 Hi, everyone, and welcome to the last conversation of today's convening. My name is Sarah Garten Stanley, and I'm co-founder for Spiderweb Show and the founding artistic director, and I'm so happy to be in this final conversation and to get an opportunity to filter through for my own self some of the things that have been said already today. Some of the things that have stuck in my mind just to kick us off are how the lack of time can be a real contributor to bad science and bad art, which was a quote from somebody earlier and I'm sorry I can't, I didn't write down who said it, but it reminds me and thank you so much for the game that we just played, how important it is to breathe. We named this, and I'm not breathing while I'm saying it, we named this configuration, this day of experiment configuration as the breathing circle because we felt that it could emulate a sense of contraction and release and contraction and release. So I invite us for this last hour to think about that and to speak slowly whether you're part of the inner circle or if you come in in the number two circle or the final circle. Of course I say that and then remind all of you, thank you so much for joining us in this circle that I'm going to put a two minute timer on each of your opening remarks just to help organize the conversation moving forward so we can stay in the inner circle and have some good, full some conversation back and forth. I'm also really struck by a comment that was made earlier a couple of times about innovation inflation and thinking about how in this topic this conversation is titled Digital Utopias, how utopia is a suspicious word for I think a lot of reasons because the promise of technology and the internet and accessibility and any number of things that were thought to be potential equalizers and or to bring in the word that was called into question this morning disruptions. While we've seen a lot of I think really exciting changes and things occur, I think we've also seen some things that have not been as exciting. So the word is not necessarily a wholly beloved word but I think it's an interesting word to think about how we might be optimistic if we use utopias in that way when we think about the digital interface with utopia. But also it comes out of our initial thinking around sustainability and in many side conversations I've had throughout the day what has come up are these questions around the climate that we are existing within, the advent of climate change, the planet that we are a part of and how we're coexisting on the lands that we are on but as well with all of the floor and fauna that we're trying to understand how better to coexist with. And so I think there is a real digital kind of imprint that is hidden in the same way that our own power over many other animals, plants and weather systems was hidden. So I bring that just forward to something to think about moving forward. So for this last conversation it's going to be two minutes time for each of the speakers. I remind you and I would ask that we do employ when we are talking and this is for the whole group. This is my final thought. It will make it more widely accessible to all people involved and helpful just in terms of the moderating as we go through and I didn't ask a particular leaping off order but I did hand a microphone to Sage and I was wondering if you'd be okay to start. Sure. I feel like I'm waiting for the timer to start already. Breathe. So I'm really interested, folks, I am Sage Crump. I've introduced myself a couple of times. What I do with complex movements, I'm a cultural strategist and so what that means is I think a lot about the ways in which art and culture dismantle systemic oppressions and creates the world we want to live in. And so inside our collective we think about all the ways in which the work is designed to do that. That is both the artistic work and how it moves and supports different organizing in communities but it's also like the conjunction in which it finds itself. Who are our presenters? What communities are we going to? How do we get to them? And so I share that by way of entering into this conversation around digital utopia because I think a lot about how we get where we're going and the importance of thinking through that with a level of rigor to ensure that we're not replicating systems and not replicating systems that devalue, exploit, especially as touring artists creating extractive economies in the places where we go and I'm glad you kind of called on me first because I do want to talk about utopia. This idea that there's somewhere we're going to land I think is antithetical to a creative practice. Right? I like to think about the work of Octavia Butler and in her book Parable of the Sewers talks about all that you touch you change, all that you change changes you, the only constant is change. And so utopia implies we're going to land somewhere to me and I think what I'm more interested in is how do we build ways in which we are, we continue to be iterative, creative and antifragile. So it's not just in relationship to the challenges but that we are in a constant mode of learning, a culture of inquiry, building a new way of being. I think that, I lost my other thought, that helps us think about the tools that we use when we're clear about where we're getting or what we are working through then the tools come in in ways to get there. And we can also think about what is the right technology and how it is used. I think that might be my final thought. I've got a lot more thoughts but they're going to come a little later. Wonderful. Thanks so much. We'll come back. That was two minutes exactly. Just to do a little bit of around the circle and placement, I call these placement statements and just ask each of the speakers to think about where they're coming at this question from and where they're hoping to look ahead to the future. Just so we place everyone right across from me is Sage and then to Sage's right is Abigail and to Abigail's right is Kevin and to Kevin's right is Alex. Alex, I'm to your right and to my right is Chantal and to Chantal's right is Wesley. And I'd just like to pass it now to Abigail. Hi, I'm Abigail Vega. I'm the producer of the Latinx Theater Commons, LTC, which is a flagship program of HowlRound, Literacy Moment for maybe some of my Canadian friends and also US friends. So Latinx is not an English or a Spanish word. It is a gender-inclusive word for people who are Latino or who are Latina or Latinx and that's in the United States defined as somebody who was born in the US or lives in the US of Latin American descent. So that's kind of what we're using. Although I'm now hearing that Canadians are using it, which is awesome and very excited about that. Just for context, we're the second largest minority in the United States, the fastest growing, a quarter of school children in K through 12 are Latinx. And an