The technology of enchantment

[Judi Lynn]

In a new anthropology and studio art course, MIT students investigate the human dimensions of interacting with technologies.

School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
November 7, 2019

An audible gasp goes through the classroom as Seth Riskin, manager of the MIT Museum Studio and Compton Gallery, uses his hand to trace streams of light through the empty air. The illusion is a simple one: Gradually turning up the speed on a strobe light, Riskin creates the visual magic by sweeping his hand through the rapidly changing beam.

A strobe light is hardly the most advanced technology found in an MIT lab, but as co-instructor and professor of anthropology Graham Jones comments, “In 10 years of teaching at MIT, I’ve never heard a whole classroom gasp like that.”

However basic, Riskin’s deft manipulation of light produces a profound effect, one that the students experience collectively in a moment of surprise and wonder. That’s what a new anthropology class, 21A.S01 (Paranormal Machines), is all about: exploring the human experience of the disconcerting and the uncanny in relation to technology and discovering how people and cultures build stories and beliefs around out-of-the ordinary experiences.



Working across disciplines



In everyday parlance, the word paranormal usually refers to the phantasmal world of ghost hunters and clairvoyants. But Riskin and Jones use the word differently, and more fundamentally, to encompass qualities of human experience that challenge our typical expectations and perceptions. It turns out that this is a great topic of mutual inquiry for the arts, with their capacity to create new and transformative experiences, and anthropology, a science that studies the diversity of experience. “When we explore the overlap of art and anthropology," says Riskin, “we find deep and complex connections.”

More:
http://news.mit.edu/2019/paranormal-machines-technology-1107