Welcome to FLEA*.
Population: 600 Billion
Year: 3209 A.D.
Swine Flu wiped out the human race in the year 2075. After disrupting
the life cycle of Earth, the only species that was self-sufficient
enough to survive were the genus musmusculus (MICE). After decades of
research, we enter the year 3209 where mice have developed synthetic
human bodies that they use as vessels to carry out every day processes
more effectively and efficiently.
They do so while wearing visors.
They are: Mice In Visors ™.
They work together in cubicles within the pseudo-human skull. Each body contains about 10 mice working together to control the central nervous system.
The mice use these bodies to do everyday life things that they had observed back when humans roamed the earth. But despite their strides to be as human as possible, they still only care about one thing: obtaining food.
And so, in order to get food, they barter with items that they observed to be desirable and beneficial to humans when they existed. Things such as: uncharged iPhones, tampons, cigarette butts, etc. These are all items that they saw humans interact with frequently, and therefore are thought to be important for trade.
The mice also can't seem to shake their animalistic desires like cheese and being warm, comfortable, and safe. So these things are in abundance in their world: furniture resembles cheese, they wear a lot of sweaters and their houses are covered in fur.
The mice have a tacit agreement as to who is in charge. So there is no government, they all just know what their place is in life, and stick it through. This makes for a very peaceful world, and within the body they all work together to create a single mechanism. Mice (In Visors™) are basically successfully doing exactly what present-day humans are trying to do.
Artist's Statement:
In the initial stages of conceptualization, the only thing we knew about this world was that mice were sort of like overlords. When we started considering what was and was not realistic, mouse overlords couldn’t possibly run Earth because of their general smallness and lack of know-how. But mice inside human bodies would be unstoppable. I literally cannot think of a single thing more powerful and sensual than a mouse in a human body. So we thought about how cunning mice would overcome their fragility to ultimately survive. The solution was relatively simple: of course mice would figure out robotics and put together realistic human host bodies so that they could thrive in the harsh conditions of a post-apocalyptic, humanless world. With their new found access to things like Opposable Thumbs™ and legs long enough to reach the pedals in Cadillac Escalades, etc., mice could finally do all the things that they envied about human life, including (but not limited to): skateboarding, hot-tubbing, drinking beer, cat-calling at babes (RIP), flippin’ burgers at the local Five Guys, smoking weed, etc. Mice could do it all AND MORE!
For outside media, we took the sort of obvious route and referred to the Pixar movie, Ratatouille. In the film, one rat figures out a way to control a human’s body by sitting on top of his head and pulling his hair (science?). Instead of this charming, albeit unrealistic approach to rodent/human control interactions, we decided to capitalize on a more pragmatic version of the same principle. Thus, mice would inhabit cold, humanoid shells that they themselves had crafted in their rodent laboratories, and they would have to work together inside the pseudo-human body in their own collaborative efforts mouse-to-mouse instead of human-to-mouse.
After researching mice and their typical way of living, we began to see just how crazy a world controlled by mice might be. By finding their unusual habits, we realized just how different the society would be. For example, mice prefer dark, and they do have their own type of “classes”
among them. With just these two details, you would have a world in the dark and a new anarchy system. Even the littlest changes could cause the most dramatic difference in a world.
From the reading Julian Bleeker said, “Design fiction is a way of exploring different approaches to making things, probing the material conclusions of your imagination, removing the usual constraints when designing for massive market commercialization.” This quote indeed expressed the different ways to approach in making a new world. We tried to figure out what one small detail would do to the rest of the world. For one thing, furniture would look like pieces of cheese. Cheese became the new barter system, which in millions of ways changes the world. We then had to approach a world that functioned without money, but instead cheese. How would this world actually function? It was an interesting experience in trying to create a world that would
actually work. In the end it brought many new ideas and pieces to the creative table.
(*I guess this is our project. I'm sort of sorry.)
