Political Factory
Thesis Faculty:
David Carroll, Barbara MorrisPolitical Factory is an interactive cinematic system that visualizes power as an invisible current flowing through social machines. Across six mechanical worlds, each represents a distinct political order, and together they form a closed loop. The work transforms theories of governance into motion, rhythm, and imbalance.
The project translates structures of governance into mechanical worlds, spatial rhythms, sound, and camera movement. Across six interconnected worlds, each module embodies a distinct political order: pressure, synchronization, signal amplification, correction, prediction, and dissipation. Together, these worlds form a closed loop. Political Factory examines power as a condition that is generated, maintained, and transformed through systems. Power becomes a changing operational logic that can be felt through movement, rhythm, atmosphere, and transition. Through minimal interaction, poetic system voice, and guided cinematic transitions, the audience shifts between the positions of witness, component, and trigger. In the end, the project invites viewers to experience power as an active system condition, shaping how order is built, perceived, destabilized, and reorganized.
World 1: The Steam of Authority
A centralized pressure system where authority is maintained through compression and controlled release. Power does not appear as a visible ruler, but as an atmosphere of pressure, dependency, and forced continuity.
World 2: The Order of Teeth
A world where order is no longer held by one center, but by the alignment of every unit. Repetition becomes discipline, and even small deviation threatens the stability of the whole.
World 3: The Empire of Echoes
Power moves through signal, echo, and amplification. The origin becomes less important than the circulation itself, until repetition begins to sound stronger than truth.
World 4: The Garden of Forgotten Hands
An automated industrial system where control appears as maintenance, processing, and constant correction. The body is not destroyed, but adjusted until it fits the system.
World 5: The Eyes That Watch Back
An AI-mediated environment where control becomes quiet, smooth, and almost invisible. The system watches, calculates, and shapes behavior before action fully begins.
World 6: The Age of Dissipation
The center no longer holds, but the system has not stopped. Power loses its shape and spreads into fragments, noise, drift, and residual motion, preparing the loop to begin again.
