WORLDbuilding
SYNOPSIS
Veiled Reality is an immersive, interactive first-person adventure in VR, speculating on a future where emerging technologies, feminism and religion collide in the genesis of wearable "shroud computing" and "smart veils" - essentially, a design fiction on the future of hijabs and niqabs.
The story follows Qainaat Latif, founder of BLVR Labs and the charismatic Inventor of these living, semi-sentient garments as she is interviewed by the Player – a journalist profiling the inventor’s entrepreneurial and technological achievements.
The advanced material of BLVR's Veil is apparently imbued with the aggregated and digitised feminine intuitions of millions of women, expressed as an artificial intelligence; provides anti-patriarchal capabilities such as deflection of the male gaze; can utilise hormonal fields to mediate interactions and transform modesty into immodest personal superpowers.
The Inventor guides the Player through a series of demonstrations and trials - each a unique veiled reality. These conversations not only showcase the capabilities of the technology, but also begin to surface the Inventor’s mysterious motivations as it becomes clear the inventor is not only showing her creation, but also experimenting on the Player, as a number of problems begin to emerge.
BACKGROUND
The hijab and various forms of veil have become a flashpoint for debate on religious freedom; integration and assimilation; gender equality; secularism and fear of "the other", simultaneously as a symbol of both emancipation and oppression, as well as a vehicle for prejudices of all sides.
Veiled Reality synthesises real-world developments in technology - such as advanced materials, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence – with speculative fictions and design fictions, to explore this debate, with alternate perspectives that may provoke new perspectives.
Can new forms of veil – accommodating multiple biological, cultural and social identities – lead to a kind of wearable apparel for code-switching and a more fluid understanding of the different facets of gender and veils.
Could a smart veil reveal oppression to the liberated and liberation to the oppressed.. VR promises us we can experience the empathy of others; can the experience of multiple "veiled realities" allow empathy and reveal the perspective of the other.
The veil is fundamentally gendered, but would a technologically advanced veil – that mediates, augments or diminishes the reality of its wearer – concentrating power in the wearer or the creator of the technology. Where does power reside amongst gender, religion and technology?
WORLDBUILDING
What are the fundamental capabilities of BLVR’s Veil and the architecture of fictional technologies upon which it is based: the Veil itself and the supporting technologies which enable its features.
SHROUD COMPUTING
The material from which the Veil is fabricated is drawn from old traditional fabrics, such as the Arab shemagh and the Japanese furoshiki, intimate and ubiquitous accessories for everyday life and even survival. A shroud computer is essentially a large square of lightweight, flexible cloth formed by multiple fibres which can:
Mimic a digital display, allowing for animated geographic patterns, stealth and modesty/immodesty.
Carry and store data as well as power.
Adjust in stiffness and flexibility, as well as warp, fold and knot.
Act as radio antennae.
DARK PHOTON PROCESSOR
Based on the principles of quantum computing harnessing the properties of dark matter and specifically dark photons (rather than qubits) in creating a computational core exponentially faster than anything else. There’s speculation that some form of proton-folding has allowed enormous amounts of computing power to be concentrated into small spaces.
Its architecture is thought to consist of a consciousness model;, a translation layer for various spiritual practices; a quantum mind architecture, as well as an intuition and emotion subprocessor. Jokingly referred to as a Spiritual Processing Unit, BLVR’s dark photon processors appear to be somewhat Islamically heretical, styled as mystical Vantablack cubes and cooled by estrogen-infused holy water from Mecca’s Zamzam well, known to have healing properties.
LARGE MORALITY MODEL
As the 2020s saw Large Language Models such as Chat-GPT underpin early general artificial intelligences, BLVR labs has pioneered the engineering of Large Morality Models and Maternal Memory Models. These neural networks have aggregated and codified the experiences of millions of women into a shared feminine intuition.
HORMONAL DISTORTION FIELD
Though an experimental and uneven feature, the fibres of the Veil can be used to synthesise and express artificial open-sourced hormones, as well as shield the wearer from nearby hormonal communication, to regulate behaviour and physiology. For example…
Generating a local field of oestrogen to induce empathy in those nearby.
An experimental truth hormone - a metaphorical lasso of truth.
Oxytocin to encourage empathy, social interaction and bonding.
Dopamine and cortisol to regulate risk and danger.
An experimental caffeine-based “God-shot” for all-night devotional prayer
Together, these technologies instantiate BLVR’s Veil as a “knotty” object, entangling various practices, processes, and policies, such that the combination can be socially and materially transformative, but cannot be understood through any one discipline.
This entanglement can result in unintended societal consequences, potentially creating a bifurcation of society between veiled and unveiled women, seemingly inverting power away from the unveiled. Believers are now as much technological as spiritual.
SETTING: TIME & PLACE
We’re thinking about the near future as a time - in the 2030s as AI becomes a commonplace substrate in society and economic convulsions have resulted in a society in decline, with cities now shrinking as opportunities recede.
We find our Inventor, Qainaat working alone in abandoned warehouses and offices and the never-revived former mills of her hometown of Bradford, a former city of culture which never got its uplift, but did give rise to an experimental freewheeling culture of fringe innovation and enterprise.
Ultimately, the Player is uncovering a story about Qainaat’s work, profiling the technologies, the inventor and the social and cultural implications of BLVR’s Veil.
An artefact from the future, such as a magazine can be a useful way of getting a handle on such futures and draw together the fullness and complexity of a fictional world.
As the player progresses, more elements of the magazine article are unlocked, until a full story is visible as an artefact of the player’s experience. If we’re clever, we can adjust the output based on what the Player encounters.
Don’t call it a veil
BLVR founder Qainaat Latit wearing a shroud computing prototype.
WIRED
14th April 2038, 3:58pm The world’s hottest startup isn’t located in the offshore sea-steads of Silicon Valley’s exiled titans or Tallinn’s orbital server-spheres – it’s in post-Brexit 2030s Bradford, a former UK City of Culture, home to the industrial revolution’s Satanic Mills and the burgeoning spiritual computing revolution.
WIRED reporter Maria Nil explores what BLVR Lab’s reality-bending technologies reveal about the future of feminism and faith. Welcome to the Dot Commonwealth: the revivified heart of a collapsed empire.