Digital (Open) House is an interactive installation resembling a digital clock to explore the concept of migration, gentrification, and displacement. The project features a display of multiple styles of houses on a sequence of small computer monitors. Using a selection of ten house types from various cultures and locations, the work simplifies their constructions as a series of line to build and rebuild each form of house through the process of time. Similar to Sol LeWitt’s Incomplete Open Cubes, the project uses the seriality of construction and deconstruction in generating each form of houses through the premeditated rules of plans and then develops this data information by computer system and sensors. The presence of the audience activates the motion sensors on the monitors to make a transition from one to another style of house, for example, from a Thai stilted bungalow to a New England cottage. The outcome is one of continual displacement: the oasis of home is an illusion. Eventually, as viewers walk away from the screens, the lights go off, then slowly, one per second, the lines “rebuild” the house, telling time in their own way.

Photo by Bundith Phunsombatlert, 2015/2017-2021/2023