nonsensitive workshop

Few people spend much time thinking about HOW they think - our thoughts and memories can form in the language of our culture, the language of our senses, sometimes in a language that can only exist within us. How clear and detailed our thoughts are, and which imaginative medium we reach for while we're trying to form them, are highly individual and often invisible to us.

Do you have an interior monologue? Can you form a picture in your mind? Maybe a smell reminds you of something - but can you remember a smell, or just the description of it? These languages might have a hard ceiling due to biological variance, but they are also a skill you can hone when you know what to reach for, like an artist learning how to see before putting pencil to page, or returning to the body during meditation.

Workshop participants craft artifacts that detail their cognitive imaginations that are deliberately enigmatic - sense becoming nonsense - inviting memory to devour the context of the experience, leaving physical evidence of the players tactile experience of inscribing it. Attendees are encouraged to bring their artifacts home to revisit the physical memory and see what they can piece back together, and to submit digitizations of their artifacts back to the project for future iterations.

The experience is part typographic poetry, part journaling keepsake game, and likely to generate discussions about what we learn about ourselves. The mapping itself gives insight into how we think, just by being asked a question about something we assumed was a given - but it's hearing how it's different for someone else that really illuminates how we work, and how we can empathize with different minds. (Remember this the next time someone doesn't notice your haircut.)

Materials will be provided, however attendees can bring their own journals or sketchbooks.

Part of the “Play Outside the Box” event series.

Please register in advance and release your seat if unable to make it, as seating is limited.

Discussions are relatively freeform but will be moderated to keep us on schedule and keep everyone comfortable. You are not obligated to share if you'd rather just listen.

As part of the "Play outside the box" series, this workshop is being presented alongside CTRL-ALT-DELICIOUS, a free showcase of games with unconventional interfaces, and immediately preceeds the Intro to Torontrons workshop from the Hand Eye Society - they're all at Bahen Centre June 14th!

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Host or Publisher g blekkenhorst