Innovation Center Denmark
Silicon Valley
’Explosions of Virtuality’ Stanford University, October 3-‐5 2011 Virtuality explodes in different modes of being, performing, learning and managing our selves and our interactions with others. Companies play with roles, structures, technologies and organizational boundaries to encourage innovation. Teachers and parents play games designed to enact the boundary between school/home trying to encourage parents to talk about their child from a school position. New architecture creates spaces for us to act and perform in ways we didn’t imagine possible. Music is played to patients in hospitals to transform their experience of treatments. Movies make us sense of ourselves as bodies able to expand time and space. Computer games engage us to play different identities that transcend to our actual world. Our engagement with the world is a constant interplay of the actual and the virtual. New spaces, acts, performances, organizations and movements are becoming possible. Creating innovation is being able to actualize these potential and infinitive worlds here and now in the actual world. This workshop will address different explosions of virtuality by inviting researchers, managers, architects, designers and game designers and ask them to zig-‐zag between questions like: What are the conditions for becoming a subject in our companies, schools, institutions and in our own lives– are we performing ourselves as avatars? How does virtuality bridge the relationship between the actual and the potential world – and what are the consequences? How can we conceptualize learning in the tunnels between time, space and realities -‐ does it still make sense to talk about competences or should we begin to talk about how to remove our competencies in order to have the sensibility to observe the potential. How may feeling be transformed to distributed and non-‐ personalized affects and intensities? Such questions should make us reflect on how the explosions of virtuality affect our welfare management? Do explosions of virtuality provide us with a hope of new spaces full of sensations, intensity and freedom or are we just observing advanced ways to manage people to manage themselves in relation to the market and/or the state?
Monday, October 3rd: Opening and keynote (Wallenberg Hall, 4th fl.) _______________________________________________________________________________ 1:30 – 2:00 PM 2:00 – 2:30 PM 2:30 – 3:15 PM 3:15 – 3:30 PM 3:30 – 4:00 PM 4:00 – 4:30 PM 5:00 – 6:30 PM
Arrival and coffee Welcome, meeting logistics – Keith Devlin Introductions and reflections on virtuality – Christa Breum Amhøj and Mette Terp Høybye Keynote lecture ‘Infinite Reality’ by Jeremy Balienson, Stanford University Q&A session with Jeremy Bailenson Break Discussion and wrap-‐up Dinner @ Nexus Café, Clark Center, Stanford University (Self pay -‐ Sign up necessary)
7:00 – 9:00 PM
Screening of the Danish documentary “My Avatar and Me” by Bente Milton, Milton Media and Fenris Film (http://myavatarandme.com/)
Tuesday, October 4th: The Sensational Organization and Embodying the Virtual ______________________________________________________________________________ 8:30 – 9:00 AM 9:00 – 10:30 AM
10:30 – 11:00 AM 11:00AM – 12:00 PM 12:00 – 1:00 PM 1:00 – 1:45 PM 1:45 – 2:00 PM 2:00 – 3:30 PM
3:30 – 4:30 PM 4:30 – 5:00 PM 5:15– 6:15 PM 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Arrival and breakfast Session 1: The sensational organization -‐ from formal roles to performing avatars Where, why – and how do we manage us self as avatars? What are the effects? And how does it transform our understanding of management and organizational membership? We will discuss this through the lens of our “innovative avatar”. Session chairs: Thorkild Olsen and Christa Breum Amhøj Break Discussion, Q&A, Walk ‘n talk Lunch Lunchtime Lecture – Roy Rosin, Intuit – including Q&A Break Session 2: Embodying the Virtual – interactions between virtual and actual How do virtual and actual bodies interact and transform the sense of self? How do virtual tranformations of selves and data shape new potentiol? How do we interact with and process the virtual to transform the world around us and manage welfare in innovative ways. Session chair: Keith Devlin
Discussion, Q&A, Walk ‘n talk Wrap-‐up of the day Optional: Campus Walking Tour Workshop dinner @ Coconuts Caribbean Restaurant, 624 Ramona St., Palo Alto sponsored by Innovation Center Denmark
Wednesday, October 5th: Transformations of time and space and Virtuality and affects _______________________________________________________________________________ 8:30 – 9:00 AM 9:00 – 10:30 AM
10:30 – 11:00 AM 11:00AM – 12:00 PM 12:00 – 1:00 PM 1:00 – 1:45 PM 1:45 – 2:00 PM 2:00 – 3:30 PM
3:30 – 4:30 PM 4:30 – 5:00 PM 5.00 – 6.00 PM
Arrival and breakfast Session 3: Transformations of time and space – a zigzag between realities How and to what extend does virtuality transforms the relationship between time and space? And how can we manage learning in the tunnel between these spaces? Let’s go – or fly -‐ into different virtual territories and from this voyage we will talk about the potential for innovative management and learning. Session chairs: Renate Fruchter and Ulla Konnerup Break Discussion, Q&A, Walk ‘n talk Lunch Lunchtime Lecture – (title TBA) Bent Meir Sørensen, CBS – including Q&A Break Session 4 Virtuality and affects How – and to what extend does virtuality shape and manage people through affects? And how do different kinds of virtuality create different forms of affects? Let’s sense, listen and feel virtuality and its affects. From this ‘state of mind’ we will discuss virtuality and affects. Session chair: Peter Hancke Discussion, Q&A, Walk ‘n talk Wrap-‐up, next steps Wine reception sponsored by H-‐STAR, Stanford
OPTIONAL: Thursday, October 6th and Friday October 7th 2011: Site visits (please sign up!) _______________________________________________________________________________ The workshop will be followed by a 2-‐day retreat with visit to Silicon Valley companies and sites of interest, possibly including: • IDEO • PIXAR • Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Stanford University