John Marshall: rootoftwo Exhibits at MOCAD
This summer, a new exhibition by Detroit-based creative studio rootoftwo, co-founded by Stamps Professor John Marshall and Cézanne Charles, invites you to interrogate the future of the “smart city” through an evolving AI installation and a playable tabletop game. Anyspace? Whatever., on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) from July 11 – September 20, asks how data, access, and power shape our everyday urban experience.
Taking its title from an oblique reference to Gilles Deleuze’s cinematic term “l’espace quelconque”, or “any-space-whatever”, the exhibition’s centerpiece echoes Albert Kahn’s historic Ford Rotunda, originally built for the 1933 World’s Fair before its relocation to Dearborn and eventual destruction by fire in 1962. The rotunda functions as a voice-interactive AI installation designed to initiate public debate on surveillance capitalism, data privacy, and the technoligarchy.
At the start of the exhibition, loudspeakers broadcast relentless, techno-progressivist propaganda about the ideal “smart city.” Visitors are invited inside to converse with a custom-built AI. Taking on one of four character archetypes, the system asks visitors to share their own personal visions for the future of their city. Over the exhibition, visitor input actively retrains the system. Slowly, the exterior broadcast shifts, transforming from algorithmic corporate propaganda into a collective, community-driven vision of digital rights.
Extending the exhibition’s inquiry into data rights and civic action is 463NCY (hacker slang for “agency”). Designed as part cyberpunk heist and part systems-literacy exercise, the cooperative tabletop game drops players into a city governed by a citywide OS where data and privacy are traded commodities. The physical game board brings to life German architect Oswald Mathias Ungers’s unbuilt entry for the 1975 Roosevelt Island Housing Competition. 463NCY was extensively playtested in public alongside the Design Justice Network, Detroit Month of Design, the National Science Foundation, and at Sketching in Hardware, Paris.
Led by Cézanne Charles and John Marshall, rootoftwo is a research- and practice-driven art, design, and technology studio based in Detroit. Through interaction, participation, humor, and play, they explore under-imagined futures and the democratic dilemmas posed by emerging technology.
This work was made possible with the support of Creative Capital, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the US Regional Arts Organizations, and a 2024 Knight New Work Detroit grant, an initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Some of this work was undertaken on a Leighton Artist Studio Residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in February 2026. rootoftwo is grateful to the Wolfsonian – Florida International University for access to materials in their collection from the 1933 World’s Fair “A Century of Progress International Exposition.”
rootoftwo: Anyspace? Whatever.
Exhibition Dates: Saturday, July 11 – Sunday, September 20, 2026
Soft opening/family day on Saturday, July 11
Large opening celebration on Friday, August 7th
The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI 48201