interesting thing when we talk about sort of conversations around generations is that the average white person in the United States is 48. The average Latinx person is 28. So there's like, yeah, there's some major shifts going on and a lot of that has to do with generation as well. So we are a hemispheric national movement of scholars, advocates, administrators and art makers who are kind of looking to rework the quote American theater and we're gonna be inclusive and say America, right? The whole America. We do that by producing conversations and events via convenings. We publish on the HowlRound Journal and we are across four time zones in the United States and in Canada with our volunteer steering committee of about 60 people and 35 advisory committee members. And we do everything aside from the producer position, everything with volunteer labor. We are not inventing this wheel. We are only writing on the shoulders of our ancestors. So earlier someone talked about disruption being like, we're sort of redoing it and that's not what we're doing. We're relying on the fact that in our community, we have a long history of organizing and this is just the next step. And there will be something after us that's even better. And then that's when we're thinking about utopias. I also don't like the idea of landing in a place because we can't even envision what paradise looks like yet, but I'm interested what happens after us. And being okay with things ending people because sometimes things have to end. Thanks so much, right on the two minutes, Kevin. I'm Kevin, three-legged dog in New York. So it's been interesting listening to, especially our attempts to grapple with interactivity today. Yeah, sure. But I just, just one sort of utopian statement as an art maker. A lot of times we think of code at 3LD as a universal translator between modes of expression. And I talked a little bit earlier about how the biggest sort of impact of technology on our work has been its ability to integrate all the different aspects of a performance or installation. And so as an artist, I've been working for the last 23 years to try to find a way to allow myself and other artists to build and finish large-scale, ambitious projects, many of which used technology. And also to find and put forward technologies and methods that are affordable and usable by your everyday, average, georgial artists. And with, you know, this sort of up-and-down success. So probably the biggest struggle has been that our company has ended up doing as much experimentation in business modeling as it has in artistic experimentation just to try to keep moving, right? In fact, in January, we finally were forced out of our 12,000-square-foot space in Manhattan. We're the 90th performing group to have been forced out since the recession. That's a whole other discussion, and it's not utopian. It's quite dystopian, actually, and I think all of us are experiencing it. But as an artist, what I've been working on, I guess, really in a focus way since 2005, is to try to find ways to bring moving image or cinematic imagery into the living, the life space. So the beauty and the scale of cinematic imagery working with the immediacy and unpredictability of live performance. And that does have a lot to do with interactivity. We have to find systems that allow our performers to interact and improvise inside a digitally complex place, and we've had a lot of success with that. Thanks so much. We're actually yet. Alex, I'm going to... There's a mic coming to you on your computer. Can you put the mic to my computer, please? Alex speaking. This is Alex speaking. This is Alex speaking. This is Alex speaking. Can you hear that at all through the speaker? This is Alex speaking. I'm happy to guide you. Digital utopias. For me, these two words provoke quite an emotional response, Colin. Clear frustration, anger, hope, isolation, breathing and not breathing. Other significant themes come to mind, Colin. Choice, reliability, balance, politics, access, human performance, un-nation-indicated perceptual intelligence. Digital utopia, when the technology delivers equitable opportunity. At present, I propose it is of greatest benefit to those who are more entitled. Be it more able, more economically stable, more likely to be employed, to just name a few. I also propose that there are many who have limited access to meaningful digital engagement and could benefit greatly from it. And as such, there exists a need for advanced political will and political progress to keep up with digital. Opportunities perhaps this is called political digital utopia. I experience the lack of political progress in relation to digital progress every day. I also have the privilege of being a working artist with access to funding which is enabled me to find creative solutions to access, find an artistic voice within this and invite digital technology into my work. With the protection of being part of a thoughtful artistic process. Digital technology outside of an artistic process often leaves me feeling that it's connected with my body. Sensorially understimulated, fragile. Digital utopia, lack, when we continue the question now is there is not liberating our imagination, our access to quality of life and work, our connections with each other and the living world around. End of current thought. Thanks so much, Alex. Do you want to make any more comments or that was Jocelyn end of current thought? Yes? Sorry, I was looking at you, Alex. Is that the end of your current thought? Wonderful. End of current thought. Thanks so much. I'm going to pass it over to Chantel. So my most direct relationship with technology is through a project that I co-founded in 2015 called Climate Change Theatre Action where every two years we commission 50 playwrights from around the world to write a short play related to climate change and then we take this collection of plays and we make them available to whoever wants to present an event within a certain time when during the fall against around the world. So the way we use technology for this is really to create a sense of community and make visible something that might not be visible in the sense that they're having an impact even though they might feel very isolated. So we have a little bit like how around we have a world map where we pin all of the events that are taking place and then we use social media to put people in touch with each other. So what ends up happening is somebody, so this is an arts based action for social change and people use these plays, they create an event and it might be a small group or something like that that's presenting an event for 20 people but then they know that within that same timeframe in the same about 12 weeks that there are hundreds of other events taking place in the world with thousands more audiences and so what feels like could be a very small thing that if you are on your own you may not