 Good morning. How are you guys feeling? Who stayed overnight here? Nice. Nice. Congratulations. Hope it pays off for you. So we're gonna start by with everyone standing up. I know it's been a long night for some people. We're gonna start by putting your right hand up in the air. Breathe into it and put your left hand up in the air as well. Now, everyone turn to your right and let your hands, did you let, right? Yeah, right, sorry. And let your hands fall on the shoulders of the person in front of you. And use those thumbs, those little turbines of yours, just to really rub it out for the person in front of you. They've had a long night. Don't hold back. They need it. Take advantage of this moment. Yeah, really sink into it. Now, let's put our hands back up in the air. Do a nice spin to the other direction, can't leave the other person hanging and return the favor. Yeah, some of you might be the caboose right now. You know, totally fine. You weren't there a moment ago. Really enjoy it. And now let's settle into the panel. Hey, good morning nerds. That is a thing that just happened. My name is Sydney Skybetter. I'm a choreographer and professor of Dance Junk at Brown University. And it is my privilege to be here. Yeah, go Dance Junk. Is that what that was? Go Brown. Okay, great, sure. I don't know. Sometimes the Dance Junk, yeah, Dance Junk. Okay, you say Dance Junk, you say Brown. Dance Junk, Brown. I'm gonna go ahead and move on. It is early, nerds. It is early. So I am really delighted to be here this morning. I have the privilege of sharing three tables across six other nerds. And this is a really singular experience for me. I'm just honored to be part of the hacking arts experience. So I just wanna extend my thanks, first and foremost to my esteemed panelists and also, of course, to the organizers whose blood, sweat, and tears make this all happen. So thank you and mazel tov. Can we give a round of applause for those nerds? They're good. And also, of course, just very indulged me for the production folks who put on those sick disco tech beats just a couple minutes ago. So thank you for your service. So real quick, this is going to be a morning panel. So it's going to be, I'm gonna be facilitating in the style of fast. So my intention here is to put some soft but also hard parameters around folks' time and attention and guide our conversation through. And ideally, I'd love for you, the audience, to be as involved as possible. Now, I understand that there is a marginally dystopic technology interfacing between us. The slide-do, slide-do? Slide-do. So y'all already know how to use the slide-do. This is all old school. All old knowledge. You use the hashtag pound sign HA 2018, interactive on the slide-do to pose your questions and then they'll pop up in a couple of minutes on the slide-do screens up here. So I'd encourage you to be as vocal if in mediated fashion as you can. I'm very interested in you being, this panel being informed by your interests and experiences, so throw down up in there. So let's do this thing, shall we? We shall. What I'd like to do next is in one sentence or less, ask my esteemed panelists to give a bio statement. So you have one sentence to tell our audience who the hell you are. I'm Eli Clark Davis, Chief Production Officer of Daybreaker, an early morning dance community in 25 cities around the world with 500,000 community members, serving as someone who loves production as well as community building. So we're gonna focus on that. I am Ali. I design interactive platforms that enable new user experiences and I make products that make life easier. Cheers. Yeah. I'm digging this clapping after people talk thing. Let's keep that up. Yes, hi, good morning. I'm Carl Sims. I create digital simulations, interactive digital simulations with inspiration from nature. Yeah. Hi, I'm Lucy. I'm an interdisciplinary designer and currently a grad student at Harvard focusing on disruptive approach in holistic systems. Thank you. Yeah. Hey, my name is Tobias Putrich. My work is mostly about art, architecture and design and that's pretty much it, right? Thank you. Hi, my name is Ryan Edwards. I'm a musician and artist and working in the area of light, sound and interactivity. Great, wow. I have to say a very virtuosic job keeping to one sentence. There were a couple of semicolons in there but well played. So next what I'd like you to do is, again for my panelists, given two minutes, I'd like you to tell a story about maybe a choice project, research venture, intervention of some kind that for you starts to define questions of, not only sort of art, but also of interaction and how you're thinking about technology. So we're starting to maybe define our terms a little bit. Two minutes is on the clock and I should also note by way of caveat, I'm going to be timing these nerds with my phone. So if I'm looking at my phone, I'm not like checking on the latest, I guess, moth memes or whatever the kids are sharing these days. I'm just going to, thank you for finding that funny. I'm gonna be timing them and giving them time warning. So on that note, two minutes from my left to my right, please. Okay, so at Daybreaker, we think about cross collaboration in many ways with technology in is one of the biggest ones. I could think about a specific story where we collaborate with IBM Watson and some incredible artists out in San Francisco to create the world's first cognitive dance party where we, the challenge was to make AI more human, less scary. And we did so by having Watson analyze all of the survey data from the attendees coming to Daybreaker, creating personality insights that then determined what human flow they'd go through in the experience, what fitness experience they'd go on, whether they were more the cap wearer, the yoga or the high intensity interval training type of person, what food they would enjoy the event, what color they would wear to the event. And then we used all of that data to program functionality in this 30 by 30 foot LED dance floor that we built. And that functionality was also meant to bring people closer together and make real meaningful human connections and also create more energy for people to dance even harder. With that energy that people created, we then rose this 17 foot LED sun that we fabricated behind the DJ booth and simulated the rising sun. And on top of that, we used the AI to have Watson beat battle, ELU this world-renowned jazz pianist. We read these intention cards