Play in Taiji: Making and Playing Daoist Cosmos Cyborgs
In-person at InterAccess | Register here
In this workshop, participants will practice Zhan Zhuang (standing meditation), engage in body-mapping exercises, and design and play meditative games. We will explore how to reconnect with our bodies by rebuilding our relationships with the world around us. This workshop invites participants to practice, reflect, design, and experience meditative play. In response to the question, “Why do we care about cyborgs?”, it encourages participants to move beyond binary thinking—such as internal versus external, virtual versus physical, and human versus other—through Daoist philosophy and practice. Through this meditative play workshop, participants will be invited to care for and reimagine their bodies as Daoist, cosmically entangled beings.
This event is presented with Sari-Sari Xchange in support of Vector Festival's AR Residency, curated by Evangeline Y Brooks and Christina Dovolis. The residency is possible with the support of the City of Toronto Community Celebration Support Fund.
About the Facilitator
Haoran Chang is a visual artist, media art researcher, and experimental game designer. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at York University and pursuing a diploma in Asian Studies. His practice and research focus on game studies, immersive media, posthuman media, ethnographic game design, somatic design, re-enactment studies, and art in cosmotechnics. His research-creation dissertation examines how ethnographic game design methods and somatic principles can address the limitations of current health gamification applications through the lens of Daoist practice. He is also interested in Daoist technologies in general, such as talismans, gymnastic movements, alchemical practices, and psychedelic mushrooms. His works have been shown internationally at ISEA, CICA Museum, Walter Otero Contemporary Art, Hunan Museum of Art, Slamdance, Ji.hlava International Documentary Festival, and many more.
About Sari-Sari Xchange
The Sari-Sari Xchange is a community-building research & creation project using Extended Reality (XR) (ie. Virtual, Augmented, Mixed Realities) to foster new works by artists from the Asian diaspora. They explore emergent XR technologies and new storytelling techniques, address under-representation and issues of systemic racism as well as inaccessibility of these new technologies for both creators and users with disabilities.
About Vector Festival
Presented by InterAccess, this year's festival digs into the guts, the gunk, and the gears of the mechanical bodies that make up our technologies. The 14th edition of Vector Festival will search for parallels between computer and human bodies, looking at how we overheat and sweat, bleed coolant, and are circuited through our veins. In an era of thinner phones and hidden wires, the physical footprint of our technology is obscured, erasing the reminder for maintenance and care. How does this impact those with insulin pumps at their hips or prosthetic arms that require batteries? Can we push back against the techno-optomist desire to create posthuman bodies by seeking to understand the machines already in our homes?
Accessibility Information: We are located on the second floor of the building, which is accessible by two flights of stairs or an elevator. The front entrance has an automatic push door and is accessible by ramp or a short flight of stairs. Inside, all InterAccess facilities are on the same level, including a single-user accessible washroom.