DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Artistic imagination guides scientific imagination.

Particularly in domains which cannot be seen with the naked eye, scientific intuition is guided by the aesthetic representations and metaphors we use to imagine phenomena which are otherwise invisible. Aesthetics profoundly impacts how we communicate scientific ‘realities’, in both research & educational contexts.

Our laboratory uses artistic practices to develop approaches that enable perception of concepts that are difficult to visualize - concepts like ‘atoms’, ‘dynamics’, ‘energy’, ‘resonance’, ‘flow’, ‘spirit‘, ‘luminosity’, etc… To enable perception of such concepts, we use immersive multi-sensory approaches that include vision, audio, touch and proprioception. Close collaboration between artists and scientists encourages a kind of positive feedback loop where both kinds of enquiry drive one another to explore new domains: the science inspires artistic imagination, and the artistic imagination then drives technological developments that enable fresh scientific approaches, which then again drives the artistic imagination.

Over the last few years, our aesthetic explorations have helped lay the groundwork for a range of scientific research studies – i.e., some of the algorithms and approaches we’ve designed to make artworks have accelerated our scientific research. This is a relatively unexplored territory, requiring deep and symmetric exchanges between aesthetic practice and scientific practice, but it has the potential to usher in a new creative paradigm which places aesthetic and scientific enquiry on symmetrical footing.

- IRL Founder David Glowacki

IRL 2.0

The Intangible Realities Laboratory contains an eclectic mix of computational scientists, engineers, philosophers, and artists, all working to answer questions and solve problems at the interface of technology, science, and aesthetics. Currently, we are focused on the application of virtual reality, machine learning, and high-performance computing technologies to transform abstract invisible concepts like “energy”, “molecules”, or “spirit” into tangible, interactive, immersive, multi-sensory experiences.

Current specific research interests of the group include:

• Developing iMD-VR (interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality) as a new molecular simulation paradigm, allowing scientists to ‘see and touch’ rigorous biomolecular physics simulations

• Multi-sensory approaches to data representation in multi-person virtual reality which go beyond vision, including audio, touch, and proprioception

• Developing the ‘numadelic’ (spirit-manifesting) design paradigm in order to understand its potential for enabling self-transcendent experiences in groups of participants

• Understanding how an “aesthetics of energy” can be use to develop distributed multi-person VR experiences which blur conventional self-other boundaries

• Use neurophysiological and biofeedback approaches to modulate aesthetic representations in immersive multi-person digital environments

• Investigating research synergies that connect the emerging field of psychedelic science with aesthetic design in immersive digital environments