Imaginario Inverso: Laser Chat Fronterizo

Imaginario Inverso is an ongoing project that tries to understand the effects of industrialization on our social imaginary, in contexts where corporate and government interests supersede individual and collective ones.

We think that some of the effects of these doctrines are visible in geopolitical terms, through a specialization of science and technology that advocates knowledge and its applications solely in spaces with the “appropriate” economic conditions. For example, it is easy to see the biases of the tools we use for everyday communication, and how the cultural and ideological content that they promote mainly seek to spread consumption patterns that facilitate the disarticulation of collective action.

In this research, we propose several activities aimed at reorienting the uses of technology from different perspectives, in order to rethink the geopolitical imaginary. As a specific example, we want to reinterpret NASA’s laser communication technology (LLCD, LCRD, OPALS) for terrestrial purposes, and reimagine this tool which was designed to help us expand our presence in space, to bridge sociopolitical gaps.

As part of this project, we also want to investigate the ontological origins of this technology and its link to personal explorations that sought to describe and reveal metaphysical aspects of the natural world.

Documentation and updates can be found on the project’s website.