House

House is a universe explorer that might end with a house, but begins with the universe. It consists of 500+ audio files in 1000+ nested folders.

Intended to be played in your local file system, terminal, or in a default apache web directory, you enter many many different branching files to enter memories, bedrooms, supernovas, computers, islands, notebooks, churches, canals, trashcans, WeWorks, cells, minds, etc. Outside of the folder and file names, there are only brief text descriptions.

The world unfolds through many audio files. Field recordings and snippets are ripped and assembled into moments, interplaying with each other in the directory.

For my final in my Sound Art class, we were prompted to respond and craft a world that reflects this new, uneasy state of quarantine around us. In the middle of probably the worst months of my life (not because I hate loneliness, but because the absolute breakage of the world’s systems exposed to me how futile everything really is–-worse, how complacent people can be), I remembered the person I was at 13 when I could just sit down and create. I mourned for the child I was many steps backwards too, who would fill up notebooks with color and story and wave presumptuously around rooms, siring people’s attention when I had all the reason to, filling up nonsensical––but perhaps misunderstood even if they were brilliant–-stories about gods and girls and grand worlds. In my house, I would piss my parents off by grabbing sheets of printer paper to take to school and fill up with doodles of lands and worlds and blueprints and house schemes of these fantasy realms. I would debate with a friend who talked to me about the World Wars (not taught in Philippine Catholic middle school, clearly) and I back about what I read from Terry Pratchett. It was beautiful.