Mall-E Speculative Rototics
Mall-E draws the trajectory of nomads' mobile houses and their sporadic messages on the floors or wall of Futroit Mall.
Futroit Mall is not a place for shopping anymore. Retail shops are gone. The emerging abandoned spaces are now ready to exhibit art work.
The Mall-E system tracks the location of the nomads' mobile houses. When a change is detected, Mall-E draws the movement with a unique pattern. The visual aesthetics of Mall-E's drawing borrows from petroglyphs while also appropriating symbols such as brand logos and cartoon characters of the post-industrial age.
The interior of the future-indoor-mall is inscribed with the data obtained from nomads, which depicts a history of their life. Thanks to the Mall-E, the abandoned shopping malls will function similarly to the ancient caves on which primitive men inscribed their lives.
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, award # ISE-0741685