What We Do

Innovative experience designers “hack” human perception to create new forms of storytelling, communication and entertainment. For example, in 1969 the Disney Imagineers deployed the 19th-century “Pepper’s Ghost” illusion to create “ghosts” for the Haunted Mansion, who have been thrilling audiences ever since. SPaCE explores how new technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, wearable devices, and robotics represent new frontiers for human experiences, and how a deeper understanding of human perception provides unique insights into how such technologies can be used effectively.

To do this, SPaCE combines an artscience fusion of disciplines, a practical focus, a mixing of spatial codes, a dedication to the post-cinematic, and an embracing of open narrative.

An Artscience Fusion of Disciplines

SPaCE seeks to increase knowledge about “human space” using a wide range of sciences, arts, and technologies, including sensory and perceptual psychology, systems neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, computer graphics and other imaging methods, philosophy of the mind and phenomenology, narrative theory and semiotics, cinematic editing and theories of montage.

Practical Focus

Our work is not purely academic. It is directed to tangible outcomes: algorithms, procedures, and know-how in discovering and utilizing the structure of concrete experiences in physical and immersive environments including virtual and augmented realities.

Mixing of Spatial Codes

We take advantage of the conventions and codes generated over the centuries within the multiple “spatial arts,” including theater and architecture, painting and cinema, new media and video games.

Dedication to the Post-cinematic

While celebrating the history of cinema and its many variations, we boldly embrace the “post-cinematic” - the emerging and experimental media which stand to succeed the cinema of today.

Embracing of Open Narrative

Immersive spatial narratives are walkable, multithreaded, nonlinear, and repeatedly rediscoverable. They grant audiences a greater degree of agency and “authorship,” making a step beyond what semioticians call “open narrative.”