as a community to out loud at the end. And we gave Watson 1,000 of them to then sort through based on the personality insights of the community and chose one specific one that would resonate. So it was really a practice in just how AI can enhance our lives in a really meaningful way and create deep connections with others. Come. Coming in under time. Thank you, sir. Moving on, yes. Sure. So I'm a PhD student here at the Media Lab and I think a lot about building platforms that others can design for. So for my master's thesis, which I also did here, I was developing a multimodal interactive interface that was focused primarily on haptic feedback and it enabled people to interact with virtual objects on a stereoscopic or volumetric display. And whenever their hand comes in contact with a virtual object, they experience sensation where the boundary of the object is. And this is one project that falls under this umbrella of a platform that empowers people to develop their own interactive experiences and express their creativity in new ways. Currently, one of my projects is actually quite different from what I had done previously. I'm now doing soft robotics, specifically with applications to hand augmentation for people with disabilities. So I think a lot about design that is inclusive and that is accessible to everyone. So my current project enables people who have some motor impairments are not able to grab something with their hand due to inability to bend their fingers to still be able to use their own hand to pick up objects just by putting their hand over the object and having inflatable actuators grab the object and then be able to pick it up and manipulate it. And similarly, if they are able to move their fingers only slightly, then using the same approach, the actuators are filling the space between the skin and the object so they can use the object with only a very small bending of their fingers. I don't know what happens when you put hashtag fucking bonkers in the Slido, but maybe we should try that. Thank you, sir. And I should note, yeah, yeah, shit, yeah. Yeah. I should note by way of prelude in a moment I'm going to ask my same panelists to comment on each other's stories and projects. So that's coming up next, sir. So I am fascinated by emergent behavior, situations where you can create simple rules and apply them either over and over again or across many parts of space. And then you get these unexpected complex results. So inspiration from nature, I mentioned, I guess the grand version of that is life coming from primordial soup, right? So we have an example of that. And that is, to me, fascinating. I'll quickly summarize four different interactive pieces that I've created that relate to this, biology, chemistry, physics types of simulations. One is called genetic images, which is a abstract computer art evolution setup. You're shown a bunch of simple pictures and you're supposed to stand in front of the one you like the most. And that one replicates and fills the other screens. So it's a sort of survival of the most aesthetically interesting abstract artworks system. And after a while, you get more complex, interesting pictures. Another piece is a reaction diffusion chemistry simulation where you have two chemicals that react and diffuse and create these patterns that are fairly unexpected. And things like brain coral patterns or even cellular mitosis type patterns out of these very simple chemical rules. This is your 30 second warning. That piece is playing at the Science Museum. And then two other pieces. One is involving particle systems, physics simulation and a fluid flow physics simulation. So those are the kinds of things that I'm into. Okay. Thank you. Round of applause. We're out. All right, Lucy. So let me start by saying when Sydney sent me the prom, I freaked out a little because I don't actually know what I'm doing 90% of the time. Yeah, because I'm still currently a student and I'm always looking to branch out and looking at all sorts of different designs. And I guess my core is, as I said before, a disruptive approach to holistic systems. So basically looking at all aspects of everything and trying to find the most unlike these and kind of smushed them together. So yeah, so instead of saying what I guess my belief or what are my projects kind of focused on, I'm gonna say three projects and hopefully people can come up something for me. Yeah, so the first project I did was a past virtual reality projects. And it was a physical reality project slash virtual reality project where Sydney knows more about this. It was at Brown University in a place called New York where it's a physical space surrounded by about 70 projectors that work as a VR projection system. And I basically implemented an architecture model in it that corresponds to the person's virtual movement and create a spatial echolocating sound systems that helps them direct through the space through music and notes. So that's one project. Another project was, it was a material-based fabrication systems where I looked at digital ways of fabricating glass as a material in terms of under architecture context. Basically looking at the properties of slump and casting and how that could be constructed into a fragile intricate yet very stable structures that can prevent any further increase in the things like leaner fractures, et cetera. That's very utilitarian. So those are two. And the last project was a more recent projects where I worked as a combination of designers slash cognitive neuroscience person basically by taking fMRI brain scan data and using a process of machine learning and JavaScript as a way of processing visualizations to create an interface that displays brain scan information in a more, I guess, easier to understand way. So those are very different projects and hopefully, yeah. And all that in the service of interface which I'd love to return to. Thank you, Pussy. Yeah, we'll get out. And I also want to just take a moment to point out the slightly obvious that there are people taking me literally and at my word up here using swear words and asking questions. So as we go, we can address that if we can, please. When I was asked for this panel to talk about participatory kind of idea, I think in art it's very strange. What exactly is participation? So, and I was trying to think what in my work exactly could be, everything is participatory in a sense. So I just want to describe just one simple project that was