Embracing Kinship: Interconnected Interiors in the Metaverse

Creating spaces of connection through dialogues on emerging topics on the metaverse and belonging.

An Interiors Collection for INSideinsIDE and beyond

Embracing Kinship: Interconnected Interiors in the Metaverse creates a virtual reality experience where users can explore and interact with various interconnected virtual spaces while fostering a sense of community and shared experiences. We propose a series of interconnected interiors generated by ongoing discussions and community agreements around belonging, and rituals that connect us. 

Co-Authors

Michele Gorman

Madina Masimova

and Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT and Midjourney)

RIS_top_view_a_rug_made_from_indigenous_patterns_that_connect

Image credits: Midjourney
Prompt credits: Gorman, Masimova: rug patterns that connect us (abstract)
Trained on Patterns that Connect, by Carl Shuster

 madinamasimova_top_view_of_a_plate_with_patterns_that_connect_a_2d4377b5-f5ae-4d8c-b6c9-e9e3b9f68b64
Image credits: Midjourney
Prompt credits: Gorman, Masimova: top view of plate with patterns that connect us (abstract)
Trained on Patterns that Connect, by Carl Shuster

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the curated Collection

We believe AI can be a powerful support in the creative process. We are excited to explore its potential within interior design and have used this collection to explore the possibilities and to open discussions. In each instance that it was used, we lead with transparency. As designers, we see AI as part of our design process but not the end result. Where it was used as the end product, authorship is given to the platform and general prompts are shared. These are cited and credited as contributions. For instance, AI was used to generate the rugs of this collection, prompted and trained on images by Michele Gorman and Madina Masimova. In another instance, it was used to generate ideas on spaces of belonging and inclusion for us, as authors of the collection and the Metaverse spaces, to critique and design from. For text, it was used to summarize our research and for us, as authors, to elaborate on and edit. For all contributors to this collection, if AI is used at any stage in the creation of your project (including initial stages, idea generation, rendering, language translation, and final form), it should be properly cited and disclose its use. This should include details on the specific tool and version used, as well as the nature of your usage (for example, in programming code, images, and/or text/writing). For Chat contributions in other languages, we recommend AI for language translation. We hope this will enable a space of belonging and sharing.


Contextualizing the Metaverse Interiors Collection  

Embracing kinship represents the idea of fostering a sense of community, connection, and togetherness within the Metaverse. It suggests that the users of our virtual interiors are encouraged to form relationships, collaborate, and support each other. Creating a virtual reality experience where users can explore and interact with various interconnected virtual interiors while fostering a sense of community and shared experiences.

Prompted by co-authors, Michele Gorman and Madina Masimova, to create spaces that engage a sense of collective belonging in the Metaverse through a shared experience and emerging conversations. The space’s signature interior element is the domestic rug. This emerged from Masimova’s relationship to the domestic rugs of Azerbaijan, recognized as an Intangible History by UNESCO, where the shared space, defined by the boundary of a traditional rug, could be reconfigured based on different cultural rituals and bodies. The rug, and its place in the interior, connects us across cultures. We see the rug, and its patterns, as a cultural space of gathering, sharing and co-authorship in the Metaverse that connects us between our global locales, spaces and times. The authors generated each rug with the prompt: patterns that connect. They used text to image prompts through Artificial Intelligence (Midjourney) to create a globally co-authored surface to enter as a spawn point into each space.

Each space is inspired by rituals that connect such as listening rooms, tea ceremonies, dinner parties that drive the typologies of our interconnected interiors. A set of community agreements, entered through the Dinner Party room, drives the theme and interaction prompt of each room. We see the metaverse interior as a spatial way to learn, and add to activate and embody the community agreements. We use the Dinner Party as a space of belonging or offering. Each plate represents a community agreement and is hyperlinked to text and rooms. Each room will collect, over time, a set of curated Metaverse interiors that support, extend or challenge these agreements of a radically inclusive Metaverse.


What is the future of Interiors and interiority within the Metaverse?

