Collectives

EMPATHETIC ASSEMBLIES, FALL '21

An advanced digital reality has led to the formation of new types of collectives. These collectives range from benign yet obsessive fandoms to aggressive conspiracy theorists affecting global politics, from new religious cybersectarianism to collectives simply interested in a shared forum for the distribution of information. It is the inherent nature of the internet as a forum for anyone to disseminate and publish their beliefs that confront, reveal, and embrace the social complexity of our world.

The SCP Foundation

Our world is not simple, it is full of human suffering. In times of tragedy, we turn to storytelling to display real human insights and experiences, to organize and celebrate, to learn and challenge our understanding of our world, of our history and future, and above all, to be reminded of our common humanity. When these networks fail, they have the power to cause immense suffering, and when they succeed, they have the power to lessen that suffering. This is difficult, and requires all members of the collective to burden the responsibility to secure, contain, and protect. This project attempts to understand the SCP Foundation, a collective that takes this responsibility on, and investigates where they fail and succeed.

The power of innovation and engineering coupled with freedom of speech, can solve any problem in the world, but both are necessary. Criticism is essential, but cynicism is not, and in public discourse, cynicism is too easily masqueraded as truth, spreading viral and taking over. This can suffocate the dreams of creative minds who want to build solutions to the problems of the world.

The SCP Foundation has been established to host the proliferation of these dreams.

The SCP Foundation

Entry by the Administrator

Mankind in its present state has been around for a quarter of a million years, yet only the last 4,000 have been of any significance.

So, what did we do for nearly 250,000 years? We huddled in caves and around small fires, fearful of the things that we didn't understand. It was more than explaining why the sun came up, it was the mystery of enormous birds with heads of men and rocks that came to life. So we called them 'gods' and 'demons', begged them to spare us, and prayed for salvation.

In time, their numbers dwindled and ours rose. The world began to make more sense when there were fewer things to fear, yet the unexplained can never truly go away, as if the universe demands the absurd and impossible.

Mankind must not go back to hiding in fear. No one else will protect us, and we must stand up for ourselves.

While the rest of mankind dwells in the light, we must stand in the darkness to fight it, contain it, and shield it from the eyes of the public, so that others may live in a sane and normal world.

The SCP Foundation

Mission Statement

Operating clandestine and worldwide, the Foundation operates beyond jurisdiction, empowered and entrusted by every major national government with the task of containing anomalous objects, entities, and phenomena. These anomalies pose a significant threat to global security by threatening either physical or psychological harm.

The Foundation operates to maintain normalcy, so that the worldwide civilian population can live and go on with their daily lives without fear, mistrust, or doubt in their personal beliefs, and to maintain human independence from extraterrestrial, extradimensional, and other extranormal influence.

Our mission is three-fold:

Secure

The Foundation secures anomalies with the goal of preventing them from falling into the hands of civilian or rival agencies, through extensive observation and surveillance and by acting to intercept such anomalies at the earliest opportunity.

Contain

The Foundation contains anomalies with the goal of preventing their influence or effects from spreading, by either relocating, concealing, or dismantling such anomalies or by suppressing or preventing public dissemination of knowledge thereof.

Protect

The Foundation protects humanity from the effects of such anomalies as well as the anomalies themselves until such time that they are either fully understood or new theories of science can be devised based on their properties and behavior. The Foundation may also neutralize or destroy anomalies as an option of last resort, if they are determined to be too dangerous to be contained.

Manifestations

Through the examination of the collective’s behaviors, rituals, and belief systems, in both digital and physical realms, various methodologies for the architectural expression of the collective mentality are designed through architectural space.