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Conceptual underpinnings of this project began in 1995 when I first stayed in a capsule hotel while in Tokyo collaborating with a Japanese dance company. I became fascinated with these modular sci-fi like spaces, and began to incorporate this imagery into my work and installation proposals. Between 1996 and 1999, I traveled back to Tokyo to further develop this concept which became the basis of online web projects, theatrical prototypes and proposals.
At that time my goal was to stage a performance in the hotel site and stream all signals to a companion “fake” capsule hotel site in NYC. The key concept of this proposal was a parallel between the architecture of a capsule hotel and the virtual architecture of an internet chat room. “…the compartmental nature of the hotels’ physical structure can be seen as a parallel to the workings of an internet chat room. A camera and television in each capsule will enable every inhabitant to receive and/or transmit into any other capsule hooked up to the local system. In addition, internet connectivity will enable the linkage of the actual ‘Capsule Hotel’ in Tokyo to a ‘reflective’ installation in NYC…”
In late 1999, dotcom pioneer Josh Harris commissioned a NYC side only version of this project and it was incorporated into ‘Quiet’ the ‘happening . This version of the project though not linked thru internet to a live “doubled” capsule hotel in tokyo, was however quite successful
In 2000, directly following the 1999 ‘millenium capsule’ installation, I received a Japan foundation PAJ award to further develop the piece and traveled back to Tokyo to film new sequences. The work created during this period was shown at the Kitchen in 2001, and at Cooper Hewitt museum in 2002.
Original Japan foundation text proposal:
‘Capsule Hotel’ is a participatory installation inspired by a ‘short stay’ businessman hotel in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo*.
It will function simultaneously as a short term living environment and as a web-based multi-user video- conference environment. Modeled architecturally on a particular typical Capsule Hotel in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo (green plaza), the compartmental nature of the hotels’ physical structure can be seen as a parallel to the workings of an internet chat room.
Pushing this chat room metaphor further, a ‘doubled’ situation will be set-up, with twin reflective installations in Tokyo and New York. This doubled environment will serve to bridge and/or create new layers of distance, depending on one’s interpretation./
A camera and television in each capsule will enable each inhabitant to receive and/or transmit into any other capsule hooked up to the local system. In addition, internet connectivity will enable the linkage of the actual ‘Capsule Hotel’ in Tokyo to a ‘reflective’ installation in NYC.
Selected compartments will be enhanced by internet hookup, enabling a 24/7 New York to Tokyo video- conference connection. An ‘electronic cloud’ of personal data will be allowed to roam freely between these two environments.
A temporary population of ‘inhabitants’ will be assembled in each location, creating an overlapping system between participants and spaces.The circumstances of this ‘doubled’ environment will become the take-off point for an ongoing web-based narrative as well as a series of live performative actions.
As the individual participants are networked together and their signals tele-communicated, the physical and the virtual will overlap in unexpected ways, forming an environment hooked up between two distant realities. For the time they inhabit the capsule hotel, the participants will have more in common with each other than they will with their respective worlds-at-large