about risk. And we wanted to build a stack of Styrofoam cubes in a museum in England. And actually the whole idea was that working with structure engineers and architects, like to build a stack that's like 10 meters high or more that could potentially collapse. So, and then how exactly you, the whole structures form about this notion of risk. That's basically kind of scientifically kind of, actually working with structure engineers and trying to calculate percentage of risk. So in how actually then museum reacts to this notion that artwork can collapse. So, and of course, the results, final result of this collaboration with museum, with everyone was that museum actually at the end, glued all the stacks, not telling anyone. What? So, it tells you a lot about this kind of participatory and kind of like, notion of like how much institution really, and how institution participate in this kind of process. Because institutions are very conservative in that sense. And participatory art and design tries to be very open. So, and this kind of clash is very interesting that happens. Yeah. And how it happens. Sure. I wanna put a pin in two things that you're talking about. First, indeed, the role of the institution relative to all of our work, I think is something that we can explicate further. But I also am very intrigued by this idea of incorporating corporeal risk into interactivity, especially given some of the conversations we were having immediately before the panel, which had to do with creating a kind of a safe space or a playful space. And maybe these notions of risk and playfulness are in some kind of relationship, he said, leadingly. Please. Cool. Right on. Yeah. That sounds a good one, dude. So, my name is Ryan. And my background is in West African music. And I bring that up because in West Africa, if you play drums, this happened to me one of the first times I played drums there and no one's dancing, they think you're crazy. Because music without dance is like, it doesn't happen. You know what I'm saying? That's just a huge question mark, something is wrong. And so, I did that experience at first as a teenager and that has kind of been a part of all of my work as I've gone forward, where as a composer and as a creative, I really seek for another media or another person or another, something to react and feed off of. So, that's kind of like the basis of how I look at the world in making work. The current project that I'm working on now is a location-aware musical instrument where it's a public artwork that I install. It's a series of plastic cubes. And as people move around these cubes, they actually contribute to the melodic structures. So, it's location-aware in that, say, if this scan is happening this way, this could be rhythm. And as the cubes are moved this way, that could register pitch. So, it really is like actually preparing something for interaction, but not finishing it. I think that's something that like for me has become a very strong piece of what I do, is that I can't actually finish my work. I can only prepare it and set it up for people to play with. And that's really fun. I mean, that's in a way, and I'm sure that might be something we all have in common in interactivity, is that you have to kind of prepare for various conditions and then be ready to be surprised and pivot and change and kind of improvise. And that to me keeps my work really interesting and exciting and also like super present, which is how I just want to live. Sure, cheers. Wow, we got mantras falling down all over the place here. Thank you. No, and I love this, it's sort of Yvonne Rainery, post-modern in the idea of the work never being done. Exactly, so maybe there's a question as to like when an interface or when an art is finished somehow. I now want to invite all of our panelists to now comment on each other's work. So I wonder if you have any questions for each other, maybe potentially invoking some of the swear words or other kinds of words in the slide though. What's on your mind as regards to your fellow panelists? Anybody. Please. Yeah, sir, go ahead, Yvonne. On direct response to Tobias, something that we think about at Daybreaker when creating the framework of these large-scale events is this Venn diagram of mystery and safety. And that meeting in the middle is where some of the greatest magic happens and it's what keeps people coming back and wanting more, right? Where they want to play with risk, they have no idea what's coming, what could happen, could the things collapse. But they also, they want this element of safety and warmth. And I feel like there's something there with the art that you're creating as well. Yeah, but look, I think many times I think this institutional rules really kind of dictate what it's possible to do and what is not possible to do. And I think idea of like participatory art and of this kind of, it was always idea of a different museum, different space where people get interact with kind of art, interact with each other. But to me, interesting moment that happens is that institutions are always places with rules, with very strict rules. So I think the first question is like, how do you implement these rules? And especially, and I think on the level of, if you have a small company, small, I mean, you can improvise, but you're still kind of, you have to fit, right? You have to obey the rules. Simply it's like, when you organize, there's simply the whole infrastructure that you have to follow. So, and this is kind of tension, I think it's very interesting. When, where is this freedom of participation and how does it happen? Can you step out of this, you talk about safety, but this is very serious thing, you know? It's like, if something goes wrong, you're done. Sure, as in dead, yeah. So, that's kind of, you know, or even like, but probably, because if you go to some countries that rules are not that important, you suddenly feel like, I was a project, I was a DACA summit in Bangladesh, you know, actually it's a beautiful place and many things are possible there that would never be possible here. You should try exhibiting at Burning Man instead of museums, maybe. There's fewer rules, I think. Yeah. So, I wanna maybe sort of tag on to this question, this conversation and incorporate the question by, I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly, anonymous. So, the question is, how do you adapt when the audience slash end user leads you down an unexpected path? And I might maybe