As digital interiorists and feminists, we entered the Metaverse as techno utopian optimists. Excited about the future of the Metaverse as a space of liberation from the gender norms of the physical built environment, we quickly became critical of the spaces, experiences and interactions we were encountering. We engaged in global Metaverse events and design award ceremonies within Decentraland, AltspaceVR, Spatial, VRChat. In sharing stories of bullying, hypercapitalism, and the loneliness we felt when roaming events and spaces, we felt kinship in our visioning of a radically inclusive Metaverse future. If the interior is intended to elevate the human experience, create a space of connections, we created spaces of ethical alterierity in Metaverse. We asked: what would spaces look like where we can share knowledge, to heal, to listen, to commune?

We see the future of this space as one of radical belonging: a space of new emerging connections and communities; spaces of global collaboration on the climate crisis; spaces of liberation; spaces of expanded and the pluriverse of identities, towards gender and racial justice, that will move out of the Metaverse and into the physical world; spaces of connection between physical and virtual worlds.

We contemplate what a space of belonging, togetherness and community can be in the Metaverse. What does engagement look like when you may be the only one entering and engaging the space? How can you connect asynchronously with a larger community across space and time?


Community Agreements for a radically inclusive Metaverse future:

  1. 1. Listen actively with empathy. This is a space of active listening, sharing, and collaboration. Each space is defined by a community agreement and emerging theme. Share the mic. Listen with an intent to learn from diverse perspectives. Listen to each other actively and show empathy in the case of disagreements.
  2.  2. Belong. You belong here. We define Metaverse as a Pluriverse, where diversity of digital identities and voices can thrive. Be mindful of your online presence acknowledging the impact your actions have on the community. Avoid spamming and any kind of cyberbullying. Prompt for conversation in room: What does it mean to create a space of belonging in the metaverse?
  3.  3. Be YOU. Create your own Identity. Prompt: Create your own avatar. Rejoin the Mozilla Hub Room to customize your avatar. We celebrate the plurality of different digital identities and representation. We acknowledge oppressions within the physical worlds on our expressions of our individual identities and we seek to create a space of difference.
  4.  4. Be a Citizen of this space. A citizen has agency to change their built environment, engage in conversations, to reside safely, to voice their opinions. Prompt for conversation in room: What does it mean to be a citizen within this space? How can these definitions move fluidly outside of this space?
  5.  5. Say something & Communicate respectfully. Mic on. Speak up. If you are not speaking, ask why. We will communicate with kindness and respect, avoiding harassment of any type. Test your voice now by turning on your mic and express how you feel. Example: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
  6. 6. Respect Intellectual Privacy. Seek consent before reposting or using someone’s content. We will respect privacy and do not distribute personal information. If you download an object, always cite the author. Do not use it for commercial purposes. Be sensitive to cultures and his/her/their stories of appropriation within interior design. Respect each other’s culture, identity, Intellectual Property, and voices. Incorporating cultural design without cultural appropriation. Please donate to the craftspeople and those traditions. Please add text to cite the culture that the object was inspired or created from.
  7. 7. All Languages are Welcome. We welcome diversity in our space. Use inclusive language to avoid assuming anyone’s gender, race, or other personal characteristics. If you are conversing with someone outside of your native tongue, please use the text box or Discord channel so the language can be copied into Google Translate for synchronous or asynchronous conversations. We acknowledge that not all languages are represented yet in Google Translate. You MAY use AI for language translation.
  8. 8. Digital Presence. We aim to create a synchronous presence in these space, but the space will be mostly visited solely. We acknowledge that the space can feel lonely, not feeling like you are part of a community. Leaving an object or resource can create a space of dialogue for future citizens to engage with. Plan a time to visit with an affinity group on the topic and gather around the rug for discussions. Add the date and time and time zone to the Chat so others can make plans to join the discussion.
  9. 9. Join or create a synchronous or asynchronous conversation. Contribute freely to conversations and spaces through the Chat. Move around to the emerging themes and contribute an object, sketch in the space or click the Discord channel to add text, link, or external resource. Bring a community to this space for a synchronous conversation on an emerging theme or question. Turn the mic on.
  10. 10. Knowledge Hub: Explore resources, including articles, books, videos, and podcasts within this space on emerging themes. You can also contribute your own recommendations and create curated lists to share with the community.
  11. 11. Create. Add your object to an ongoing conversation or start a new one. Does your object support, expand or challenge the conversation? What story does your object(s) tell?

