'Capsule Hotel' is a participatory installation project inspired by an actual 'short stay' businessman's hotel in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. The prototype version was built for a millennium themed art exhibition which took place in December of 1999. In that version, a 62-capsule structure was constructed in a factory basement in Chinatown, NYC. It functioned simultaneously as a short-term living environment for approximately 70 people, and as a multi-user video-conference environment. The compartmental nature of the hotels' physical structure was designed to parallel the workings of an internet chat room.
This first 'Capsule Hotel' was equipped with a 76 channel closed circuit cable TV system. A camera and televison in each capsule enabled every inhabitant to receive and/or transmit into any other capsule hooked up to the system, as well as the capability to channel surf through every other compartment.
A second version of the project will shift the focus of the connectivity from local TV system to internet system, involving the linkage of an actual 'Capsule Hotel' in Tokyo to the physical structure of the installation. The technical capabilities of both 'hotels' will be enhanced by adding an internet hookup to selected compartments, enabling a 24/7 New York to Tokyo video-conference connection. A temporary population of 'inhabitants' will be assembled in each location, creating an overlapping system between participants and spaces.
The circumstances of this 'doubled' environment will become the take-off point for an ongoing web-based narrative as well as shorter lived performative actions. As the individual participants are networked together and their signals telecom-municated, the physical and the virtual will overlap in unexpected ways, forming an environment hooked up between two distant realities. For the time they inhabit the capsule hotel, the participants will have more in common with each other than they will with their respective worlds-at-large.
Pictures of the classic Capsule hotels in Japan: http://www.hsyndicate.com/picture/153005190.html