tag on to that audience end user or institutional framework. Maybe there's a way that art working within the world, within or orthogonal to Burning Man or other places, has an effect on the work. So, I wonder if you can talk about what happens when the audience end user or institution leads you down an unexpected path. So, I think that plays into your risk comment also. I think that's what you hope for. I think once, you know, if you can create an interactive piece of some sort where you'd have no clue what might happen, that's great. Unexpected things are wonderful and sometimes they're not that great and sometimes they're much greater than you would expect, but that's, I think that's a very positive thing for any piece, in my opinion. I'll add to that. I think, I like what you just said about, like you hope that happens. And I think that's like, that's a fundamental piece in anyone's approach. You know, if you think, I'm gonna provide for all of the contingencies and I'll be ready for it. You know, go ahead if you think you could, but I think what's kind of beautiful is not being able to do that or kind of accepting and embracing that, so that would be like the first step. And then realize, like I think on the unfinished thing, that it's unfinished and that's beautiful because then you go back to your studio and like everything you learned from showing it last weekend, you incorporate this week. And you're like, whoa, okay, now I actually need these things because last weekend I wasn't just showing a finished thing and standing there, I was actually researching and participating and like bringing things in because I'm passionate about developing this so that it's a journey, it's a path rather than like kink. All right, what's the next thing, right? And that, so that's actually like more about technology and interaction, but more about an attitude maybe. Or like a stance. Yeah, like I'm into the fact that I don't know how it's gonna work and I'm gonna get information from people interacting with it. Like that's a wonderful shaking that to happen. Sure. I'm curious, do all of you share that vantage point, that kind of improvisatory pliability? Is that something we all agree is important or vital here or useful? Yeah, we consider them the golden moments at Daybreaker where you set up a framework and you hope for people to create their own magic within it. And if it's something that you weren't expecting in a way that might have been a little more challenging it's one of those moments where the community gets to kind of self correct in a way that reinforces community if you will. And it's a way for people to feel more, like they feel more connected to the experience by able to react back to it. Connected, but they also maintain their agency. So they're not, you're not like imposing interaction on them, it sounds like they're there of their own volition. Please. I would go perhaps even one step further and say that we should not only think about how to engage the audience in the experience that we design for them, but how can the audience itself be part of the design of the experience itself. So one of the things I, one of the philosophies I share a lot has to do with open source and engaging people in the development of products and interactions themselves. So it's perhaps, one of the suggestions I would have for all of the hackers here is that when you create something, perhaps consider open sourcing it so that you are not limiting the people to only using the particular system or the particular product that you develop, but enable them to remix and expand upon it and develop their own versions of it, similar to how software works. But we can extend this to hardware and also to performances and more general scenarios as well. So other thoughts, questions for your fellow panelists. Anything that you've been dying to ask each other for literally minutes now? I kind of want to keep on going with the kind of the interface interaction questions like targeted towards all of my panelists. Like for example, I have a question for Ryan because we've been talking about like rules, frameworks, and for example, like taking your box project for example, like it is like set in a space, that's like a regular space, like everything is rectangular, and there are different, I guess the box is a program in a way that when people can move them, like there's a set coordinate and like a relationship between each other. But how do you really decide how much rules I guess to enforce on the people? Like in a way that you could, there's you can go all the way from like, yeah, just let them do whatever they want, like see like whatever like almost like morphic outcome that comes up to, okay, I want the lateral element to be this, the linear element to be this, and I want specific like core slash nodes to be composed. Like how do you like, I guess my question is to what extent do you apply those rules and set people? Maybe to tag on again to Anonymous's question about the interactions with the artwork and how you think of the object and it's lifestyle, no, life cycle. Oh, here's a great lifestyle, I hope it hugs all the time. Amazing. Well, that question I have, to answer that, I have to back up and ask like, what is the, what are some of the philosophies? What are the experiences that I want people to have? I mean, the quick answer is that I program the piece to operate in a number of different ways, both from like kind of confined within parameters so that it's very musical and then also things that are completely organic and with, and removing some of those structures that make it musical. But one of the philosophies for me is I want to try to create spaces where people interact socially with one another. So that to me is the holy grail. The more that I can help put that into the world, the better. So, I answer that musical structures and people are more interactive with one another that way. Then I might go down that path and encourage it. But also there's times when people get completely musical playing with it and I'm like, you know what, I need to completely change this up so that I scramble it and then they go whoa and they start talking to one another. Like all of a sudden it's detuned church bells and crickets and that's what they're playing with. And then they're like, are you kidding, what? You know, so that is, to that end, it's really, those are the two things that I look for. And the other thing too is like, how is removing