notice any impact and when you see that it's replicated it's much more encouraging and of course it's nothing new it's what a lot of organizers are doing a lot of social movements are doing but we've kind of borrowed this model and applied it to the arts. Is that it? If you're done, is that the end of your current thought? I think that's the end of my current thought. Wonderful, thank you. Wesley. So, yeah, Wesley Taylor part of complex movements would say so many different conflicting thoughts about the idea of utopia that I can't even reconcile in my brain right now and I think one thing that I grapple with on a daily basis like not being resigned to the ship already sailing on these things never being achieved and it's like well what do you do in the meantime? When I was 18 I started my university years in environmental sciences I left that to be an artist because all the models that I saw in 1996 were like it's over if we didn't do things 10 years ago and those were the models that would be out of this if this accord is not signed on to and agreed to then it's over and these were all the predictions 30 years into the future 50 years in the future and if there was a checklist and we were supposed to check those things off then none of those things were checked off so that's one thing but then thinking about other things like I'm obsessed with AI and just thinking about the world with that and going back to theorization of and lived experience of we talk about utopia and I think utopias can be conflated with this idea of fiction and science fiction and dystopia and things like that so my technology was Skynet and it wasn't as a joke but actually that is what I think and that is why I'm obsessed with artificial intelligence but also like the theorization of say the the black body in the United States already experiences that dystopic notion that is in science fiction and so those are things that I grapple with all the time just to say that I am engaged and involved with these things because to me it comes down to the consciousness what is the consciousness that is imbued in these systems, ideas, frameworks, technologies and on a wholesale like way there's it's very much exclusionary and so what goes on, what transports, what transfers to next phases and next stages of humanity and things keep me up at night Thanks so much so thanks everyone for a two minute placement statement what I heard in three different ways and actually not the word but from everybody was this question about fragility and I wonder how Sage you mentioned it with respect to antifragile and I wonder if you could speak a little bit about that and then Alex, the word fragility came up in your writing and then Kevin you spoke about sort of building and finishing and there was sort of a concrete kind of get this thing kind of built and Wesley when you sort of mentioned this question around if there was a checklist then it didn't get so I just, everybody actually sort of brought it in so I wonder if we could sort of spend a bit of time on that Sure so first of all there's a book called antifragile I don't actually recommend the book but conceptually it's really dope and part of it is a way to move past this thought of like resiliency and this and resilient meaning something that comes something that comes against you and then you are able to respond and recover building spaces that are antifragile means you are in a sense you are in a process of constant iteration so it's not a responding to an external disaster or an external problem but actually we're building things that move us past and it moves us past this, what I kept hearing is like this binary of dystopia utopia antifragile gets us into this constant creates a different culture by which we're not centering the harm but we are continually thinking about our vision forward and what's the future iteration from the learning from what's happened So the first time I remember hearing the words sustainable viable were from a venture capitalist in the early 90s who was describing what was wrong with not-for-profit organizations so I try and this is a problem that I think is common to everybody that's working in digital arts which is that there's a pervasive corporate structure that we all run into moment to moment every day and one of the things that I'm interested in we started a software company because there wasn't a tool that we needed so we just started a software company and put us in the same room with Henry Kravitz the inventor of the hostile leverage buyout so it wasn't that good an idea it turned out but and I learned a lot from him unfortunately but sorry can you say what that is the hostile leverage buyout that's where the investor comes in and takes usually half equity and half debt and then they do what they call fry and flip which is they push the entity to spend as much money as it can until they're in trouble and they call in the debt and own the company so I mean that's one way there's a lot of different other it's hostile and it's leveraged it's bad anyway one of the issues that we struggle with you know we work really hard to make sure that our toolset is affordable that any artist anybody can have access to it we did a big huge installation in Shanghai that was probably the largest video projection surface ever built at that time was 88 million pixels so it was five times IMAX resolution and we did that with $350 software because it's better it's a better tool and it's also we can't afford $40,000 channel media and we can't afford $50,000 and that's part of our work and the last 10 years I found it more and more and more difficult to engage artists in cooperative work because everybody is innately pitted against each other by this ridiculous idea that we're going to achieve something by competing with each other somehow right so this is another sort of struggle that I've had and all artists you know but you know we've been able to make a lot of progress through cooperative action but one of the things I'd like to see for example is a group of artists and technologists and maybe universities are involved that come in and develop an alternative to the Adobe suite which I feel like a indentured servant to Adobe because I have to use their suite and I have to pay X amount of money a month to make sure that my content, my intellectual property is still accessible to me I guess I feel more like I'm kidnapped but anyway great thanks I think we could move on maybe a little bit from that question I'm curious a little bit about the feelings around data and how data is providing positive opportunities for the work that you're doing and how it may or may not be I was thinking in the previous session about this question about whether audiences want to participate or not and it made me think about how suspicious I feel about data but also how dependent upon data I am and so I'm Abigail I was really moved by the quote with