Carto
gram
A zine produced by members of ARCH 5602, Kean University School of Public Architecture
Tiktok
A zine produced by members of ARCH 5602, Kean University School of Public Architecture
Tiktok
Vol. 1
Letter from the Editor -
Davis Richardson
Reclaiming 432 Park Ave - Kamila Diaz Calderon
Ultrathin Worlds -
Anyi Liranzo-Payamps
Finance Over Function -
Jared Britton
The Housing Shepherd -
Kacper Kowal
Livestream Dystopia -
Jake Haenggi
VR Architecture -
Ryan Barbour
Metaverse Architecture -
Danny Gavino
From Fi-Fi to De-Fi -
Scott Gleason
Realistic or Reality? -
Stephan Argent
Dubaifying Saudi Arabia-
Rasha Labibidi
NEOM’s Sustainability Mirage - Andrew Lazarte
Living in the Model -
Bryan Tome
Planting the Illusion -
Lauren Taravella
Critical Regionalism -
Nolan Aucone
About
Order
CGZ-VOLNO1-ARCH5602-FA2025-E5
Livestream Dystopia
Livestream Dystopia
Jake Haenggi
You wake up, and it’s showtime…and you’re already a few minutes late. Ten minutes late, to be exact. And in this field, you might as well be six hours late or not even show up at all… not with the scrutiny you’ll face. You quickly flip on your bedroom lights — a set of three 5600k soft ring lights kick on — one on each side and another directly above, perfectly calibrated to negate even the possibility of a shadow. Besides, it’s much more reliable than drawing back the curtains – when’s the sunset today? Alexa, what is the weather forecast? The dull zzzzzzzzzzzzz of the lights warming up is quickly interrupted by the low rhythmic thump-thump-thump-thump of techno music blaring in the apartment next door. Luckily, all the walls are made of eighteen-inch-thick concrete; most of the noise made here is absorbed, but the bass still finds a way. As you come to, that faint beat instantly confirms your anxieties of being late as you spring out of bed and dash over to the mirror. A shadowless studio apartment makes it easy to wake up in a stupor, and given your occupation, you don’t exactly have to go too far to find a mirror… after all, it’s your money maker!
You take a nice look at your lovely mug in the mirror and do your best artistry to pave over any deep, dark bags beneath your eyes from the countless and unforgiving nights on the clock. As you’re finishing up your Picasso, beneath the bzzzzzzzzz of the professional-grade lighting and the thump-thump-thump of the techno, you hear the vague bvvvvt! bvvt! bvvvvt! bvvt! of a cellphone vibrating. You probably would’ve heard it much more clearly if it wasn’t for the stack of 2” pyramid foam insulation panels it was sitting atop…the panels you say “you have yet to properly install,” but we both know you’re using it as a makeshift nightstand. “Oh shit…” you panic. You check the time. It’s 10:19 pm, nearly 20 minutes late, which might as well be 12 hours late. The grind is truly unforgiving...and while a day off would be nice, it’d be career suicide now that you’re beginning to gain traction. The people need you; they rely on you. It’s your job to help them... morally, but also contractually speaking. The increasing consistency of the bvvt bvttt bvttt suggests you could be a whole day late, the notifications so frequent the vibrations are overlapping and cutting each other off. You’re familiar with that tempo of notifications. You’ve been late only once before. You’re in trouble. You were supposed to be live at 10. In your profession, for a flub like this, you might as well kiss your “traction” goodbye.
You take a deep breath, grab your backpack modem off the charging wall situated by your front door, and quickly crunch on a sponsored energy bar that you wash down with the parent company’s electrolyte concoction. The zzzzzzzzzzzzz of the lights, the thump-thump-thump of the techno, the ever-increasing bvvt bvtt bvttttt bvtt bvtt bvtt bvt’ing of the notifications pouring in. They’re looking for you. They can sense you’re active. And by the way they’re reaching out to you, they need you more than air.
You wince, hook everything up, saddle your backpack, and tap your phone screen to clock into work.
