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Paper short abstract:

The home, above all, is the place of the predictable. In a scenario of growing uncertainty generated by multiple factors, this research proposes to explore those essential spaces of certainties that are maintained and produced from domestic space.

Paper long abstract:

The home, above all, is the place of the predictable or the known; an environment where it is possible to foresee the sensory experience with an accuracy that cannot be achieved in other spaces. This condition allows our senses to rest and the brain, as it does with a phantom limb, to reproduce from predictive models that which it knows. Even our identity, ultimately, rests largely on the certainty that the place where we fall asleep will be the same place where we wake up, be it a house, a tent, a truck cab or a cell. We know the sound of the doors, we know the rhythms of the people we live with, the smells of each room and the temperature of the floor. Our senses are only alerted when the stimuli we receive does not match what we expect.

In a scenario of growing uncertainty generated by the environmental crisis, technological development, health emergencies, economic difficulties and war, this research proposes to explore those spaces of certainties offered by the domestic space. It is especially interesting to recognize how the social and material changes associated with these crisis scenarios affect what is predictable and eventually entail the construction of new forms of certainty. Two apparently opposing forces are recognized: an analogous one that rests on the materiality of the home and its anchoring in a specific and concrete territory; and a digital one that opens up to the possibilities of artificial intelligence, virtuality and augmented reality.