A Cineasthesia Project

# HOME

The Last Draw/Home is a film and art installation that deconstructs and reimagines the notion of “home” — as cultural memory, as shelter, and as a form of resistance in service to a reimagined future. The project is multi-purpose: using neuroaesthetic principles rooted in West African indigenous practices to lower cortisol levels and induce states of joy, euphoria, play, and embodied remembrance — and as a prototype for fire-resistant, climate-adaptive affordable housing.

The Sensory Journey

## Interconnected Sensory Chambers

Visitors move through interconnected sensory chambers — experiencing film, video, oral storytelling, bass vibrations, AR environments, projection mapping, sound frequencies tied to ancestral rhythms, and eco-designed spaces — across a durational journey modeled on ceremonial timescales.

By fusing adaptive architectural design with immersive storytelling, The Last Draw/Home offers spaces that can function as both an externalized and internalized nervous system regulator.

Project Goals

## Cultural Reclamation, Nervous System Restoration, Climate-Resilient Housing

The Last Draw/Home operates at the intersection of three urgent imperatives: cultural reclamation, nervous system restoration, and climate-resilient housing.

Through integrating technology with Ghanaian indigenous practices — sound frequencies, ceremonial pacing, ancestral storytelling modalities — the project invites visitors into what we call “cultural design”: architecture and narrative shaped by the epistemologies of the communities it serves.

Cultural Design

## What Would Housing Look Like If It Were Designed to Heal?

“How can we create both an externalized nervous system through design technology and an internalized nervous regulator through story and somatic sensory experiencing—linking the knowledge and ancient tech that has always been there to the technology of today?”

Immersive, Interactive Art

## The Experience

Drawing from Alice Walker’s radical tenderness and Audre Lorde’s framing of self-care as a form of political resistance, this project destigmatizes play, rest, and joy for people who may be in survival mode.

Each sensory chamber is designed using neuroaesthetic research to activate specific neurological responses: lowering cortisol, stimulating oxytocin and dopamine pathways, inviting the body back into safety. Visitors don’t just observe — they participate through the story and immersion.

Film Sound Frequency Bass Vibrations Volumetric Lasers Oral Storytelling Touch Cinemagraphs Scent

“How can we create both an externalized nervous system through design technology and an internalized nervous regulator through story and somatic sensory experiencing—linking the knowledge and ancient tech that has always been there to the technology of today?”

Sensory Worlds

Immersive, Interactive Art

## Interconnected Narrative

Each experience has its own separate space and is linked to a story, creating an interconnected larger narrative — layers revealed like a Russian doll across different mediums.

Drawing from Alice Walker’s radical tenderness and Audre Lorde’s framing of self-care as a form of political resistance, this project destigmatizes play, rest, and joy for people who may be in survival mode.

AR layers, volumetric projections, and spatially mapped soundscapes create environments where visitors encounter their own stories reflected back — not as trauma, but as source.

Housing Prototype

## The Home Within

The installation also serves as a functional prototype for fire-resistant, ecologically designed affordable housing.

As climate disasters disproportionately displace Black and Brown communities — from wildfire corridors in California to flood-vulnerable neighborhoods across the Gulf Coast and West Africa — we need housing models that are both structurally resilient and culturally resonant.

The Last Draw/Home investigates what “home” can be when designed from indigenous knowledge systems rather than extractive development logic.

Three Pillars

## Story · Sanctuary · Land

### Story

A grounded near-future narrative about a Ghanaian family living under ecological pressure and lottery-based survival gives the work its emotional life and human stakes.

### Sanctuary

The habitat system through which this world takes architectural form — spherical, linked, repairable, teachable, and suited to distributed local manufacture.

### Land

Food production, water catchment, soil repair, medicinal planting, nursery life, shade, and productive edges all shape how people live, move, and remain in place.

Grounded in Place

## Mim, Ghana

For this work, that place is Mim, Ghana — its red earth, water edges, agricultural life, quarry conditions, settlement patterns, and surrounding landforms create a grounded environment for thinking about climate adaptation in material terms.

The project asks what becomes visible when future habitation is grounded in land, culture, pressure, and daily life.

Why WORLDING

## Where Story, Land, Climate Futures, and Real-Time Technology Meet

The Last Draw/Home sits precisely at the intersections WORLDING names: story, land-use, climate futures, and real-time technology — but it approaches that intersection from a position rarely centered in planning discourse. This is a project that deconstructs the various meanings of “home”, imagined through Black diasporic epistemology, where the act of dwelling is itself a narrative act, and where climate adaptation is inseparable from cultural survival.

The WORLDING incubator’s emphasis on teams working between storytelling and community-based placemaking is in direct alignment with our team and our values. This project takes shape as a prototype where story, ceremony, and shelter are developed together, each one informing how the others are experienced. The project needs exactly the kind of interdisciplinary support and pressure-testing that WORLDING provides.

Our use of real-time 3D technology — AR environments, volumetric laser mapping, spatially responsive projection — is central but not dominant. We believe this aligns with WORLDING’s approach to XR as a tool for worldbuilding rather than spectacle. The Last Draw/Home operates at the scale of the individual nervous system, the scale of the neighborhood, and the scale of diasporic climate futures all at once.

The Creator

## Elle Sam

Storyteller · Filmmaker · Medicinal Healer

Michelle “ELLE” Sam is a storyteller, award-winning filmmaker, writer, multimedia artist, and medicinal healer of Ghanaian descent within the Fante, Akwapim, and Bwiti traditions. She holds a B.A. from Rice University in Visual and Dramatic Arts, Sociology, and Neuroscience — an interdisciplinary foundation that reflects the convergence driving her work.

Her credits include writing for Jason Katims’ As We See It (Amazon) and Hardly Working (Paramount+). Her short film Missed Connections won the audience award at TranScreen Amsterdam. She wrote Black Boy Joy, which received a NAACP Image Award. She was a speaker at TEDxAccra’s Chale Talks.

Her practice bridges West African indigenous healing traditions, neuroaesthetics, and multimedia narrative — the convergence at the heart of The Last Draw/Home.

Collaborators

## The Team

### George A. Jackson II

Habitat Systems

Brings the Acorus habitat system and its architectural logic — spherical, linked, repairable civic sanctuary infrastructure suited to distributed local manufacture and climate-adapted settlement.

### Stefanie Atkinson Schwartz

Multisensory Experience

Brings multisensory experience design, embodied perception, and visual storytelling into the worlding process. Her work explores the intersection of nature, sensation, and ecological awareness.

### Roxi Shohadee

Creative Producer

Brings production expertise and creative strategy to the HOME project, supporting its development across immersive art, housing innovation, and community engagement.