Past Events

More than ever people are asking, what’s real? How did this ever become an urgent question for our daily lives, a matter of ever greater disagreement and discord? Why? Today we turn to two artists whose practices provides beautiful insight into how we’re moving from truths “we hold to be self evident”, based on nature, to multiple manufactured realities. 1 Fluid Reality with Claudia Hart – Artist Claudia Hart has been working in extended reality and simulation since the 1990’s. She…

Why does the American political system too often feel like a poorly designed video game: no matter what you do with the controller, nothing seems to change on screen. Responsiveness and the ability to effect change is pretty important to the design of virtual worlds; it’s absolutely essential in our actual real-world republic! This week an examination of the practical matters of organizing and motivating turnout, and the systemic changes are needed for a better Democracy. 1 The Politics Industry…

Gaming platforms are the dominant media type of our era. Globally gaming generates over 150 billion USD in revenue, more the global music industry (20 billion USD) and the movie industry (45 billion USD) combined. And gaming resides at the extreme leading edge information technology — employing advancements in machine learning and agent based modeling in the creation of artificial worlds, physics and characters. These worlds can be so elaborate that real world economists are brought in to design in-game…

From the dawn of the television and through the Mad Men era there was one media prophet to whom the world would turn: Professor Marshall McLuhan. It was McLuhan who observed that the Medium is the Message, and that electronic media would turn us all into participants in a Global Village. His 1964 book Understanding Media remains foundational to building and understanding the use of new media: it informs to everything we do in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Today we’ll be joined…

Today we explore the visceral nature of Mixed Reality and Digital Twins. Can these new forms of media help us experience in a tangible way our future scenarios? We mean Visceral: as in punch-in-the-gut, emotional and oh-so-real. How might reality tools that draw on the world building and immersive nature of games, along with the physics and economics of the real world help us understand the tomorrow and bring it back from the future to today so that we can…

We convene this Friday night at a moment of liminality in America: We're on the verge of a new administration, but with as much polarization as ever. Our democracy survived (so far) an election in the midst of a social media storm and a pandemic... but our challenges are as great as any time in history. Tonight were joined by American History scholar Cordell Carter from the Aspen Institute to consider how we govern, seek compromise, and build going forward. What can…

Today marks the 50th episode of our Quarantime-capsule! The Nation is struggling through a 3rd wave of a pandemic that is a harbinger from this biological century. Healthcare workers, individuals, & communities are facing a breaking point in their ability to cope with their inner landscape, and the actions they must to take to stay safe and sane. Our guests today are world-leaders in wellbeing and human flourishing. Today we frame time-capsule of 2020 through the tensions of crisis and…

Join Alec Shuldiner @biggreenbrother from @autodesk, & Dr. Beth Coleman, author of "Hello Avatar," as the rise of the “Internet of Infrastructure” wakes up & starts to have opinions, & potentially can take action for, with, or against our citizens.  We stand at a chasm between that new form of Infrastructure & the centuries old and evolved classical infrastructure of today. We take our existing infrastructure for granted. It's had hundreds or thousands of years to evolve based on a…

You're invited to Quarantime’s Holiday Party: an evening of Urban Ephemera and Lost Landscapes. Our holiday show explores the hidden richness in forgotten films w/guests Rick Prelinger of the Prelinger Archives @footage & Lisa Hurwitz, producer of @AUTOMATmovie! Rick is the nation's leading collector and curator of ephemeral films: home movies, corporate visions of the future, industrial propaganda, snapshots all of our daily lives and aspirations. The Prelinger archives has over 60,000 such films, many online at the Internet Archive.…

Just about now America needs some pretty big ideas for economic recovery, industrial transformation, and how to tackle climate change while driving inclusive growth. Today on Quarantime! a report of the boldest approaches to economic development in our nation today, hot off the press, direct from the visionary teams creating them. 1 A Marshall Plan for Middle America. Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto famously committed his city to the Paris Climate Accord when the US government pulled out & believes that…