Welcome to the dollhouse. DOLLHOUSE for Queer Imaginaries is a digital community built on the idea of safe spaces for queer people. This social VR project invites participants to reflect in playful ways about what home means to them.
Built spaces can make people feel welcome or excluded. They can be hospitable or hostile. They can give people the freedom to be themselves or they can be oppressive. Lots of queer people find their safe space on the Internet, like in chat rooms, for example. This project imagines what physical shapes these virtual spaces could take, drawing inspiration from nightlife and cruising culture.
To explore the virtual dollhouse, users first select an avatar, a practice akin to wearing drag—an embodiment of queerness, allowing them to express their identity in ways that might not be possible in the physical world. The dollhouse encourages disobedience as intrinsic to queerness. Users are invited to explore, refigure, and interact with the space, with the dollhouse constantly in motion.