respect to the average white person is 48 and Latinx is my writing is terrible 28 and I mean that's an incredible statistic and it's based on data which I think is from my perspective a very positive outcome of what data can do or the work Chantal that you've been able to do with respect to climate change and bringing together for social change and yet I wonder my question to the group is how we feel having this data is helping move our projects forward do we see that being a continuum or do we see the problems that lie ahead anyone want to take that on well I'll just say something that's going on for us for a moment but so I was reading this article that was talking about how all the rules that the EU is putting in about security in relation to our data and how the US isn't doing that work and it equated that Europeans feel about the word privacy the same way that Americans or United States feel about the word liberty like we are like all about freedom and it's like so privacy is not the same so I'm almost like oh I don't know like data I feel like whatever in some ways you know it's unreliable because when you're talking across labels you know specifically for Latinx people right so we are white we are black we are indigenous we are Asian and most often when we're talking about census work like that happens every 10 years in the United States they don't include Afro Latinx people in that number so when I say a quarter of that's not happening there's also a lot specifically in the southwest people are being mislabeled as Latinx and they're really indigenous or Native American so there's all these like labeling things that are really weird I guess here too but definitely in the US that do pit us against each other right so it's like if it comes about only one can get it and we're going to be in the same pool like then we have a moment of competition that's false and that's created for no reason but it can also build strengths right in terms of community and having a greater sense of the numbers of a larger sense of you know across a nation or across the America or Turtle Island as you said you know it can offer an opportunity to think in a larger more communal way I guess the question is can that communal thinking translate and maybe that's my endgame thinking which maybe sort of part of this utopian problem but can it help transition into greater power for different groups who have not up till now held the balance of power and can are we still in a position where this work that we're doing can make strong do we feel that we can still make strong cultural change with the use of technology and the digital shift is it still something that is it something that we feel that anybody here that I feel positive about and can point to some of the ways in which it can really help move ideas forward so I made a I did a little experiment with data and this was not data that was collected through technologies just things I knew from this project climate change theater action and it was looking at racial bias and gender bias and comparing our statistics with the field at large and I would say so because in the field at large you have you know usually artistic directors and institutions making decisions about their programming and then in climate change theater action it tends to be either individuals or groups who will come together and make those decisions so the decision power it lives in a different place and I wanted to see if it affected the place that were presented whether statistics in terms of gender and race match the statistics of the field at large and it turns out that it didn't that we were doing much better so I and you know and when I say we it's not me it's really the people who participate so I think in that sense the data is a way to move the field forward because then it makes you question okay where does the power live and why when it lives there are certain decisions made in a certain way and so if you change how where the power lives and the decisions are different then what does that mean and what do we have to reconsider Alex would you like to say something this is a question about data or the digital the potential for digital technology to advance ideas it's both I was thinking about data yeah I have to say the subject of data doesn't speak to me I I'm trying to get sort of a connection to it both personally and professionally and I'm struggling but I can certainly say that that digital technology has changed the way that I imagine and it's changed the way ID center vision from work so I think in answer to your question in just in terms of progression of ideas I do think that I think it does progress I think it changes how we imagine and then how we execute those imaginings but I'm a bit confused about the question of data I can and then and then after that we're going to move into the second circle and then hopefully we can keep the conversation going an example of that is recently we were doing some work on climate change and some of the data around the carbon footprint that exists as a result of technology where we think of it as a very clean non non pervasive or invasive kind of way to communicate that in fact there's many questions around how much how much how large the carbon footprint is using technological you know email instead of paper for example is a very straight up thing there's actually data can show the costs and so to my mind that's a very helpful really productive way to think about because we make so often we'll make big choices and then look back and go oh maybe that wasn't the best choice so it was from that perspective thinking there may be some stuff thank you if we can maybe take this moment just to move to the second circle and please feel free to join us in the second circle okay please as I say feel free to join from outside the circle but let's keep going on this question I think Sage so I think another thing so it's like all my allergies I have a ton of like food allergies right and then I have a lot of like a lot of word allergies because I think data like I feel like there's a lot of for me resistance to like this idea of data because of I think like a lot of positions that I like to take are anti like anti modernist enlightenment objective eyes and like objective thought because like a lot of those a lot of those things and those concepts become instrumentalized against communities that see the brunt end of those like the the worst of those things and so it's like these are things that I understand and I know like data can show things but then it's also like it's also data over intuition a lot of times and it's like a lot of times where it's like you see I can like I can do like a lot of math just reading a lot of reports say articles and things like that and you're like well you know this is fucked up it's not right and then it takes another 30 years for data to support that you know what I mean and