Polysocial Realities & Virtualities | Interactive Architecture Lab

Our students of MArch Design for Performance and Interaction at the Bartlett School of Architecture contributed to Ars Electronica 2021 Festival with an exhibition around the subject of contemporary PolySocial Realities. This video shows interviews with the students presenting work in progress. The term PolySocial Realities coined in 2011, has unfolded and accelerated over the past decade until it not only pervades daily life, but indeed is daily life.

Initially conceived of as a model to illustrate multi-directional and multi-platform information and communication across scales of time and space (biological and artificial human/animal/plant and machine), agents and modes, PoSRs not only remains prescient after a decade but extends further than anticipated. While questions of misinterpretation and misunderstanding will always exist, at the core of PoSR in 2021 and its complex ecology of interaction lies potential. We will use concepts of interconnectivity to have real and virtual events and platforms talk to each other to form polysocial interaction; through the communication of physical and digital participants within a fragmented exhibition environment, we will ask questions and explore answers and experiences together with festival-goers.