Hi guys, sorry I’m late, today’s like so cooked already- the..erh.. uh doordash guy who dropped off my dinner was like TOTALLY on my ass about taking a flick with him, he must feel the motion radiating off my aura. Anyways, let's throw some W’s in the chat for Stream-a-thon day 525, we’re gonna crack it off with a classic Commute-With-Me while I read off some donoes I missed. So sit back, crack a brewskarooni, and enjoy tha–wait-im sorry, real quick, mods, can we ban the guy spamming “WHY ARE YOU LATE??” over and over?
You stumble out of your apartment door, and the hallway immediately comes alive. LED strips light one by one on either side of the hallway like you’re an important cargo jet coming in for landing, accompanied by inset wall televisions looping the same realty-like imagery of the untouched gym amenities on the 3rd floor. You tailspin through the stairwell door, thankful the LED McDonald’s advertisement on the wall breaks your fall. The pixels flicker to the next Nvidia advertisement, portraying a graphics card in the same format luxury automotive brands used to use for their commercials. Your viewers begin appearing in the live chatroom in your mobile palm device in droves, all with the same intent — for blood — but you try to narrowly tune them out with reassurances that you’ll throw out some gifted subs as soon as you get into the office.
As you had just gotten used to the zzzzzzzzzz of your domestic lighting, the buzz of electricity in the stairwell is amplified in a more aggressive ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ — and not for nothing, but considering all this advertising, you’d think they’d at least finalize converting it from a walkup. You often forget they make you all live and operate in a disbanded and completely top-down interior-renovated penitentiary, but that almost makes it sound like a bad thing. Believe it or not, it’s much safer for them to station people of your profession offshore like this from the physical public; while it is your job to federally upkeep the general population’s morale through your broadcasts, they aren’t always exactly excited to see you IRL. After that stream-sniping incident of 2036, they decided it’d be better to situate their little broadcasting investments far, far away on this converted correction island, where the only thing that can possibly harm you is a keyboard warrior’s cyberbullying. But that was all the way back when they used to let you live downtown with everybody else. Before the mandates went in, before they shlepped you all the way out here, before they made cable finally tune off for the last time, before they protected and pampered you all like you’re the ‘92 Olympic Dream Team. Of course, you’ve only seen the grainy footage they managed to archive from that series, but still — it wasn’t always this good. After all, that streamer in ‘36 was running late too, yknow?
But now that they’ve given you all a complete technological ecosystem here, you won’t have to risk getting assassinated by a crazed viewer on your way into the office. They should’ve known that cutting off all network reruns of King of Queens so abruptly would have serious implications for the public. It’s much better off for all of you this way, the streamers separated from the general public. They used to have to spend too much time and effort instating ordinances way-back-when you were all living and operating amongst the civilians.
There will be a strict 11 pm IRL streaming curfew in public settings.
No streaming within 500 feet of a schoolyard at any given time.
Any practical joke caught on camera with the intent of profiting from content is an automatic
5-year sentence — no parole.
No streaming within 500 feet of a schoolyard at any given time.
Any practical joke caught on camera with the intent of profiting from content is an automatic
5-year sentence — no parole.
It was a real headache and a waste of taxpayers' hard-earned dollars to keep dealing with the obnoxious IRL presences of all of you, but the government really had no choice. After the mandated shutoff, you all were projected to these positions nearly overnight to continue to propagate, educate, and, most importantly, entertain the masses. How could you all not feel above the “common man?” They relied on you, and at this point, you were all they had left.... oh, and now they’re wishing horrific atrocities upon you and your family in your chatroom if you don’t quit reminiscing and hustle your ass to work already.
The only benefit to your lateness is that you’re missing the stampede of your coworkers that nearly trample you on your typical commute. You finally hustle your way to the ground floor. It’s 10:25 pm. But you remember that in this atmosphere, you’re all safe now from everything... except the criticism being text-to-speech’d from the secondary phone in your hand. No, not the phone you’re pointing at yourself filming with, the phone in your other hand that you’ve spaced out as it blares the personal attacks and expletives aloud for a $2.99 donation.
