Embedded: The Interface of the Physical, Virtual, and Social

The unprecedented access to and abundance of media in contemporary society has changed how we experience and perceive our surroundings and, by extension, architecture by subjecting us to fragmented realities. This increasingly virtual world raises issues of perception, spectatorship, and desire. Meanwhile, the physical and virtual spaces traditionally associated with socialization, entertainment, work, and sleep overlap, intertwine, and intermingle creating hybrid spaces. We are embedded within a system of hybridized virtual and physical spaces, and this system becomes increasingly manipulative and difficult to escape as it penetrates the most intimate and vulnerable of spaces–the bed. However, the tensions arising from the hybridized space of the bed in an increasingly virtual world can reveal new opportunities for inhabiting spaces with others. The bed can reorient space or reinforce the status quo. This thesis, therefore, presents a speculative future inviting us to be critical of our present.