Open House Jack Stenner, Ph.D. School of Art + Art History University of Florida PO Box 115801 Gainesville, FL 32611 USA stenner@ufl.edu Patrick LeMieux Art, Art History & Visual Studies Duke University PO Box 90764 Durham, NC 27708 patrick.lemieux@duke.edu ABSTRACT This paper describes the exhibition and/or demonstration of Open House, a computer application and art installation that allows viewers the ability to remotely control physical aspects of a “distressed” home in Gainesville, Florida. The house at 1617 NW 12 Road is currently in financial limbo while in the process of foreclosure due to the US housing collapse. Virtual markets have transformed this otherwise livable property into a ghost. Through computer interaction that ties virtual and physical action, Open House implicates our tendency to separate virtual and physical activity as an enabling mechanism that was a proximate cause for the current U.S. social/financial crisis. Keywords Installation, body, affect, interaction, subjectivity, representation, immersion, aesthetics Figure 1. Still of streaming video feed. CONCEPT It is not cement or stone, but imaginary systems of value which make up the foundation of our homes. When the U.S. housing market collapsed in 2008, so did the dreams of many middle and lower class Americans. Florida, California, Nevada, and Arizona were particularly hard hit, and not by a force of nature, but by the abstract and invisible hand of the market. The U.S. “housing crisis” painfully illustrates how the “real” and “virtual” are intertwined and signals fundamental change as neoliberal economics reshapes the “American Dream”. Open House is a computer application and art installation by Jack Stenner and Patrick LeMieux that allows viewers the ability to remotely control physical aspects of a “distressed” home in Gainesville, FL. The house at 1617 NW 12 Road is currently in financial limbo while in the process of foreclosure due to the US housing collapse. Virtual markets have transformed this otherwise livable property into a ghost. Open House allows individuals to repopulate this disenfranchised space and assume the role of virtual squatters remotely occupying the abandoned property. Figure 2. Initial application screen. DESCRIPTION Using a computer application downloaded from: http://www.no-place.org/open_house , the viewer is presented with an interface to the house in Gainesville. The first screen is informational, providing a contextual overview and entry to the project (see Figure 2). After clicking “enter” the viewer is taken to a black screen with text dynamically loaded and recombinantly assembled from the no-place server. The viewer is instructed to click on the background to proceed, at which time the first image of the home appears. This image is a composite of real-time streaming video from the site combined with a photorealistic cg model of the house and environs LEAVE BLANK THE LAST 2.5 cm (1”) OF THE LEFT COLUMN ON THE FIRST PAGE FOR THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE.