September 30, 2011

Leaving from: BMW Guggenheim Lab
Traveling to: local community gardens
Mode of transportation: walking

Here is a simple but radical thought: Our empathy pulls us beyond ourselves and out into the world. This not simply a mental act; empathy links and stitches together environments, practices, and creatures. How does this physical holding together happen? What are the movement-spaces of empathy? Come develop—and test—extended ideas of empathy via movement and wayfinding exercises, led by creative consulting and design collaborative spurse.

Cities are machines that produce interactions among strangers—interactions that can be as lyrical and profound as they are singular and momentary. Significant things happen when we talk to strangers: we’re interrupting the expected narratives of daily life, shifting perspective, forming unexpected connections. And in a way, we’re waking up. This workshop sends participants on small, targeted missions to interact with strangers in order to experience this fundamental urban pleasure, and to learn about the unwritten rules that guide it.

Photo used by permission under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) License from Nestor's Blurrylife

New insights in brain science suggest that we are hard-wired for altruism and trust—even among strangers. Lab Team member Charles Montgomery invites neuroscientist Paul Zak and psychologist Emanuele Castano to help design a party that will bring out the love in even the most hardened New Yorker. Join us for a night of experiments in trust, play, and radical conviviality.

Event Videos:

Love Night 

Paul Zak - Dr. Love at Love Night 

In collaboration with:

Project for Public Spaces: Photography for Love Night video
Anna Letitia Mumford: Video editing for Love Night video

Ryan V. Brennan: NYC Based Social Performance & Collage Artist

Dr. Sabine Seymour: Director, Fashionable Technology Lab at Parsons The New School for Design

Research assistant Scott Peterman, and the entire class of Fashionable Technology

Performance:

Youmna Aoukar
Hannah Lea Dykast
Christopher Koelsch
Isaac Malca
Angie Marie Rodriguez Fernandez
Galina Rybatsky
Isabella Scott
Daniel Selden
Lauren Slowik
Chandni Thawani
Yang Chih-Han
Boshan Zhou

Photo used by permission under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) License from Thomas R. Stegelmann