Choreographing mixed realities; escape from Zoomworld; other technological imaginaries

Inspired by FoAM’s early work with responsive environments and physical media, the ‘silver’ route looks for ways to enlarge & rework the flat, seamless interfaces and proliferating glazed faces that have come to dominate online communications. Scrutinising the early liberatory promises of new media and digital technology, we ask where things went wrong, while sketching some outlines of how things might have been—and could now be—imagined otherwise. Revisiting FoAM’s own history staging transient, collective experiences, we look at what it would take to bring some of the wildness of earlier connected performances (and media experiments) to the mundane online interactions of today. Rejecting visions of augmented and virtual reality, we shift our attention to ‘mixed realities’ of all kinds, seeking different ways to augment people’s engagement with their everyday worlds, and render reality pliable. The route’s materials range widely, gleaning for lessons among the diverse worlds of media arts, architecture, archaeology, cognitive science, indigenous and traditional knowledges, music, textile arts, and game design.

• How can we enlarge or rework the reality of our online communications? What can be gained from working with seams, glitches, and latency, instead of treating them as obstacles to immersion? What does designing or staging for 'transience' look like, in practice?

• What lessons or insights can we find from earlier episodes from the history of virtual reality and new media arts? What would it take to recapture the wildness of early connected performances?

• What kinds of interaction are contingent on site-specific, in-person & collective presence?

• What are the best ways (tools, techniques, strategies…) to augment people's engagement with their everyday worlds, and render reality pliable? What is the bare minimum required to sustain a suspension of disbelief?

• Can robots grow their own worlds?