Toolmaking for Spatial Intelligence

Description:

Two new technologies have made unprecedented advances in the past few years and they are now embedded in a variety of consumer products: synthetic realities (virtual and augmented) and artificial intelligence. However, the further evolution of these two technological
directions might require a coevolution. Human beings, and all adaptive life forms, rely heavily on their ability to navigate a spatial environment, and to exchange information with it through I/O loops. Currently, common artificial intelligence systems, like
LLM, do not have direct access to the spatial environment. In fact, their derivative nature is such that they are not even aware of it. Virtual and augmented realities, on the other hand, and the HCI elements that they rely on, owe their efficiency almost
single handedly to mechanisms of embodied cognition: the organism’s ability to not just orient itself in space, but to use the environment as an integral and active part of its sense-making mechanism.

Architecture and other design fields have a deep discipline-specific understanding of spatial affordances, and employ design methods that incorporate concepts of information, exchange and behavioral affordances. At the intersection of these fields and the technical
implementation of AR/VR and AI, a new area of study and practice is now emerging: spatial intelligence. This workshop aims to set up a foundational basis for this field within a framework of “toolmaking”. This framework invites participants to engage with
a conceptual understanding of this material while simultaneously testing it by asking the question “If this … is so, what tool could you build in order to…?”.

Detailed Schedule :

Day 1: 07/24 | 12:00 – 14:00 EST | Lecture + Q&A

The two target technologies, spatial computing and AI – a “the human reality is a spatial reality” approach

Day 2: 07/25 | 12:00 – 14:00 EST | Lecture + Q&A

Areas of interest – the built environment, the socio-affective sphere, technocapitalism and the anthropocene

Day 3: 07/26 | 12:00 – 14:00 EST | Lecture + Q&A

Toolmaking – a look at the state of AR/VR and AI technologies today from the perspective of software development and hybrid approaches for designing instruments of change 

Day 4: 07/27 | 10:00 – 14:00 EST | Student Presentations + discussion

Students will present diagrams that illustrate an example of potential practical implementation of a tool for change based on the intersection of AR/VR and AI.