Experiential Climate Models Workshop
April 16-18th, 2015
Tempe Campus, Arizona State University

The Synthesis Center is pleased to announce a transdisciplinary workshop that will explore how our experiences of atmosphere and place are mediated by climate models, architecture, and technology, and how those experiences may be moderated and enhanced through the use of responsive media and experiential computing. With support from ASU's Institute for Humanities Research, the workshop will bring artists, philosophers, climate scientists, landscape architects, and sustainability scholars together for a conversation in-and about-a responsive media environment that we are building here in ASU's iStage for the purpose of staging atmospheric phenomena. The Experiential Climate Models project aims to create visually and sonically immersive and intra-active representations that facilitate embodied cognition of processes that unfold over spatial and temporal scales beyond the perceptual threshold of the individual human being. Our pilot project, iMonsoon, allows visitors to enact through their bodily movement the formation and movement of a rain or dust storm (haboob) over the state of Arizona. The workshop will draw on the transdisciplinary expertise of participants to articulate the affordances of our apparatus and propose new directions for its development.

April 6-18: Experimental Media Residency
April 16: Evening Welcome 6-8PM
April 17: 9AM-11AM Roundtable Discussion
               11-12PM:  Lecture by Silvia Benedito, Design North, The Bridge                           
                        The meteorological turn in design: Atmospheres for living and sensing
               12-1PM Lunch
               3-7PM iMonsoon: An Introduction to Experiential Climate Modeling (Public Event in iStage)
               6-8PM Reception
April 18: 8AM-12PM Visit to Desert Botanical Garden & Future Planning Brunch Meeting at Gertrude's
               1PM Desert Hike w/Ron Broglio

Participants:
Oana Seteu, Filmaker and Media Artist
Silvia Benedito, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard
Andrew Harding, Climate Impact Scientist, ClimateXChange
Freida Atban, Lecturer, Department of Music, Goldsmiths
Melissa Bukovksy, Project Scientist I, RISC Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, UCAR
Tim Choy, Associate Professor of Science & Technology Studies/Anthropology, UCDavis

Ron Broglio, ASU
Paul Coseo, ASU
Meredith Hoy, ASU
Chris Ziegler, ASU
Sha Xin Wei, ASU
Dehlia Hannah, ASU
Christopher Roberts, ASU

 

Dialogues on Sustainability: Atmosphere for Thought
Balance/UnBalance: Water, Climate, Place: Re-Imagining Environments
March 28, 2015 12:15-1:15PM, Mathews Center iStage

Synthesis and AME will host in the Matthews Center iStage an atmosphere for thought in which we will stage a series of dialogues on sustainability topics. We will configure the iStage as a responsive environment whose potential response to activity can be dialed to different microclimates. These dialogues are structured improvisational ensemble, the actually "performed" conversation in an environment which responds to and co-constitutes the atmosphere of the conversations. Dialogues will include Walking as Performance toward Environmental Awareness and Representing vs Inhabiting Place.
Saturday March 28, 2015 12:15pm - 1:15pm
Matthews Center iStage (950 Cady Mall Tempe, AZ 85287)