Occupy Earth Parsons + U Aalto Presentation

On Sunday February 25, from 3:30 – 5:00 pm at Kellen Auditorium, 66 5th Ave room N101, students from Parsons MFA Design and Technology program, along with students from Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture in Helsinki, will present mixed reality works resulting from the fall 2017 studio concerning the illusion of control and environmental disruption.

In the fall 2017 studio entitled Occupy Earth, students from Parsons and the University of Aalto created works of “mixed reality,” constructing new forms of virtual and physical hybrids to explore polarized discussion of the ecologies, climates, and environments we now face as an earth-bound species in the 21st century. We used the term “mixed reality” to link emerging technologies such as virtual and augmented reality to the physical and sensory realities that pervade our cultural and political lives. More information about the course can be found at http://www.occupyearth.art.

The idea of “Climate Control” was a central theme, human’s illusion of control that they are an exceptional species serving as masters of the Earth’s ecology. Another central theme referred to current tensions in ideas of the “Body Politic,” the relation of individuals to a larger social body, and which species have, or do not have agency as members of that larger body. students created a range of prototypes exploring the sensory and phenomenological experience of environmental disruption and current understandings of ecology using light, space, symbolic objects, and set design with little to no verbal language.

Resulting works will be exhibited at the University of Aalto in Helsinki. from March 16 – March 21.