the barriers to be musical? I think that's one of the things for me that's really important is, you know, you don't have to afford a violin and lessons and go to a school that has an orchestra. How can I democratize music and music making so that people feel the feelings of music in unconventional settings and with people they don't know. So if I can make that happen quickly, you know, strangers happen upon this and then now they're being musical, that to me is an end goal. So not such a concise answer, but those are some of my thoughts on it. Thanks for the question, Lucy. You're also alluding to interactivity, not just between an installation and an object and a participant, but also between participants, between communities of participants. Please, yes. Please, yes. Yeah. Get common cards. Yeah, so it seems like a number of us on the panel have that interest in common. Yeah, we were talking about this earlier. So for me, I love it when a piece can lift sort of an inhibition barrier and cause people to act silly and just feel like they can do crazy stuff that they wouldn't necessarily do walking down the street, but now it's okay, so go for it, right? Way ahead of you, bro. Some of my works have motion sensors and so on because people can, you know, dance or be silly. And then, even better, is when you have a few people using it at once, they start interacting with each other at the same time as they're interacting with the piece and that's just fun when that happens and it's great. And in fact, you could argue that the VR goggles are very risky in terms of an experience that can create that kind of interaction because you don't see the person as well, maybe you can, you see the avatar sometimes, it can work, but I tend to do pieces where people do not wear anything at all, so it's a digital mirror kind of situation with augmented reality, but not wearing the goggles. Sure, no, what I love about that is it positions dorkiness as a kind of utopian virtue and it highlights awkwardness and play as aspirational. He said, with a question mark? I agree, did I get that one right? So I just want to kind of call the process because there's been a number of instances where my esteemed panelists have gestured towards reducing barriers and talking about playfulness and sort of procedurally, here we are on a stage with bright lights so we can't fall asleep and you are in a dim space and comfortable chair is where you can fall asleep. And also our relationship is entirely mediated by this delightful, if frankly distancing technology. So I just wanted to kind of like maybe go off mic or something for a moment and ask how the hell are you doing and is this useful or interesting? Should we use more swear words, fewer swear words? What's good for you? How are we doing here? Couple of thumbs up, yeah okay. I guess this isn't the best way to ask for long form criticism exactly. But it's like so, well it's not really a question. But I also, I'm gonna shift gears a little bit and go to the screen here because we have a couple of requests with four thumbs up for Daybreaker at MIT with I think five or six exclamation points. So I think, I don't write the bylaws but I think that means that that has to happen. Yeah, okay, there's some support for that. I guess, let's see, what was the main guidance for Watson's analysis of the Daybreaker community? So I guess maybe this is a question ultimately about a kind of algorithmic processing. And I guess I'd extend this to you all. I'm curious how you either think about the design or engineering or the curation of algorithms or of the math behind your work. How do you code for interactivity? I hired somebody to help me do that. Fast and answered. Yeah, but I would say that it matters a lot, first of all, that obviously that's someone you can trust and that you can co-collaborate with and also that you empower. And I think for me that's something that to think of my work, not as my name but as a team has helped that. And then also for me personally, kind of creating the software for me to work with that remains expressive. And I think that's, and kind of continually just to my earlier point, about being able to kind of develop it as it goes, creating that kind of an environment where it isn't something that's like, again, it's not finished. It's like, I don't know what I'd wanna do next weekend. Let's make sure that we have some options. That's been my approach to that. Thank you. Your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, in the last half a year I got really frustrated with this whole process. Okay, I hire someone, you know, he does my work or she, you know. And I really try to understand. Now, I really spend a lot of time last few months trying to understand and you're starting to code into, you know, because I think this collaboration, you know, it's a problem for understanding and understanding the context, understanding possibilities within this context. And even, you know, here I'm kind of surprised because we are all coming from very different contexts. And I necessarily don't know much about like design. I mean, probably you don't know much about contemporary art and also what I was frustrated few months ago that I don't know much about like programming and especially like machine learning. So, you know, how much do we have to come together exact to understand each other and to understand what participation really is, you know. Especially, you know, and especially like the question of like, you know, you know, building models, building, you know, trying to think what they really do. You know, it's not, it's quite a complex thing and how much of my time I really dedicate to this question. That's a super interesting frame. So the question on some level ultimately is how much do you need to learn in order to collaborate effectively? To study each other, to kind of participate, you know. I mean, on the level of like, you know, party or like, you know, we can dance together, right? You know. Oh, absolutely. Any time. If I have to, you know, if I have to build them like certain, you know, model, you know, machine learning model, it's like, you know, then it becomes a little bit a challenge, right? Because I would really like to know what's in there and understand what it does, right? It's funny because I, as a choreographer, I have similar questions about dance, actually. So it's like the machine learning is a black box of a certain kind. But choreography and especially