A Manifesto for DomoNovus

DomoNovus proposes a future for domestic life that strongly depends on digital technologies, computational intelligence, network protocols, and cloud services. As the universe of domestic properties slowly sinks into a digitized utopia, it is necessary to establish new frameworks that assist the cartography of this hybrid territory. The majority of electrical and electronic objects become colonized by computer code, in a similar way mechanical household tools were infected with the integration of electrical control in the first half of the twentieth century. The “New Home”, therefore, becomes a self-sustainable environment that creates its own resources such as power needs, chemicals, and nutrients, and also allows inhabitants to reinvent and redesign the domestic interior (objects, embellishments, surfaces), as well as the computational functionality that is needed for the house to think and operate.

According to its modular configuration, DomoNovus provides a performance that feels appropriate in a particular household using computational services for the classification, analysis, and filtering of data and metadata that are received from the inhabitants and the environment. Personalized Artificial Intelligence agents process collected information clusters to identify trends, predict future events, or exercise psychological traits that can be further applied in the applications of the domestic space. The eidetic memory of DomoNovus consists of a centralized storage space (local and remote servers) that includes all data of individuals and of the household as a collective entity. Decentralized hybrid and digital objects are also able to store information related to user interactions, accumulate identification and profiling instances, as well as record contextual information that is retrieved during certain events, developing material instantiations of an immaterial system. At particular moments, when a domestic object senses a noteworthy interaction, such as the rise of the emotional state of an inhabitant, information is collected and shared, providing effortless captures of entire lives. If the spatial characteristics of such an object permit the implementation of the necessary hardware (i.e. infrared sensors, 3D camera, microphone), memory collection may also consist of 3D video and sound. Navigating the memory database of the household using a personalized interface and holographic virtual or augmented devices, the exploration of past moments of the household manifests as a projected simulation in three dimensions with their associated ambiances.

A food printer becomes a necessary addition to the kitchen environment, which is responsible for preparing meals according to the users’ preferences. Recipes can be downloaded or shared with the community, providing a new palette to the eating experience, although the cooking ritual is impossible to completely replace. However, the food printer can provide a personalized meal for each inhabitant according to bio-sensing and context-aware applications that monitor performance and body needs to calculate and design a meal with maximum nutrient supply. Most importantly, the collected intelligence of DomoNovus can be applied in the design of supplements that assist the biological functions of inhabitants to sustain optimum physical conditions. All sorts of stimulants are available to be delivered from the house – chemical, edible, media – to regulate biological functions such as metabolism, or calibrate abnormalities (depression, jet lag, nausea, et cetera). By using sensing instruments such as GSR (Galvanized Skin Response) sensors, biometric devices, or thermography, the house becomes a nurse, a doctor, and a therapist. Instant connection to relevant databases can fetch optimized treatments through available resources. Even the process of taking a bath becomes a session of healing; analysis is executed on a molecular level, cell reconstruction is performed (bio-stimulation, tissue regeneration), and vitamins and proteins are supplied. Comfort and relaxation aids can be triggered via compositions of synaesthetic media, using light, scents, sounds, and visuals to evoke sensorial stimuli and become a dwelling necessity.

The tracking of physiological, behavioral, and biological properties is an essential characteristic of DomoNovus, not only for calculating practical and detrimental issues but also for exploring creative and imaginative processes, which become part of the house’s communicative and playful extensions. Interactive spaces are initiated when participants enter the house – physical and biological characteristics are monitored, spatialized, and expressed back through the use of media. The interaction with others becomes a natural interplay, a casual exchange of information in physical and virtual planes. Initially, houses assisted humans in surviving natural phenomena, but now the main objectives have been extended to sterilize the environmentally polluted domestic landscape, as well as to filter oversaturated information emitted from physical, virtual, and cyber sources. The house becomes the ultimate entertainment system, as it intends to fulfill all needs and desires of its occupants, such as providing full immersion in virtual and augmented worlds with the ability to experience accurate simulations, extract dwelling settings from the community, and spatialize them in the current setting, offer options to extend individuality to multiplicity, or even exhibit domestic embodiment of a universal singularity. Artificial agents are responsible for crawling over local or remote multimedia assets and collecting snapshots for real-time compositional collages that suit the affective ambiances of the environment. For example, visual content is selected from personal, collective, or online archives according to the requirements established by the cognitive engine, which is subject to change at any moment. Files are mixed and edited based on their metadata evaluation, and fused into the interior surfaces or headset devices. Rather than selecting and viewing a film, as was normally the case, inhabitants now watch how the house and its algorithms view them instead. Same time, ambient displays embedded in various locations around the house are either used to amplify the immersion or to present supplementary media content that is listed as a secondary option. According to tracked interactions, the content shifts, almost telepathically, to show visual material that is extracted from online locations, found in the home’s databases, live feed captures from microscopic to macroscopic sources (i.e. videos of the domestic autonomous sample analyzer, to streaming multi-satellite imagery), or any content that is manually defined by the user.

One might imagine that the power requirements of DomoNovus would be quite high. On the contrary, renewable energies and recycling facilities are fundamental parts of the structure that allow it to be fully sustainable, covering all necessary needs and even distributing extra resources to the grid. Transparent solar panels integrated into the exterior surfaces of the house capture, store, and allocate energy interchangeably to increase the efficiency of electrical usage. Windows are built with panels that allow natural light to pass through and the same time to convert infrared and ultraviolet light into electricity. Many low-powered electronic and digital devices of the interior harvest electromagnetic and radio frequencies as well as ambient light that continuously recharge small, low-cost capacitors, providing infinite life for the devices, thus, maintaining sustainable and efficient solutions. Recycling equipment is available for objects and materials of the domestic space that helps in minimizing external resources, achieving sustainability and low costs for the ecosystem. Using combustion, bathroom and kitchen waste is converted into methane gas, mainly for heating the interior space. Finally, microbial fuel cell technology is employed in order to extract electrical energy from organic matter, such as insects, fruits, or animals. In some controversial cases, though, the microbial fuel cell has been used to decompose the body of dead inhabitants, and although macabre, its application initiates a critical discussion concerning the limits and possibilities of symbiotic mutualism.

DomoNovus proposes a domestic environment that is sympathetic, affectionate, and respectful to its inhabitants and the personal and intimate spaces contained within the house. The mutual symbiotic relationship is an important objective it attempts to achieve, which is not only constrained within the interior but extends to the outside, affecting the neighborhood, the city, or even the planet. Home, as a cell of a greater organism, interacts and communicates with local or remote systems, houses, and markets, forming an Internet of Homes that aims to assist society and planetary consciousness through the use and sharing of physical, electrical, and digital resources. Each house is an instrument in the collection of energy, a pore of oxygen through the use of algae canopies, an agent that assists in minimizing the destruction of natural resources and reversing the catastrophes caused by industrialization. Moreover, the data collected from each house can be shared, in order to provide invaluable resources to scientific evolution; for example, environmental studies that can monitor the sustainability of the wider ecosystem and propose regulation measures even in real-time.