Project Title: House of Cards
Date: November 2017
Project Lead: Ryan Luke Johns, Stephen Fan, Mei Lun Xue
Gallery: 1.5 Rooms, NYC
For Performa 17
House of Cards originates from a series of blackjack games and terminates in a physical house of cards, using both manual and automated labor. A projection-mapped environment guides players to specific locations to affix their playing cards based on the result of each game—revealing a design that is both algorithmic and determined by chance. Against a soundscape of casino and restaurant, the gallery is denatured and transformed through productive leisure. As the card games progress, participants reveal the essential value of human error, and how a game of chance might be harnessed in the creation of built space. The promise of automation lies in infallibility and durability, but is architecture resulting from automated labor actually a house of cards?