Wild Worlds and Tamed Minds

Organized with the support of Prof. Terry Knight
MIT Architecture Lecture Series, 2016

Wild Worlds and Tamed Minds

Proliferation of digital and immersive media in creative practices increasingly challenges established boundaries between the real world and the digital world. What was once imagined, created and consumed in digital media is now leaking into lived experiences, calling for perceptual and material existence. The lecture series Wild Worlds and Tamed Minds explores this emerging type of creative reality in relation to the notions of computing, embodiment and narrative. The series brings together designers, scientists, media theorists, anthropologists and philosophers to cultivate an interdisciplinary discussion on theories of mind, body and world; their influence on understanding and performing creative activities; and the role of computation as a communicative tool between actively experienced worlds and mental representations. Lectures will address questions such as: What are the cognitive and neural basis of the experience of space? How do immersive digital media (i.e. virtual, augmented or mixed reality) change our lifeworld? What are the potentials and implications of this media for creative practices?