that's where we go with when you have people yelling to say this is not right this is my experience this is my lived experience and so I think one very good example of that is video on cell phones and police brutality people have been screaming police brutality exists but until like the objective thing of like cameras and those things being broadcasted through technology do people like understand this as a thing and so I think that's one anecdotal way and once again it's like data over antidote right antidote becomes a bad word when we start to talk about evidence and so just rethinking some of these things in a lot of ways I mean it makes me think about rethinking the greater systems when we're thinking about climate change when we're thinking about colonization when we're thinking about the ways in which we've created our systems for engagement that it's hard at a certain point to sort of talk about anything without starting to undo a lot of the things which has to do with monetary systems in the way in which we think about end results and kind of a financial bottom line I'm wondering if there's Sage were you going to jump into this data question a little bit because I was having a very similar reaction Alex about like how am I leaning into this question and part of it for me was this idea of like the word data and like separating this idea of data and statistics first of all and thinking about what are artifacts of a lived experience and one of the things that can do by understanding understanding what are our it shows us our connections right and it helps it can help us build relationship and for me that's where the value of looking at the pieces of a thing and saying these pieces are aligned here and with this other person and how we can get to things like intersectionality or even a conjuncture that makes sense around building a new political climate the other thing that I want to come back to my other thought about this relationship of this conversation of climate justice during lunch I was talking with one of the volunteers about a black feminist writer named Sylvia Winter and her piece Beyond Humanism and one of the things she advances in that is that we can't only talk about the well-being of humanity and we have to move beyond humanism because we are in relationship to everything around us and I think we think about a relationship and I'm looking for someone who was talking about relationship earlier during the interactive and immersive conversation that all of this for me is around how do we build more touch how do we build more touch with each other and that it's in the touch and the collectivity that we'll actually figure out what is next and what needs to be next which is sort of anti-data right if we're going to rely on the porous structures you were talking about self no co-presence like if we're going to rely on that as our primary data as opposed to numbers and all those kinds of things like that's kind of a radical anti-data perspective a little bit yeah I'm certainly not arguing for it I have one example of it being positive which was around thinking about climate change from but yeah I mean I think but I want to pick up on this thing about touch because we're all here we get to be in space together which I think is a tremendous privilege to be able to gather and to make the most of being in the same space as one another we've all come together over great distance and have communicated previously over online and on the internet and over different different devices are we thinking about how touch can be more a part of future thinking around technology and how it can be more expressive and is that something that is a because when I think about VR if you can't see it you could hear it but you can't you can't be fully engaged in that and I'm wondering are there going are does anyone here know anything about that does any touch work around sort of multi-layered experiences that have a physical component because I think touch is hugely important but Alex this is Alex speaking haptic technology is vibrational information so I did a theater piece in England that the audience was led purely through a haptic device that was in their hands and so it was highly interactive in terms of touch it was very interesting but again I guess one of the things that I thinking about touch and about the balance between digital technologies and the human experience whether it be touch or smell or hearing or seeing is that so often the technologies actually can interfere with the human technology so if I'm wandering around a space with a haptic in one hand and a cane in another there are no hands free for me to use this wonderful piece of technology called my skin and it's the same often with technologies that are for blind people where you have to in order to use it on the street you have to put in earbuds because you can't possibly hear it on your phone and once you put something in your earbuds I don't know what's going on over there anymore so I'm really interested in technologies that use bone density or some way like something not in the hands but just some way to protect our human perceptual intelligence with technology intelligence technological digital intelligence end of current thought thank you so I just think a little bit about this idea of in an instance like VR what kind of data might be collected and that in many instances that data could be something like the haptic feedback of the person who's standing next to you the warmth coming off of their body and how that narratively fits in with what you're experiencing in virtual space that data isn't necessarily collected or put into any kind of record keeping but is nonetheless part of that experience and I think this idea of haptic feedback is a huge part of the immersive qualities of a lot of these technologies that we've been talking about all day and that a lot of these issues of data that we've talked about it's kind of about how they become fixed in time and space about how a record that was taken from a while ago gets looked back on and then we comment on it as if it is a truth of today and yeah thank you yeah I wanted to speak to this piece about touch and also connect it to what you said earlier about intuition because I think that we have a serious problem underlying how we think you can translate between experience and basically math I think we have a theory that we have this understanding that the universe can be well understood through math which is very true but that translation is really deeply flawed and so what that means like how are we going to take these things that are very complex and translate them into data that actually gives us meaningful information about the people we're putting into these systems it's something that we're not very good at doing and I think that's really a serious risk when we move forward with technologies we start saying we're going to count