social dancing, which is totally mysterious to me as an elite highly trained conservatory dancer, like is a source of some anxiety, but also wanting to know or wanting to understand. Other thoughts, please. To quickly address the question of how we, what kind of guidance we got from Watson. So we were looking at some of the bigger questions of the community, right? And are they spiritual? Are they adventurous? Do they love risks? And it came down to like understanding if they're more extroverted or more introverted leaning. And those were the questions that we were coding for to help understand what path they would take. I can go much deeper into all those details, but for the sake of time, I'll say that for a question at the end. One thing that we were really proud of is understanding the extroverts versus introverts in the room and making sure that no one felt that labeled inside and that they were all feeling really connected. And one thing that we did was use that information to create functionality on the dance floor where if you were looking at the floor and you're super fastened by these designs under you, you would notice that when you got closer to other people, there would be rings that would come around both of you that would encourage you to dance more in groups and connect with one another and then look up at each other. So it was like, I'm around this person and you look up and you have this meaningful moment with that person. So that was one of the main things we coded for. I just wanna put a pin in functionality on the dance floor and I don't know if we can request t-shirts with that on it. Maybe we can just do that. I love that commingling of a kind of expressive and sort of community-centered moment that is augmented and literally framed by the technology. It was a first for us. But one thing, just to chime in on what you're saying. Oh, the thoughts for t-shirts, maybe. This actually could go on a t-shirt. I think so. So when we are thinking about designing an experience for people that call themselves, or that say that they never dance, they can't dance, but you're also creating experience for really advanced dancers like yourself. We had to create one that would bring them together in a really special way. So when you think about creating the experience and the science behind it, they're trying to get as many of the happy chemicals to fire so that they're really able to interact with one another. And when we were unscrambling, Rada was unscrambling these happy chemicals, we realized that it spells dose. Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, which is crazy for a sober early morning dance party, when you think about going to get your drugs at the pharmacy or elsewhere, that you're enabling yourself to release your own dose. And so when you're at Daybreaker, you're able to get your dopamine from this early morning accomplishment. And you're oxytocin from having this hugging train at the entrance and then throwing away handshakes and only having hugs on the dance floor. And you're serotonin from really feeling valued as part of a community member, from either the MC speaking to you or having these sober interactions with other people and actually going deep with them. And you're endorphins from burning 500 to 1,000 plus calories on the dance floor, right? And so when you're creating these interactive pieces, really thinking about the experience that they're having around it and trying to get as many of these happy chemicals to fire so they can have an emotionally resonant moment. And that's really what when you feel that way at Daybreaker, it makes you throw out the like, you know, you leave Daybreaker saying, I can dance. I am confident going out dancing at night without anything else. Yeah. I love how your sort of experiential frame for this work is both not about drugs, but also very, very, very much about drugs. I wanna toss this to Carl and then I'll take a question from the website. I was just gonna give a more geeky answer to the coding question if I can step back. I write most of my own software. I use OpenCL, OpenGL for GPU programming. I don't know if you guys use GPUs out there, but it's fun these days. Those are so fast. OpenCL. Yeah. Yeah. And then C++ and so on. In another life, I created software tools for special effects. So coding is kind of my main thing in a way. Artist is the fun part on the side. Okay. Yes, Lucy. And I kind of wanna add on to what Carl said about programming myself because I program most of my projects myself as well, but in a very different sense whereas I don't know anything. I'm trying to learn everything. And 90% of the time I ended up somewhere where I was like, ooh, I did not know I did that and I like it. So that kind of situation. So I think as my approach to algorithms and programming projects, I think it's from a perspective where I'm not expecting anything as a result and just kind of have it guide me because I feel like that's an important part of interaction design as well. Like from the back end, where I'm interacting with the code in my own way and I'm seeing the code interact with the end user in another way. And that very triangulated, like almost crossover relationship was something that was really interested to me. And this can be like very easily applied to like dance choreography or like other mixed media projects that I think, yeah. Sure, I love that because you're speaking to the kind of interaction design and experience design of your own artistic practice and a kind of coding for serendipity that you yourself value. I wanna take it back to Anonymous who's posing a lot of questions if I'm being honest. Contingency planning and complicity of the audience in relationship to an object in its creation. Can we talk about how the audience is implicated or is complicit in your work? And maybe more by extension, the relationship of your audience and maybe more specifically of the bodies of those participating and your work. And if it involves drugs, then great. Also, non-drug answers are fine. Well, at Daybreaker, wow. It is all about the audience and the moments that they exchange with one another. And what we think about all these moments with ritual, right? And both at the entrance and the exit. You know, on the dance floor, but some of the things that we like to include at every single event when you arrive, instead of having mean bouncers at the door like you do when you go out at night, you have a hugging train, right? And