You open the iron knockdown door to the outside world, and the lumens increase, even for 10:32 pm. What once was a quiet on-foot commute stream to the office has become an explosion of overstimulation from all angles. You peer up, and the same Nvidia advert from the stairwell is now cast upon the entire facade of your apartment building. The advertisement is pretty legible considering most people’s drapes and curtains stay closed most of the time. The rules of the outside world are simple: if it’s a surface, it’s an advertisement. After all, most commuters are visually broadcasting for entertainment and insurance purposes for their cash-cow federal investors; they’ve got a lot of money riding on you all to puppeteer safely and correctly. Artificial trees have been installed so companies can purchase ad space spread across branches of “leaves”. Although this development drums up so much revenue for the city, it was sequestered to the outskirts because of these commercialized conditions.
Your coworkers don’t have to go very far to begin their work, so you see them lollygagging around the entrance to your building. You must elbow and sift through the online gamblers, mobile game wanderers, and morning-coffee-drinking-positivity preachers, all clocked in and dealing with their own audiences. Speaking of audiences, your lovely audience is continually bzzt bzzzzt bzzzttt’ing your pocket reminding you how much they love you and your tardiness to your professional obligations. The concealer you slapped beneath your eyes begins to melt off your face as you hustle and bustle past loafing “remote” coworkers all populated in the communal plaza, but within about 100 steps total, you make it to the front door of the office. It’s like this so that minimal strain is put on the talent. You remind yourself that you’d only gotten there sooner if only your commute wasn’t so brutal.
The giant glass doors slide open, and you place your handheld camera, mobile palm chat reading device, and modem backpack on an X-ray conveyor belt. After you’re cleared through the metal detector, you take a sharp right down a long corridor when the lumens flashing from the glass on the mezzanine begin to reveal the office: a huge open floor situated with hundreds of livestreaming “professionals”. You scan in your keycard, and your station number appears in big red text on the screen: 214 today. While they very well have federal funding to construct hundreds, if not thousands more stations, that wouldn’t entice their talent to come into work on time to get first dibs on the most pristine money-making government-funded streaming setup...now would it? But as long as you show up on time, and say whatever they want you to say, endorse whatever they want you to endorse, your stay and lifestyle will continue to be paid for.
-
001-100 stations are the most reliable, top-of-the-line, cleanest streaming setups
101-150 stations can be a little more worn, little more duct tape, laggy internet
151-200 stations have Cheeto finger keyboards & chairs with missing wheels, and the video streaming quality of a Yukon Gold.
200+ stations… oof, yeah, good luck
The cicada humming of mechanical keyboard usage erupts as you stand atop the freestanding aluminum staircase above the gaming floor, a circular setup with all stations in ring-like formation around the centralized internet modem core. You scan the room and finally spot your dark station all the way tucked in a surprising corner for such a vibrant LED- illuminated room. You begin to schunk-schunk-schunk down the aluminum stairs, as Station 16 locks eyes with you, sneers, and looks away quickly to get back to their audience. You pass station 58, where they’ve utilized the collapsible partitions to ensure a soundproof remote study session for their students. The floor is illuminated with a grid pattern beneath each step you take – someone must’ve really liked the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey — while the ceiling above is exposed, darkly painted steel rafters. You never noticed the minimal overhead lighting aside from the LED rings provided at each station. You pass Station 130, where they’ve raised the recessed cooktop to successfully give a tutorial on how to make shrimp orzo. Schunk-schunk-schunk across the illuminating LED grates, and there it sits in all its glory: Ahh yes, 214. The chair is stained with God knows what, most of the vowels are missing from the keyboard, and the pixels that DO work in the monitor are reading BAD SIGNAL. You sigh and remember that there is nothing worse in this world than being late to your livestreaming job.
Bzzt bzzt bzzt bzt bzzzzt bzzt bzzt bzt bzt bzzzzt bzt bzzzzt bzt