The Synthesis Mission
The Synthesis Center at Arizona State University asks: How can we create environments that are richer, but not more complicated, and how can we create environments in which we would want to live?
How: Building an ecology of practices for re-imagining and re-making the spaces we inhabit
Synthesis Center researchers draw from diverse disciplines in the humanities, engineering and the arts to blend knowledge and know-how to find meaningful ways of using the arts and technology to animate the worlds in which we live and play. In particular, we use techniques from responsive environments, time-based media, phenomenology, non-anthropocentric design and theory.
Rather than throwing disciplines together, we give our collaborators time to respect and meld distinct, even incommensurate values and ways of thinking and making into an ecology of practices.