this first interaction is kind of when you throw out everything you know about how you're supposed to meet someone at a social setting, right? So when you get hugged by somebody else, now you're on the dance floor hugging all the new people that you meet, right? And so it's not really creating rules for the event, but creating these frameworks and culture and setting that tone right from the beginning. Another thing that we love doing is saying things during the experience that we're not trying to narrate the experience for everybody, but we are trying to help them break free, right? And so giving little guidance to the people that are actually speaking to the audience and helping people not judge themselves and things like that and things that they would never hear when they go out to the clubs, but also have this moment where they're like feeling really connected to themselves and to everyone around them has been huge for creating transformational moments for people on the dance floor. And so really just thinking about the small tidbits that can create deeper unlocking and help them ask bigger questions and why they're there, why they're showing up and what they want to get out of it. Hug as technology, exactly. Yeah, human technology. Like social grease in a way, like how is an audience complicit in some cases, I can say in some of my work, like the piece is alive and it happens when people interact with it. So there is a chance that the piece is there and no one's playing with it, no one is showing up or they're walking up and they're confused. So like, I think to your point, Eli, like how do you help people get past where they might just be looking at something and be unsure without actually saying, you know, well, here's a pamphlet about our thing. You know, how do you avoid that like too much structure but still kind of find a social elixir that just kind of says like, oh, oh. In one case for one of my pieces, it would be to hand people a pair of drumsticks. Not say anything else. But like, yes, you're a stranger. I don't know you. You're here with two kids on the street. Here's some drumsticks. That's just whale. Yeah. And then hopefully the piece is like structured in a way that that then turns into something meaningful. But that's the, like sometimes it does take that. Like, you know, how do you open doors without actually having to lead people all the way through, but kind of say like, here's some doors. Sure. As opposed to like an IKEA manual of interactive art. I have a very similar situation with some of my pieces where if someone's using it, other people see that, they see how it works, then they get in there and start using it as well. But if no one's using it at a particular moment, it's not as interesting because it's really dependent on the people using it. And so how do you draw people then when no one's using it? So one thing I tried, which was interesting is you have a different mode when it detects that no one's using it. And it starts doing stuff kind of on its own. But then as soon as someone steps up, it stops that and lets only their interaction with you, the thing is doing it. So you're not creating too much structure over what people would be creating on their own. So it changes its mode when someone's using it and not using it to attempt to solve exactly that kind of problem. You're an invitation. So I'm told by the thing in front of us that we have seven minutes and 10 seconds left in our panel. I'm going to take that literally. And I'm gonna ask you all one more question from the board. And then I'm going to invite you to tell our audiences first where folks can find more information about you. And then secondly, if you had any hard one trench fought guidance or knowledge to impart on the folks in the audience what that would be. So that's coming in a moment. But I love this question again by anonymous. Can you tell about a project you felt failed and what you took from it? Can we do like kind of a lightning round of failure? Can we just quickly go down and talk about our favorite failures and what you took away from that project or that failure? Unless I'm the only one who's ever failed which is possible. Look, I think a general question could be like if there's something like too much participation if there is some, if there are limits to participation because my experience is that sometimes especially in the frame of contemporary art I think this participant moment became almost problematic because and especially going back to this kind of problem of institution like how, because if you control if you're a company or if you have a group of people and you don't really belong to any institution and kind of you try to establish your own rules, I think that's fine. But immediately when you depend on someone this can become quite weird. How do you manage people? How do you really tell them what they can do and what they cannot do? And of course, and then you can be faced with a failure where people are confused and don't even want to participate. Sure. So maybe there's like two questions buried in there. The first is how you handle dependencies but also secondly, what kinds of rules can scale and to what point? Yeah. Thank you. Other meditations on failure either yours or those you have observed in my career or other people's careers. I guess I kind of want to rephrase the question as to how do you really define failure? Because almost all of my projects ended up somewhere that wasn't supposed to be at all. Yeah. I mean, taking an example of a project that I'm currently working on, I've been working a lot with ceramics lately with slip casting mostly. And just because I had various issues with my mold and it ends up being like very like overflowing, cracked, et cetera. Like by trying to fix everything, now it's turned into like this very morphic, like weird object that I find like almost inspiring for some reason. So I guess the process, like the process is like, do you really take failure as failure or like another opportunity to kind of go further? Like maybe stepping into it doesn't matter where you're not familiar with or maybe like try to come by it with a past knowledge into like creating something that's very like abstract and that could potentially open new fields. Like, yeah, because failure is a relative term. Sure. And maybe one that's attitudinally defined. