Today, most sectors, brands and events are all pivoting towards a second digital wave. Amongst them is the legendary Burning Man (BM) Project. Since 1998, the international event has been located at Black Rock City, a temporary city that reappears each year in the middle of the desert of northwestern Nevada. With the new COVID-19 reality, Burning Man faces the same uncertain future as other mass events, but unlike most brands and event companies, BM is augmenting human connection by challenging its creative community to take part in designing a Virtual Reality ‘multiverse’ of Black Rock City.
While most of us have experienced some less than memorable digital events, many of those events have been exact mirrors of physical events that missed the experience mark to begin with. I think there’s a real opportunity here for companies to learn from organisations like BM, who are openly embracing change and experimenting with a different way of doing things. If used in the right way, VR could be an incredible tool that may unlock new possibilities within the events industry.
Sitting at the intersection of art, academia, and business, Raspberry Dream Labs (RDL) tackles one of the most intricate subjects of being human - sex . Founded by Angelina Aleksandrovich, they are a team of artists and engineers drawn together to create innovative multisensory solutions for cybersex. Angelina and I met last year during a conference in Portugal. RDL has partnered with Burning Man to create ‘Cyber Dreams’, a virtual camp dedicated to breaking the taboos concerning sexuality and create a healthy sex-positive future by introducing a new era of sexual experiences that are no longer restricted by the limitations of the human body. Angelina reached out to us at Arigami and asked me to share more about the science of human connection.
So, what is human connection? Is it physical? What is physical? Dive deep into the human senses and you’ll find an unexplored language that connects human experiences made up of the ever evolving electromagnetic spectrum. To start, we have this new invisible world that no one fully understands but it’s clear that it’s there. From here, it only gets sexier or scarier, depending on your perspective. Experts predict that future generations will ‘physically connect’ with the help of virtual reality goggles, holograms, stimulating bodysuits and, yes, even erotic robots.
What started as meeting and flirting through screens and progressed to ‘sexy time’ over Skype is now leading to products that promise human intimacy through a digital interface. And while different cultures have different beliefs about how important connection and interdependence are to our lives; I think this is a story we would like to tell ourselves rather than wait for it to happen.
Join me on 01.09.20 at the Cyber Dreams camp at Burning Man 2020 as I make sense of the science, anthropology and design of human connection.
Interested in learning more about how we help clients address wellness and sensory design? Contact Us