Rachel Boyce

RB is a creative technologist and digital renaissance human with a background that spans web development to microbiology. They recently completed a Master's degree in digital media design, with a capstone project of lo-fi augmented reality for the mobile web and currently does R&D as Interactive Developer at Complex Media. RB's prime directive is to create cultural tools for a post-scarcity world, that help people engage with each other and the larger social organism, through the merging of data art, co-curation, and transmedia narrative techniques. Ongoing projects include THE BOX: a series of sensual micro-environments, and Dream Cacher: an exploration of dream data.

Performing with Sarah Friend

Protective Rituals for Post-humans

A participatory art performance. We will guide participants through a chaos magic ritual to feed and strengthen the egregore of NYC Mesh and ward against malicious breach of privacy from unwanted entities.

In chaos magic, an egregore is an emergent phenomena similar to the genius loci, or spirit of a place. This performance will engage participants in actively co-creating such a communal entity, using a network-hosted smart phone app and the power of their intention. Participants should be ready to connect with their subconscious and/or minor godlike beings and get weird.

The mini-workshop session will cover the basics of chaos magic and working with collective emergent entities. We will then brainstorm our intentions for the NYC mesh network, and create a ward against malicious intrusion into the network and our devices. We will close by ritualistically casting our intent into the distributed void.

This workshop will be at once in the style of community-driven design practice, a situationist happening, and graphic novel made real.