Sinful Leisures // a re-contextualisation of leisure as a state managed aspect of life in the digital age
Yap Kai Jun, Aston
Final Review Setup
Diagnosis Envelope
Sinful Leisures Discovery Guide
Thesis Research Summary
In an era where choice and autonomy are increasingly perceived as illusory, our lives are intricately intertwined with surveillance mechanisms that silently guide our decisions. This omnipresent surveillance, once confined to public spaces, has surreptitiously infiltrated our most private realms through the ubiquitous presence of smart phones connected to vast networks. In the digital age, our phones run our everyday lives and while the convenience it has afforded us is undeniable, these devices extract our personal data, transforming it into raw material for corporate control and behavioural analysis.
Such pervasive surveillance has robbed us of our authentic self, encouraging homogenization and entrapping us in predefined silos. Our digital footprint, comprising search histories, location data and social graphs are running ledgers of inquiries we have deliberated, points of places we have moved through and dimensions of our personal identity and connections, all subject to automated scrutiny. Such surveillance unchecked is a harbinger of a society where we lose the sanctuary of our self, for we are automated.
Through my research, I will delve into the complex interplay between Surveillance Capitalism, Autonomy and Deterritorialization of choice, primarily through the prosthesis of the smart phone. I aim to dissect the surveillance infrastructure underpinning our personal devices, orchestrated by both the network and corporate entities This system has reconfigured our perception of choice, leaving us entrenched in a spiral of control and entrapment rather than enlightenment and alleviation.
Sited in the scenario of future conditions of the smart phone and network, the thesis stands as a speculation of how the issue of surveillance will be exacerbated in this new condition. The thesis seeks to explore the potentials of using architecture as a disruptor and resistance against the network and surveillance against the encroaching network and its surveillance apparatus, to negotiate a space in which the true autonomous self could exist.
Thesis Design Bridge
Expanding on my research, the Attention Economy draws links between Data, Health and the State. As a result, it has left us with altered brains, becoming digitally exhausted. The symptoms of such digital exhaustion manifests itself physically in terms of physical, mental, emotional and behavioural symptoms, all that relates to our health.
Echoing the mother state’s obsession with her citizens’ health, I begin to imagine in the societies of control, an ecosystem where the government’s access to our online data has the potential to diagnose these symptoms of digital fatigue and the solution to this digital exhaustion would be a state mandated form of rest, one of leisure.
Historically, leisure as a state controlled activity was present in communist Poland, used to as part of the regime’s modernisation policy, to reward hard work for the workers in a socialist homeland. In my project, I re-contextualise leisure as a state controlled aspect of life, as part of the government’s response to welding a stronger grip on our health.
Thesis Abstract
In our networked age, the normalization and numbness towards the surrender of our personal data in exchange for perceived conveniences has subjected ourselves to voluntary surveillance through our data and devices. This has left us with altered brains and bodies that have become digitally exhausted.
The project speculates that in this society, the state leverage data from our digital footprints to diagnose individuals with digital fatigue and prescribes a form of leisure modelled on the indulgence in the seven deadly sins as an antidote for this modern malaise. Riding on the paradox between desire and prohibition, this creates a leisure destination of allure and remorseless sinning.
Ultimately, the project reveals an outcome that this indulgence in the seven sins would create a self-fuelling economy that instigates a new form of leisure addiction in the contemporary digital landscape, subsuming itself in an alternative cycle of entrapment.
Architectural Proposition
The built proposition designs a new state-managed leisure destination that is spread across the island of Sentosa, replacing the traditional model of leisure into a prescribed leisure modelled on the indulgence in the seven deadly sins as an antidote to the symptoms of digital fatigue.
The Towers of sins are erected across the island, each distinct on its own and all connected by a dedicated cable car system. Each Tower of sin houses leisure activities that targets specific symptoms of digital fatigue and offers varying intensity of treatment. These Towers become different leisure rides that visitors participate in, producing a self-fuelling leisure economy.
SINFUL LEISURES
ON GOVERNMENT SERVICE
Diagnosis Envelope
Sinful Leisures Discovery Guide