features or count things about people and we don't really know fully how to use that information effectively but then we're going to build our systems based on our imperfect use of that data that's when you start getting these problems like these social media problems right you have ideas that have some use but also deep flaws and then you set up the structures and put people in them and I think that pattern and that's actually a thinking problem of okay well we're taking this information we're imperfectly translating it then we're building ideas based on that then we're building systems based on that that set of sequences is a huge danger in doing this work and in building systems that we're going to use these technologies within thank you I just want to acknowledge that I'm curious about using the term touch and data in the same conversation and I'm curious about how we're considering the ways in which our data is already touching back on us via the way it's being collected in mind and coming back and weaponized to identify ourselves to ourselves as mediated bodies and curious about in a conversation about digital utopias how we can start to like unpack the ways in which the ways in which our data has already has already been proliferated on online platforms and different spaces like that even as we aren't the ones who are always mediating it for example how much of myself and I know there was someone I really appreciated not every technology is related to Facebook but on Spotify when someone gives a recommendation back how much of myself has been mediated via corporate lenses for my entire life and hence created somehow the performative body you see before you I'm curious about how that about the body being mediated by data could be a little more complex and intersect with capitalism that's my final sentence off that same thought in the building off of the idea of Facebook I guess I think that there is something to say about the generational relationship to these technologies that there's say variation in parenting styles in relationship to these platforms therefore there's now generations of children whose lives are documented on a platform very much outside of their own agency so whereas we might be able to choose how we opt in and opt out of some of these systems there will be people whose entire lives from birth are documented on a daily basis and how does that bleed into what might be insurance policies in the future when their lives have been documented to such a minute degree so I appreciate that conversation a lot because earlier you dropped the word hegemony into the room and I think that this is if I were going to do anything else in the world I might but because I think about hegemony in the way in which culture impacts the way we look at ourselves and the way we interact with each other I'm in this room right now right that's why many of us do use art and culture as a basis for change and so part of what I want to hmm I think maybe that's just a snap maybe I didn't need the mic but I just really like this idea of our bodies and our presence in the world being mediated by what's coming back to us is about the way in which hegemony functions and tells us this is how we are supposed to interact we're supposed to show off our kids like this and how are we with the work that we're doing using the same even sometimes the same tools to say actually there's another way to do this there's another way to live that's just fine and really unpacking the ways that that the current hegemonic culture makes us truncate our imagination right so this is our sort of penultimate shared breath because we're going to move into the outer circle but just before we do I just thought maybe we could move out with was Lee mentioned your obsession or keeps you up at night with AI and I thought while we were moving the chairs out we could think about sort of building a little bit on what the two of you just said I wonder about how AI plays into this whole question and also as we're making digital plus performance I'm trying to bring it all back together so let's move out into the outer circle and one last big conversation I just wanted to I think yes AI is one of those things that keep me up but I think it's mostly like in all of these systems whether it be true AI and I think what was brought up about this idea of data going back to experience but also like data and intuition which I think I think you talked about it pretty succinctly is still I think like the consciousness that goes into it because I think there's already this misunderstanding we have all these algorithms out there we base a lot of decisions on algorithms we know this well very well documented that these algorithms are very flawed and we get depending on what side of privilege you get benefit or you don't get benefit from these flaws and then also being able to actually defer to the algorithm right and so we're hiding behind a lot of these things already and they haven't even achieved like this idea of consciousness whatsoever but we're deferring to them actually as decision makers and so I think even going back to I don't know trying to bring it back to performance and thinking about how we're being collected through these different platforms and things like that and thinking about AI bringing it back to that is like this idea of like simulation and then like the ultimate performance as we perform ourselves actually that information when it achieves it's utopia will be able to play us back you know and we'll be able to push play on our lives or future lives or iterations of ourselves and so I just think those things are interesting when we start to have this conversation Hello I'm Charles I was really excited when you brought up SkyNet I think that conversation about data is tricky when you think about the platforms and companies and technologies that you're going to bring into the room and into your work and into your processes I think that it was a really interesting framing this morning that technology that we're talking about digital technology is just the latest innovation in terms of human communication and so as that process continues we're talking about it on a human scale today but if you talk about AI and machine learning that's a completely different time scale so if you are bringing voices into the room that are collecting human sensory data human personal privacy data on a mass scale because you're excited about the innovation to your communication that allows you to reach more people you may be ethically like tacitly feeding a process we talked this morning about labor and changing roles too you may be undoing your role in the theater you may be making yourself obsolete in terms of a machine scale of innovation yeah and around the algorithms there's a piece that I'm making right now which I'll talk a little bit more about on Friday but part of what we're trying to address in the