Isolation

For this project, I intend to create a potential utopia/heterotopia based off of our given circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic. I want to explore and create a reality that explores our present-day sociocultural changes due to the pandemic in an exaggerated way. My goal is to create a series of renders that show the changes in society that may occur because of prolonged exposure to the virus. Creating a loose narrative and showing what kind of potential reality I imagine, using a variety of precedents ranging from the written works of, George Orwell's 1984, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, to the plethora of films we have watched throughout this course, added with a few I have watched on my own time. The main goal of this project is to experiment with the idea of world-building, taking influence from science fiction media and the current circumstances occurring in the world today. 

The world has experienced one of the largest pandemics they have ever seen, with no viable cure in the foreseen future. The disease has forced portions of cities to become large windowless monolithic structures in an attempt to reduce the amount of outside exposure. Residents are highly monitored to maintain a virus-free environment. Drones dominate the sky as all commercial interactions have become automated. As a means to cope with this isolation, humanity has invented a fully immersive virtual system that allows people to interact and entertain themselves with whatever they desire. However, this is just a form of interaction and entertainment and has no impact whatsoever on the outside world. People who wish to leave these concrete building complexes' must wear their protective equipment and go through a sanitation process before leaving and entering.  Because of this new process of automation, many people have lost their main source of income and must live within the old city. They construct their own forms of portable air purifiers using old tech. They have resorted to shooting down delivery drones as a means to scavenge for spare parts and steal supplies. There is a great divide between these two worlds that rest in the juxtaposition of each other.