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Symposium
Erik
Davis, Keynote Speaker
Experience Design (And the Design of Experience)
Presented
Friday May 10th at 8pm
All
art and culture works with material, whether it be paint,
or words, or sound. The converging flows of electronic, virtual,
and immersive media, along with the construction of more intense
and immersive technologies, suggests, I believe, that the
most contemporary material of cultural production is nothing
less than human experience itself. While defining what we
mean by "human experience" is a tricky proposition,
to say the least, I believe that it is vital that we shift
away from the overly semiotic and structuralist accounts of
subjectivity popular in the late twentieth century, and to
affirm a model of consciousness which allows for a gradual
but clear distinction between meaning and sensation, narrative
and intensity.
Across
the fields of art, architecture, media, music, pharmacology,
even spirituality, we are moving towards the intentional and
multi-dimensional stimulation and production of a complex
range of increasingly im-mediate human responses, including
the direct induction of classic "altered states of consciousness."
These responses extend far beyond (and below) the traditional
object of communication: the conscious human subject conceived
as a rational agent and a reader of meanings. In other words,
as science, pharmacology, and media technology deepen their
understanding of how the human nervous system joins with the
ever mercurial psyche to produce a lived sense of reality,
these knowledges are becoming integrated into the engines
of cultural production.
A
quick scan of our sociocultural landscape suggests that, in
terms of artistic practices, mass entertainment, sports, and
emerging technologies of pleasure, productive forces are increasingly
targeting experience itself - that evanescent flux of sensation
and perception that is, in some sense, all we have and all
we are. In this talk, I will explore a few facets of experience
design, including the rise of the so-called "experience
economy," the intensification of tourism, and the rise
of extreme sports and Hollywood special effects. Finally,
I will explore how art and spiritual practice both suggest
modes of experience design which challenge the dominant logic
of commercial and ideological culture as it shapes our collective
experience of reality.
Erik Davis - Biography
Erik Davis is a San Franciso-based writer whose1998 book,
TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information
is currently being translated into six languages. Davis is
a contributing editor for Wired and Trip, and has also contributed
articles and essays to a number of magazines and book anthologies.
Some of his work can be accessed at http://www.techgnosis.com
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