Every person you meet holds a world inside them, what does yours look like? This was the question artist Lauren Moffatt asked nine women from across the world in order to define the blueprints for the collectively written universe inside Local Binaries. This is a virtual space that can be explored by the viewer in miniature scale via augmented reality (this version already exists in a first iteration) or as an immersive experience in the virtual reality version (the virtual reality adaptation is in progress).

Drawing inspiration from therapy techniques that encourage embodied mindfulness – like body mapping – participants were asked to focus on their inner state and interpret it as a landscape. They imagined geological forms, sounds, plant-life, weather systems and architectures to delineate the physiological and psychological sensations they felt.

They then relayed the scene to the artist as if describing physical surroundings. The artist recreated elements from each testimonial, collaborating with artificial intelligence to visualise each described detail, hand-painting and 3D modelling the images produced by the AI and then using a game engine to interweave and collage them into a sprawling virtual universe that audiences can interact with.

Virtual reality artists are optimally positioned to pioneer the metaverse beyond the data-driven empires of tech giants, who threaten to nullify our identities and dictate our shared human future. Local Binaries uses digital technologies to create a collective introspective place, deliberately decelerating and decentralising as a form of resistance. It connects the viewers to the protagonists of the work and to each other in an intimate time-based experience that asks them to be in the present with each other. It creates a collectivity that infiltrates geographic boundaries as well as borders between the digital and the real, and between bodies and minds.