...seems like the COVID pandemic is becoming another history to be forgiven and forgotten,
as the next emergencies persistently washing headlines;
What if, in an exceptional case, the pandemic (and associated actions) extended for decades?
COVIDPUNK is an interactive architectural fiction propelled by a series of loosely linked stories in a(nother) post-2020 world.
The pandemic era begins with COVID-19 sweeping across the globe;
Urban routines of working/ schooling/ shopping/ recreation/ social life begin their digital transitions under social distancing
requirements, where Zoom and Amazon become significant social infrastructures;
Digital gaps reveal between the industries advanced of remote operation and the majority others requiring onsite work,
which also widens economic gaps between relevant communities;
Public health measures become a contesting ground for economic, political, cultural, and spatial conflicts
from individual to international scales;
The paused social production also intensifies the historically established racial and political tensions;
Hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and freezes under 'unprecedented' climates add additional strikes to the stay-home populations
of North America and Southeast Asia;
The continuous fights between mutative COVID developments and corresponding public health actions gradually legitimize new
urban norms of regulated social distancing practices, periodical vaccination reinforcements, and graded lockdowns
for different scenarios (L1 for masked access to public space - L5 for absolute quarantine);
Internet evolves into a placeless collection of workplaces, schools, shopping sites, social clubs, amusement parks,
courts, and voting boxes that collectively reformulate one's work-live habits, whereas cities and local communities virtually
reduce to public health units for COVID-related regulations and actions;
Public investments in digital production and service grow under the drastic work-life transitions;
online exchange of information and material become fundamental skills for human life;
internet access becomes a formally acknowledged human right;
Digital gaps between industries and corresponding workforces evolve into spatial segregations between the
'safer' communities of digital workers with controlled access and the 'risky' neighborhoods of urban commuters with unstable
social distancing practice;
Home Extension began a year ago when @11F made a 'legal shared space' within her
15sqm room and opened it to us as a pub during lockdowns.
The furnishing &sharing trend quickly spread throughout the whole building (btw, we live in
a one-unit-per-floor pencil building on Tokyo Health's quarantine subsidies, just so you know
how we were excited for this). Despite having dividers between the host and guest on social
distancing baseline, I can feel the pre-pandemic vibe by walking up and down every day for my next floors' offerings.
The only person absent from our program is the 'ghost @13F' living upstairs...
The COVID transitions of social production stimulate economic and political investments
in the global network of 5.0 Infrastructures:
- Internet 5.0:
the pre-pandemic standard of 5G cellular network that has been reshaped and made globally available through
a low-orbit satellite matrix under the US-China 5G competition,
providing uninterrupted digital access for people at home and machines across borders;
- Industry 5.0:
a comprehensive system of remote collaboration between digital workers and machinery that enables fully unmanned industrial
activities through automated procedures and remote human interventions; relevant technologies are initially developed to sustain
the productivity of primary industries during COVID lockdowns and then been widely adopted in other industrial businesses of
various scales for relevant social and economic transitions;
- Mobility 5.0:
the pre-pandemic visions of Level 5 autonomous vehicle that has been standardized for driverless
forms of air, ground, and aquatic transportations, thanks to the restricted personal mobility that helps their training and
legislation in most cities as well as heavy public investments in relevant services such as Amazon and Uber Air;
On the other hand, oppositions rise among the digitally disadvantaged societies and the stakeholders of human-labored industries
with major concerns regarding employment opportunities, techno-monopolies, and cultural identities of production;
Like most other Live-In-Office members, I moved here during the summer COVID recession for the advertised 'pre-2020 office cultures'
my parents always talked about...turned out that I still spent more time living online inside my studio unit than using
the shared amenities with my 'officemates'. Ironically, the new wave of COVID-Mu lockdowns offers me more chances to step outside
and explore this (heavily transformed) 1986 office tower with nobody around...
[Note: this is a (endlessly) working project; I will often extend the explorable area of the tower with new interactive artifacts]
5.0 Technologies thrive across diverse industries and services under recurring COVID developments,
promoting unmanned production lines on less-inhabitable lands and filling major transportation hubs
with automated distribution facilities; the growing community of digital workers adopts the title of
'nomad' for spending most of their time and energy somewhere across screens while living elsewhere
under necessary social distancing measures;
The uninterrupted productivity of 5.0 industries leverages the socio-economic status of nomads.
Their significant buying powers converge into an offline leisure market as symbolized by COVID-free towns: gated
touristy sites and enclosed portions of cities exclusively reserved for COVID-negative consumers to spend their money.
These towns revitalize the pre-pandemic trends of digital nomads traveling
around the world and add to the popular cultures of a larger population involved in digital economies.
Although Tallinn has been my favorite COVID-free town for its Medieval cultures,
I rarely related it to my E-Estonian coffee business before the 90-day-annual visiting requirement
came in force. I'm not sure about the rumors on the country trying to convert E-Estonians
to geo-Estonians for demographic compensation, but I can see how Tallinn comes alive every
summer when nomads land at Old City Harbor, light up the Baltic Quarantine Resort for their arrival
week, and dive into their oldtown dreams with #negative tags on.
However, these procedures run a bit different for me this year...
The resumed industrial activities under 5.0 Technologies accelerate global warming progresses as
emblemized by searise (a.k.a sea-level-rise). In addition to flooding waterfront settlements and damaging the
urban infrastructures of coastal regions, searise further intensifies the COVID pandemic with millions of
urban migrations (refugees) from coasts to inland cities and unexpected virus mutations as COVID meets the once-frozen
pathogens from melted polar ice.
While nomad communities can escape from immediate searise impacts by traveling to safer COVID-free towns,
their remote industrial activities (under limited searise awareness) push commuter societies into greater risks both socially and environmentally.
The 5.0 economies raise political tensions on cross-border laborforce, taxation, and market regulation,
calling an invisible war against the geopolitical authorities on the global economy. In addition to speculative
interventions of digital giants to domestic markets, digital turns also popularize tax-driven immigration
and employment arbitrages among nomads which further dilute the notion of citizen and
residency in social production;
The 2050 UN World Summit initiates United Digital Nations (UDN) as an intergovernmental division to reinforce
geopolitical identities of digital economies through regulations on cross-border economic activities and
corresponding jurisdictions; on the other hand, the interwoven interests between speculative politics and digital
economies have been taking advantages of UDN interventions to build borderless capitals;
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