Project Name: Multi-Agent Masque

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The interactive aspect for the Philadelphia Masque has two behaviours. The first is a responsive playing field where each Character has a placement and an orientation. As each piece is moved, the map of the city is commensurately transformed. These Characters become the investigative or the defining moment from which a new city geography is understood. The relation of derelict lot is now inverted to become the moments around which Philadelphia is re-created. The second system is a mutli-agent system for which speculative values and assignments are simulated and tested. These vacancies are given staggered goals and directives to find like sizes, similar demographic size, or equal orientations to make explicit the many ways in which these blighted properties are distributed across zoning, property values, wealth, and privilege. The Characters of the mask are agents in which inequalities may be exposed, and new social orderings are suggested.

credits:

Michael Wetmore
Josef Musil
Chris McAdams