal style.
For Xiaoyi’s room, it seems that she loved the color of pink a lot, because the wall color is pink, and she also had many small stuffs with pink, such as pencils, mirror, etc. Also, Xiaoyi might possibly is a person who had to always work with the computer, as she had a really high computer stands on her desk. Furthermore, Alex thinks Xiaoyi definitely is a person who liked DIY a lot, as there are boxes of breeds and strings in her room alonging with the various handmade bracelets and rings. For the most impressive thing for Alex is must be the huge bookcases put in Xiaoyi’s room with a wide variety of books. For Alex, with the development of technology and the lack of natural resources, she hasn’t seen the real physical books, and only experienced with the digital ones. For other spaces in Xiaoyi’s home, there also many interesting things. For example, as Xiaoyi’s parents really likes the color of green and blue, they paint their bedroom with the color of blue, and paint the living in green. Another fancy discovery is that because Xiaoyi’s mother is a person who loved travelling, and would always bought the souvenir refrigerator stickers of tourist places that were all decorated on the refrigerator doors.
With the help of Ada and the other family members, she gradually understand what kind of living style a common 2022 family will have and understand how to get along with a group of people (family).
Time flies. In a flash, the 12-hour experience is up.
“DING!”
“Alex, times up! You have to go back~”
Alex lays back down on xiaoyi’s bed and slowly closes her eyes.