Bianca Carague is a Netherlands-based Filipino artist and designer who creates virtual environments and objects that allude to alternate worlds and possible futures. By combining design research with worldbuilding, Bianca creates compelling narratives that visually reflect on social issues and emerging technologies. Bianca has exhibited her work in places such as the London Design Biennale, Dutch Design Week, and Triennale di Milano. We spoke about her practice and ideas that inform her work.
Surreal, Spatail, Thoughtful.
Before I began creating virtual spaces at all, I became interested in how neuroscience relates to the built environment. I read books on how the spaces we inhabit can affect our moods, feelings of safety and ability to think in abstract ideas. But I also wondered how narrow this research might be, knowing that each person has unique cognitive associations depending on the culture and environment they grew up in. Each person experiences the world in a different way, so I thought that I shouldn't believe in a universal standard when it came to designing for wellbeing. I find it important that people have agency over the spaces they inhabit, among other things we consume.
My creative process often starts with intuition or an initial gut feeling, before cross-referencing it with research. I tend to lean towards soft shapes, colors and textures because they’re visually soothing. I like to strike a balance between what feels natural and magical, familiar and surreal. I think that this results in spaces where people can feel both safe and alive.
Many people spend so much time online as it is. The least we can do is to design these spaces in a way that’s good for us.
I want to reference my projects Bump Galaxy and Gen C: Children of 2050. Bump Galaxy was a Minecraft server for mental health, while Gen C was a solo exhibition about the future of childhood, given the climate crisis. Both involved an interactive and participatory way of making. What I built on Minecraft, I only really designed the basics of it. It mostly grew when I began to invite other people to play with me while everyone was quarantining during the pandemic. Minecraft makes it possible for people to collaborate in real time, so Bump Galaxy naturally became a place where people’s different ideas of what it meant to care and be well came to life via various virtual biomes designed for different types of care. Gen C was an interactive exhibition where I held workshops next to the exhibition and used participants’ ideas to develop my work 3 months later. Through these workshops, I invited them to build on top of my work or even change it. Therefore, the exhibition in the beginning was very different from how it turned out in the end, thanks to everyone's input. What started out as a fairly barebones exhibition that alluded to just my own research on the climate crisis and how it relates to other social issues and emerging technologies eventually evolved into something more layered with other people’s ideas about the future. Both projects have very much shaped my practice and perspective. These days I prioritize plurality over coherence in the worlds I make.
