Jessica Wang

In the liberation cages, users enter a state of temporary dissociation, immersed in a primitive, natural habitat designed for recuperation and reflection.

This thesis explores how new set of spaces can reconnect people to their sense of inner, introspective and instinctive self. Five spaces of consciousness manifest as a bird sanctuary, a hideaway dream room, a resistance retreat, a salt haven and finally an anti-gravity withdrawal space aimed to trigger different brainwave states: alpha, beta, theta, delta and gamma.

Using tactile materials and embedded technologies that range from the analogue to the digital, these spaces of liberation become the ultimate escape from the world outside. Detailing is ephemeral, imperfect and unfamiliar. Colour, transparency and light are blended with an extraordinary hum through the application of a phenomenon called entrainment to deepen and enhance an immaterial sensorial experience.

The micro climatic spaces are constructed with filtering layers of surface, structure and planning, each chosen from their sensorial and technical properties; shou shugi ban and charcoal bamboo purify and deodorize the air; a white steel framework taken from the Faraday Concept disrupts electromagnetic radiation and perennial species chosen from their sound absorbing properties. What results is a distilling process where impurities are vaporized giving natural sunlight to be filtrated through providing the living cage to breathe and evolve as seasons change. The liberation cages explore the possibility of emancipation generated from our primitive natural habitat through reengaging our five brainwave states and five senses of our own.