Land Acknowledgements

This work was done on the unceded land of the Munsee Lenape people in Brooklyn, New York and in Baku, Azerbaijan.


Gratitude:

We would like to thank Maya Georgieva, Director of The New School Innovation Lab, for her wisdom and insight around our co-taught Mixed Reality elective.

We would like to thank Johanne Woodcock for her support of an AI generated interiors collection on inside.inside.

We would like to thank the students of Mixed Realities for expanding these topics through dialogue and creative work.

We would like to thank our guests in Mixed Realities for being open to dialogue on the future of the Metaverse.


Embracing Kinship Room Collection

Rooms designed by Gorman and Masimova. Curated interior elements generated by AI or cited author with permissions.

Each room has been curated around a Community Agreement or emerging topic on radical belonging in the metaverse.

Room 1: Active Listening Room

Room 2: Dinner Party / Community Agreements Room

Room 3: Be You  / Digital Identity Room

Room 4: Digital Presence Room

Room 5: Join a Conversation, or start a new one, Room

We appreciate all meaningful feedback to make these spaces more welcoming for all.

We will continue to add / curate / connect interiors to this space, emerging topics and virtual interiors of the Metaverse. We have launched this collection in Mozilla / Hubs with emerging themes from our discussions, plus the curation of themes that we would like to explore within.  Please return to see the spaces change over time and conversations emerging. We see this collection as living and growing. It’s alignment with our Mixed Realities elective will feed it’s research into this space

Please explore.

Please leave your thoughts in the form of text, hyperlinks, drawings, or objects.

Please connect if you have work you would like to share or highlighted in the collection at Michele Gorman and Madina Masimova (emails hyperlinked)

Join the conversation:

Embracing Kinship Discord Channel

#decoloniality-in-the-metaverse

#everyday-interiors-in-the-metaverse

#prompted-interiors

#ecological-futures-of-the-metaverse

#spaces-of-protest-and-dissent 

#radical-feminist-spaces-of-the-metaverse

#spaces-of-co-authorship-and-collaboration

#expanded-identities-of-the-metaverse

 


 Why use Mozilla / Hubs?

Mozilla / Hubs is most aligned with our ethics. There is no need to purchase cryptocurrency or “land” parcels to enter or to create. Free of the spaces of capitalism the current platforms of the Metaverse promote, we critique platforms that require the purchase of cryptocurrency or NFTs. We promote spaces of listening, making and contributions, reframing the current approaches to the Metaverse. The selling of land in the Metaverse also amplifies colonialist approaches to space. What does a space of sharing and belonging look like?, creating an alternative to the approaches we currently see.

As the platform that we are using is not entirely meeting this future, we use the medium as a way to present work that proposes new radical futures of the Metaverse and explores what is possible. It is our hope that our students build on this research and find future potentials of spaces of radical belonging within these spaces, and continue to make, share and liberate themselves to find real connections and communities to challenge the built environment.


We invite you to enter here:

Interconnected Interiors Walkthrough
ACTIVE LISTENING ROOM


Listen actively with empathy. This is a space of active listening, sharing, and collaboration. Each space is defined by a community agreement and emerging theme. Share the mic. Listen with an intent to learn from diverse perspectives. Listen to each other actively and show empathy in the case of disagreements.