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I agree with that. I think it's important to start lots of projects, many of which you might not finish. Just go for it, right? Don't be scared to start a project just because it might fail because it doesn't matter. You just don't finish, you do something else, that's fine. Especially these days, I mean, taken from an old timer where computing used to be really expensive and really slow relative to the way it is now, you guys have it really easy. Congratulations. So, you know, go and do it, whatever it might be, whether you finish or not. Thank you. Ali. One way in which you could say perhaps failure could be defined is that if you take too much advice from people, they may have very different opinions about what you are doing and that might give you a very different sense of which direction you should be going. So I think it's important to have a very clear understanding of why you are doing something and you have to be careful who you take advice from and how you incorporate that into your project. So a project I was working on about two years ago was a context awareness system for mobile devices and that's a project that sort of ended up being finished, sort of not completely, but one of the obstacles that I found with that project is that after I tried pursuing it more as a product than just a research project, I ended up getting very conflicting advice from VCs and from some of the people in business I interacted with about whether this would be a project that can be pursued as a real startup or whether it should be just confined to a research project. So that's one project I ended up not pursuing as a product because I got a lot of conflicting advice but even today I still think that was a mistake and I probably should have continued forward. I think that that's such a fascinating conversation for another panel or another conversation about the role of mentorship and the constellation of resources and people that inform all of our work but also your point is very well taken. I don't trust anything that comes out of a panel. Ryan, did you have a quick thought? I know this is all lies and garbage. I have a quick one just on failure which is instead of being specific in general for me it has been times when I took someone's resume or reputation or skill over the relationship that I had with them when developing work and I think for most of us and I'm probably, I hope everyone in this room the work that you're working on is important and you're filled with passion and it's personal and it's public and it's all those things. So then the people you work with you should love and want to work with them because if everything goes really well you'll stay up late hanging out with them and then you'll take it on the road and you know what I'm saying? Hopefully those things happen and then hopefully you're gonna wanna hang with them because your relationship is the thing that's forward and if the people around you, you have to be honest with yourself if you're not feeling it. I think even if we're writing code and doing, even if electricity is involved you still have to feel good about the people you're with. Sure. Yeah. On that note we have literally 23 seconds before we I guess all get kicked off the stage I guess physically and literally. So what I'm gonna invite us now to do is share a place where folks in the audience can get a little bit more information about your work and very, very, very briefly some piece of maybe advice or guidance that you'd like to impart on our audience go. And we're out of time. You can find us. So we're actually looking to do a daybreaker here at MIT. You can come talk to us right over here after this. It's coming up this, later this fall but you can find more on Instagram at dybrkr or daybreaker.com and I'll be here to talk about any questions you have as well. Some wisdom is when thinking about every experience that you create do think about it through what you want people to feel and that's gonna be the most important thing for people to have an emotional connection to what you're creating. If you want this creation to live longer that's how they're gonna start talking about it and create sharing. Pass it down that we now have a blinking light of some kind and I'm getting very nervous. So please. One piece of advice I would ask for everyone is to think about including as many people as you can in your interactive experiences. So specifically think about people who may not have the full set of abilities that a normal person might have. And as for where you can find more of my upcoming and recent work I'm here downstairs literally in this building so you're always welcome to come talk to me and I update my website about once a year which is my last name.com. Thank you. You can find out more information at CarlSims.com and my advice would be just take risks and do what you love to do. Amen. So my advice to someone who doesn't know what she's doing most of the time is that is completely okay because new media is all about finding out who we are and who we interact with and how to really bring that into art and design and tech. To find out more about me you can literally just Google me the search that doesn't come out as a real estate agent in California is probably me. And yeah, yeah, that happens. And on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I'm at the media lab, Tuesday, Thursday I'm at Harvard. Rest of the time I'm kind of floating around Cambridge so if you catch me say hi. Great. I love that your response was if I'm not at Harvard or MIT just Google me. Thank you, please. Yeah, you can find more information on our website and regarding advice, I try to kind of, I feel I give too much advice all the time so no advice this time. Amen. Cheers. I mean, you're like the dark horse up here, man. My studio is called Masari Studios. You see it there, masaristudios.com. We're based here in Boston and one of my pieces is actually out here in the lobby and I have business cards and brochures if you'd like to check it out and hang here this afternoon. Great. Folks, thank you. Give it up for Sydney for being funny and groping it all together though, right? Good job, buddy. Well, thank you. I don't know that that's ever happened before, man. Please give a warm round of applause for my esteemed panelists. Give it up. Thank you so much. Mazel, mazel. And to be continued, shameless plug, are you gonna give the shameless plug or should I give the shameless plug? Shameless plug for my own workshop session that started 15 minutes ago.