Lab
Future Mechanisms Lab
Develops bounded future mechanism prototypes from methods and structures that have passed prior testing.
Development Focus
Future Mechanisms and Transferability
Lab Function
Future mechanism prototyping
Current Status
Concept development
Central Question
Which tested mechanisms and methods warrant development into future public mechanisms?
What the Lab Develops
The Lab considers further development only after a mechanism or method has been separated from its originating work, tested for transferability, and critically evaluated. Its task is to decide whether a bounded prototype is warranted, not to turn every artistic structure into a public mechanism.
Founding Corpus
Mechanisms, methods, and protocol hypotheses developed across NVI
Source Materials
- Mechanism analyses
- Method components
- Protocol hypotheses
- Transferability findings
- Comparative cases
- Critical evaluations
Development and Testing
The Future Mechanisms Lab asks what kinds of future mechanisms might hold plural and partly incommensurable forms of value.
It distinguishes artistic inquiry, mechanism development, protocol hypotheses, transferability testing, and practical application. A relation identified in an artwork is never assumed to remain coherent in another context.
Comparative cases and bounded experiments are used to decide whether further mechanism development is warranted.
Components under Development
- Comparative cases
- Transferability tests
- Boundary definitions
- Prototype design
- Critical evaluation
- Decision criteria
Outputs
- Transferability assessments
- Boundary definitions
- Prototype briefs
- Bounded test designs
- Go or stop recommendations
Possible Test Contexts
- Public allocation
- Cultural governance
- Participatory decision making
- Institutional accountability
- Future public mechanisms
Development beyond the Source Work
A future mechanism is developed only when prior tests show that its structure remains coherent, accountable, and necessary beyond the source work.
Documentation
Collaborate
Evaluate a tested mechanism or method and determine whether a bounded future mechanism prototype is warranted.
Explore future mechanism prototypingRelated Work
Post Capitalistic Auction
Post Capitalistic Auction is a performative and real art auction in which bidders make binding offers through Money, Opportunity, Understanding, and Exchange. The artist selects the winning bid, while an advisory panel publicly examines its meaning, credibility, and risk.
Voice to Voice
Voice to Voice is an installation and lecture performance developed from more than eighty in-depth interviews across China. Through individual testimonies, listening booths, video, sound, and a mobile interview structure, it examines how labour and productivity enter personal narratives of dignity and self-worth.
JUDGE ME
JUDGE ME is a scripted performance staged as a courtroom trial. Jingyi Wang performs within a structure of claimant, defendant, witnesses, expert testimony, cross-examination, jury voting, and a verdict that leaves the question open, turning the theatre into a public situation of judgment.
The Butterfly Entangled Effect
The Butterfly Entangled Effect is a large-scale installation and performance developed by Jingyi Wang in collaboration with Maurice Benayoun and collaborators across art, science, and technology. It proposes a living system in which melting ice, dormant biological life, environmental data, machine regulation, and spectatorship act upon one another.