Digital Culture Speaker Series: 'What If? What If? What If? Prototyping Experience'

The mother of all wicked problems is that people with clashing values may reasonably disagree on what is to be done. But rather than bounce between total control and random guesses, how can we not only imagine the world other than it is, but prototype it enough to play in and try it out?

Speaker bio: 

Sha Xin Wei is professor and director of the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University, and directs the Synthesis Center for transversal art, philosophy and technology. He is a fellow of the ASU-Santa Fe Institute Center for Biosocial Complex Systems, and is a professor at the European Graduate School.

Wei's core research concerns a topological approach to poiesis, play and process. His art and scholarly work range from gestural media, movement arts, and realtime media installation through interaction design to critical studies and philosophy of technology. Trained in mathematics at Harvard and Stanford Universities, he has pursued speculative philosophy, experimental art, and visionary technologies that are reciprocally informed in depth and poetry.

In 2001, Wei established the Topological Media Lab as an atelier for the study of gesture and materiality. From 2005–2013 as Canada Research Chair in media arts and sciences and associate professor of design and computation arts at Concordia University in Montréal, he led the TML creating responsive environments for ethico-aesthetic improvisation.   

Wei has published in the areas of philosophy and media arts, science and technology studies, performing arts research, and computer science, including the book "Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Media." (MIT Press).