To provide the Couch Lessons community with an interactive virtual safe space, where they could freely relate and dialogue with AI experts and meet each other.
The Couch Lessons Series organized by the Goethe-Institut proposed a series of online conversations with AI experts on a wide variety of topics. From the future of food and social responsibility to democracy, friendship, artistic practice, cyborgs and the future of work, the collection of weekly lectures spread throughout the year, and invited the community to think about the possibilities and risks of AI in a relaxed and easy way.
The purpose of the Grand Finale, the final session, was to deepen the bonds the community had developed during the series, prolonging the laid-back atmosphere and also giving them the chance to actively participate in the conversations.
To facilitate the interactions, we teamed up with the illustrator Marcia Mihotich and designed a virtual world, dreamy and intimate, where it felt safe to start a dialogue. Each unusual landscape - from the Ocean of Creativity and the Meadow of Reality to the Forest of Civilization - held a question propelled by one of the experts, while participants could join freely as they roamed through the shared world.
Based on the principle of closeness, one could listen and see the others when virtually near and would fade away when moving apart.
(maybe that sentence could be highlighted to break the text on the layout?)
The interactive multi-room event, where conversations took place simultaneously, evolved during two hours, and gave the chance to 40 AI experts and a community of more than 160 people to get to know each other, exchange visions, knowledge and sensitivities in a very intimate virtual grande finale.
.gif)
-Concept and curation
-Design of the virtual world
-Interaction design and practice methodology
-Customization of the platform to meet the dynamics and spirit of the event
-Moderation and support during the event