piece and bring to the consciousness there's all these studies that say that Americans and people in general don't care that their data is being seen they're like oh my data is being seen I don't care and they won't take action to protect themselves they don't care enough about privacy and there are some ways you can ask the question where they do care but most of the time they don't care and they won't change their actions because they don't see the dangers of it but the algorithms are starting to make decisions that the creators don't understand why the algorithms are making the kind of decisions that they're making and they're starting to make decisions around whether someone gets insurance or not or whether an employee has crossed certain lines during them now or whether what criminal sentence someone should receive these things are starting to be given to these algorithms that are the most pervasive way that ourselves are being projected into that space and so in trying to make the piece one of the things that we're wrestling with is how do you make something that is trying to address the complexity of this issue but how do you make it in a way where it stays human and immediate and emotional enough so that you actually can engage people in a different part of themselves so that they can care about this and that gets to the theatre and technology and how you're putting those things together to make it be visceral and impactful so I think it's a really burning topic right now certainly. Still sitting on two chairs I just, I kind of want to, in listening, I want to flag that we keep bringing up this binary of human and technology especially digital technology and that I feel like that's a little bit irresponsible in a digital performance festival for us to be making such divisions when really we're looking at the intersection in the space between and especially if we consider that some of the sentiments expressed can be read as prioritizing kind of presence or like in person kind of expressions or interactions and just to go back to my point this morning about being more specific about the kind of language we're using I would say that data is not inherently digital in that I think we're talking mostly about big data which is like large data sets that are computational and algorithmic in nature because like the Canadian census is data and it's very useful and it's led to some very good things and amazing decisions but it's not inherently digital, it has been digitized and and I also just want to hope that we steer back to performance that it's not just engaging with the world of technology but that it is performance perhaps that is less human centric or human centered and maybe doesn't operate on understandings of behavior that are inherently just to our own kind Thanks Milton I was actually just going to bring back something you said this morning and now I'm split because I'm really interested in the critique that you've raised but I think I'd like to go back to something you said this morning because for me it's a very hopeful and generative use of technology and the digital plus with respect to being able to look at performance in rehearsal and to review it on a daily basis and actually to think as a director about being in control of certain things over a period of time in that connection with technology to my mind that's a way of regaining a sense of presence in the larger field of feeling like so much of my presence has maybe even taken away from me in the way that I've been created through data and all those sorts of things so to my mind that was a very interesting response to the present world I'm living in connected in a process in a rehearsal hall towards an end goal of a show and I just wonder if you could talk are you working in that way or is that something you just learned about and you're interested in doing more of it's something that had come up as an idea in a proposal that we had put forward with the spider web show about a virtual reality performance lab and being able to record performance using motion capture and being replayed through VR in that we'd be able to witness kind of what is performance again and again and perhaps that performance doesn't have to be necessarily in the same time zone which was really a response to the kind of green screen technology the spider web show in the CDN studio that came out if anyone doesn't know that initiative it's to put multiple people in one rehearsal space using green screen technology that's readily available so green screen webcam and that if you want to look at it online in the CDN studio it's something that spider web show worked on so yeah it's not something that we've put into practice yet but if we've got funding one day I'd love to thank you and then I would just like to dig in a little bit to your comment about the irresponsible way in which we're talking about technology and humans and I'm wondering if you could offer another way for us to think about that I think just generally going back to exploring this kind of gray area language that assumes that one thing is more valuable than the other when inherently as I can't remember whom mentioned it but we are living in a mediated world that a lot of things about data have resulted in the things that we use every day and how we communicate is very much indicative of a time that we live in and I would even go in so far as to say a concrete example is the way we talk about audiences in the kind of work that we create and perhaps that to go back to one of our earlier points that that's predicated on a certain idea of how to relate to our spectators or people who discuss with us the kind of work that we're making and I think it's really difficult in this day and age to make work that is trying to chase sincerity in many ways and this is somewhat of an offshoot point and kind of discussions through technology when it's still being mediated through like you have to pay $15 to have this sincere conversation with someone over text message or something which is an amazing kind of gesture but also I think we have to reckon with this idea of people are under a model of capitalism and having to pay for the certain thing and it's all being mediated through both capital and through a digital kind of platform as well Thank you Alex, we have two minutes left Well it's Alex speaking I suppose I want to respond to that because I'm not sure I entirely agree with the idea that we have been speaking in a way that is binary or I also think there's a difference between discussing technology in an artistic context and technology in a non-artistic context and I know for myself I can say that my relationship with technology in an artistic context is very much about balance and intersections but my relationship with technology outside of an artistic context is not that and I am very aware of the divide between what is human and what is non-human or