Scotty showing his project at the 2022 ITP/IMA Spring Showcase.
Recent APP Alum Scotty Gorham (2022) received both the Tisch Creative Research Grant and the Public Humanities Grant for his project “The MACO garden.” Scotty developed the workshop in his final months in the Masters of Arts Poltics program and presented it at the 2022 ITP/IMA Spring Showcase.
“The MACO garden is an empathy development workshop series combining worldbuilding, sculpture, video, and game design, with community building, care, and critical dialogue. During the workshop we will examine the historical origins of empathy in contemporary culture, and form our own collective definition. Participants will use constraint-based to begin to imagine their own alien worlds. Each participant will design their own MACO (Magical Affect Connection Object) from clay, with the intent to reach out to life unknown. Participants will imagine themselves using their MACOs to make contact beyond earth and to envision what that contact could feel like. The playful sculpting process will support the exploration of questions around what empathy looks like on both an interpersonal and intrapersonal level. Participants will learn to use their cellphones to 3-D scan their empathy objects using LiDAR technology. Ying will guide participants through a process of using embodied filmmaking to imagine interstellar subjectivities. Together we will ask ourselves, “As we look to the stars for the future of humankind, how do we harness empathy as both a subjective and relational position to solve problems and build better futures?” “The MACOs and videos are hosted in an online 3-D environment designed by Aris known as the MACO garden.”