Synthesis

(0) PhD projects (more details from respective folks!)

Garrett: Diagrammatic

Yanjun: Affective, Enactive Experiential design 

Shomit: Sound installation, Living Systems, subjectification, performance and site

(1) Transformation and Ontogenesis (XW)

Recognizing that the world is constantly in a state of change, process, evolution and flux means we have to face the fact that no fixed, finite description can tell the whole story or predict the future.  But can we understand how the world changes?   What are the motors of change, dynamic and transformation?  Life is full of surprises — not only can we not say exactly what’s going to happen, we cannot even say in advance what all the possible futures are.  How can we think about transformation and change in ways that are themselves supple and adaptive?

Ontogenetic Process, Emergence, Individuation research stream, with special volumes in Angelaki (2020), and AI & Society (forthcoming).

AME & European Graduate School: Emergence, Ontogenesis and Individuation seminar.

Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Matter (MIT 2013)

(2) Eco-Eco: Ecologies and Economies 

Ecosystems and economies exceed every special interest and discipline, whether cultural or technoscientific.  Blending biological life with social-economic life requires rethinking both economics and ecology.  It requires caring for both non-quantifiable value as well as quantified fact.  How can we develop fresh approaches to making sense of, navigating, and shaping alternate ecologies and economies, under the proposition that we are one species among many?

Alter-Eco Seminars and Studios, some of which have been prototyped at Synthesis / ASU, Building21 / McGill and the European Graduate School.

(3) Prototyping Social Forms (XW)

How can we blend both custom-made and well-established methods of sketching and making from media arts, experimental performance, design, engineering, and conceptual studies to build working models of complex biosocial and sociotechnical systems in plausibly thick social settings?    How can we prototype, at lifescale, the lived, whole experience of social forms such as places: home, city, street; events: play, meal, learning; or infrastructures: finance, governance, energy to the degree needed to get a sense of what it would be like to actually live in or live with those social forms?  In collaboration with the School of Arts, Media and Engineering, and Fulton Schools of Engineering.

Process Germ Bank (Muindi)