what is digital outside of my artistic process That's the end of my current thought Thank you, I think that concludes our conversation for the day, did I miss any last no I just want to say thank you for that personally, it was thrilling and terrifying because I always feel like I haven't a clue what I'm talking about and I feel like I learned a lot and I want to thank all of you for being in this conversation and I now pass it over to Jamie Thanks so much, Sarah Okay, so we have a pretty hard out right at five but we'd like to spend just a few moments closing out our time together from this day one of conversation many more days to come and I think to do that I would love to ask everyone to think of either a word or a phrase that you have heard today maybe an image that was spoken today that is sticking with you that you want to carry forward that you want to keep thinking about that you want to chew on over the next few days and we will just pass the mic around the circle and do that and then we'll hand it over to Adrienne right after that so I will I guess it doesn't matter which way we go Great, amazing and maybe we say our name one more time many of us are staying around for longer than today and we want to keep getting to know each other Great, so again I'm Jamie my word is iterative I'm Craig and I guess I'm thinking about the immersive versus the interactive I'm Colleen and my word I'm struck by touch I'm Kristen and Onion Sarah and Fragility Miwa Skynet Trisha Baldwin lasting masterpiece versus temporal art Sophie Anti-fragile Mia Agency, Consent and Mediated Bodies Abigail, Augmented Imagination Charles I'm thinking about the movement of their cosmos similarly John Astrophysicist Claude, Biological Connections Gada, I'm thinking about the relationship between mastery and magic Chantal Participation Roy, Do-Less Better David House, Co-Presence Wes Performance Rob, Agency Tristan Serendipity Alex, The Constellations Sage, Mediated Intimacy I don't have one sentence but the history of ancestors in relation to the history of experimentation Kristen, Blue Streamers Catherine, I'd like to keep thinking about this idea of discovering the human Jenny Sam How very queer stars are Wojtek Korpo, Hegemony Disruption Milton, Big Data Wayne Designing Collaborations Xander Participation and manipulation I'm on the anti-fragile kick and also re-embodiment Felicia, we will be able to play our lives back to ourselves Kevin Digital technology is a natural phenomenon Brenda, I'm also going to go with Touch Kate and I was thinking about authority but I can't stop thinking about the word kinder in my head or like what is it? Lisa Marie Kids Adam Data Disruption Andrew Stellar Nurseries Thank you all so much We will follow up with some emails after this that link out to things such as the live stream archive I believe we've already shared a contact list but just to say we'll make sure to do that work everyone knows how to find each other after this I'm over here now I know, I move I'm on pink I'm actually on pink Oh, you guys had a really nice vibe coming and then I came in the circle and everything fell over Thank you all very much for your time and your focus and your brains today I have a couple small announcements to make that elf today first of all that if you've signed up to view the Electric Company Theatre VR session we're running about 30 minutes behind so whatever time you signed up for add 30 minutes but the meeting point is still the same over here and we're not going to stop until everybody who's signed up has seen the pieces and if that's then come and talk to me afterwards the second thing I wanted to share with you is that dinner will be ready for you at 5.15 I think we'll be ending very close to 5. Here however we do need to clear this space fairly quickly because we're turning it over into a lobby space for an amazing show tonight I can't tell you how excited I am to have choir choir choir come and perform here in Kingston this is a duo who have been doing a weekly sing-along basically in a bar in Toronto and it's part comedy part community singing part community building and part of their description of themselves is that you go out into the night feeling great so if that's not a sales pitch I don't know what is and what I'm even more excited about is that we've established our links with our hubs in Vancouver in Toronto in Montreal it almost makes me want to cry in each one of those cities there's going to be a room full of 30 to 50 people who are also going to be learning Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah in three part harmony and at the end of the night we get to sing that together not just together in our room in this beautiful concert hall here we have colleagues and friends and family all across countries so co-presencing whoever said that over here whoever you dinner is going thank you, you're good dinner is in the art and media lab so to find the art and media lab you walk straight towards the stone wall to your left there's a sign on the wall that says art and media lab it'll direct you to turn left again you'll pass the restrooms as well as a water fountain and I think that's the the last thing, that's my last announcement but I did want to I wanted to insert some mindfulness around how we break this circle because we've spent a lot of time building this space and building these relationships and this is just the beginning a folder this is the pre-event really, this is the tailgate party and our official launch is tonight and we will be spending the next couple days together to me what we've done today is conversation starters and it's given us a chance to see each other's faces hear some initial thoughts and know who is out to get us or not who we want to get closer to to continue a conversation so I want to invite you all to stand and create a circle and I don't know if I'm going to say that I'm going to do the next one thing at a time so we're going to make a circle here together so we're going to be fairly close and let's make some mindfulness around this and see how perfectly a circle we can make if we're in a perfect circle we can see everybody so if you're looking to your right and you can see everybody that's good if you're looking to your left you can see everybody if you can't see them you might have to adjust a little bit you know I'm short so I can never see anybody oh that's pretty good that's pretty good okay so I invite you to look around the circle and see everybody here next I invite you also to take a deep breath and let out a tone whatever sound comes out of your mouth and it might be like which is how I feel but it might be beautiful which is other people might be feeling that we're going to do that three times and after the third when your sound is gone and our group sound is gone I invite you to just step away any questions? okay I'm going to put this down now so this will not be mic'd