A space to engage a sense of collective belonging through a shared experience. Prompted by co-authors, Michele Gorman and Madina Masimova, to create spaces of connections and to hold conversations. The domestic rug emerged from Masimova’s relationship to the domestic rugs of Azerbaijan where the space could be reconfigured based on different rituals and bodies. The rug and its patterns as a cultural space of co-making and co-authorship and how this could bridge to the space of the Metaverse. The authors engaged domestic rugs + patterns that connect and used Artificial Intelligence (Midjourney) as a prompt to create a globally co-authored surface to enter as a spawn point.
Spawn point
A spawn point is a location where a participant enters the space. Multiple players can enter at the same spawn point.



DINNER PARTY ROOM


Rituals that connect such as tea ceremonies, drive the typologies of the interconnected interiors. Using the metaverse interior as a spatial way to learn, and add to, community agreements. We use the Dinner Party as a space of belonging or offering. Each plate is hyperlinked to text, rooms, or projects that support, extend or challenge these agreements.

BE YOU ROOM


Be YOU. Create your own Identity.
Prompt: Create your own avatar: https://hubs.mozilla.com/docs/intro-avatars.html
Rejoin the Mozilla Hub Room to customize your avatar. We celebrate the plurality of different digital identities and representation. We acknowledge oppressions within the physical worlds on our expressions of our individual identities and we seek to create a space of difference.

Join an ongoing conversation:
#expanded-identities-of-the-metaverse
https://discord.gg/zG4JDEVe
DIGITAL PRESENCE ROOM


Digital Presence. We aim to create a synchronous presence in these space, but the space will be mostly visited solely. We acknowledge that the space can feel lonely, not feeling like you are part of a community. Leaving an object or resource can create a space of dialogue for future citizens to engage with. Plan a time to visit with an affinity group on the topic and gather around the rug for discussions. Add the date and time and time zone to the Chat so others can make plans to join the discussion.

Say something & Communicate respectfully. Mic on. Speak up. If you are not speaking, ask why. We will communicate with kindness and respect, avoiding harassment of any type. Test your voice now by turning on your mic and express how you feel. Example: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

All Languages are Welcome. We welcome diversity in our space. Use inclusive language to avoid assuming anyone's gender, race, or other personal characteristics. If you are conversing with someone outside of your native tongue, please use the text box or Discord channel so the language can be copied into Google Translate for synchronous or asynchronous conversations. We acknowledge that not all languages are represented yet in Google Translate.
JOIN A CONVERSATION ROOM


Join an ongoing conversation on emerging topics on radical inclusion within the Metaverse.

Join or create a synchronous or asynchronous conversation. Contribute freely to conversations and spaces through the Chat. Move around to the emerging themes and contribute an object, sketch in the space or click the Discord channel to add text, link, or external resource. Bring a community to this space for a synchronous conversation on an emerging theme or question. Turn the mic on.

Explore resources, including articles, books, videos, and podcasts within this space on emerging themes. You can also contribute your own recommendations and create curated lists to share with the community.

#decoloniality-in-the-metaverse
https://discord.gg/NE7mVuHEZY 

#everyday-interiors-in-the-metaverse
https://discord.gg/jgzhSN8aG7

#prompted-interiors
https://discord.gg/Qp3qabcpR3

#ecological-futures-of-the-metaverse
https://discord.gg/Qp3qabcpR3

#spaces-of-protest-and-dissent 
https://discord.gg/b6cRQvYcHh

#radical-feminist-spaces-of-the-metaverse
https://discord.gg/cs3g6aYJUt 

#spaces-of-co-authorship-and-collaboration
https://discord.gg/uDrNq7ZYnh

#expanded-identities-of-the-metaverse
https://discord.gg/zG4JDEVe

Respect Intellectual Privacy. Seek consent before reposting or using someone's content. We will respect privacy and do not distribute personal information. If you download an object, always cite the author. Do not use it for commercial purposes. Be sensitive to cultures and his/her/their stories of appropriation within interior design. Respect each other's culture, identity, Intellectual Property, and voices. Incorporating cultural design without cultural appropriation. Please donate to the craftspeople and those traditions. Please add text to cite the culture that the object was inspired or created from.



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