This was the question artist Lauren Moffatt asked nine female – identifying individuals originating from across the world in order to define the blueprints for the universe inside Local Binaries. Drawing inspiration from meditation and art therapy techniques that encourage embodied mindfulness – like body scanning and body mapping – participants were asked to focus on their inner state and interpret it as a landscape. They imagined geological forms, sounds, plant-life, weather systems and architectures to delineate the emotional and physiological sensations they felt. They then relayed the scene to the artist as if describing scenery. The artist recreated elements from each testimonial using a game engine, interweaving them into a sprawling landscape that can be accessed and interacted with via smartphones and other handheld devices.

Local Binaries is an augmented reality world that explores the way people experience psychological and emotional states in a spatial way, as if they were miniature landscapes inside of us.