Topological Media Lab

The Topological Media Lab provides a locus for studying subjectivation, agency and materiality from phenomenological, social and computational perspectives. Investigating such questions, the atelier-studio-laboratory creates material poetry, and speculative, live events in responsive environments. The TML invents novel forms of gestural media, expressive instruments and compositional systems that support these speculative performances and installations. The products of the laboratory include scholarly presentations, media artifacts and performances as cultural experiment, opportunities for students and affiliates to refine critical faculties in collective projects. Current application domains include: realtime video and sound synthesis, embedded sensors, gesture tracking, physical computing, media choreography, active fabric, and wearable or soft architecture. The TML draws insights from and informs the studies of embodiment, performance and music, as well as the poietic uses of dynamical systems, differential geometry and topology in philosophies of process. Its projects also serve as case studies in the construction of fresh modes of cultural knowledge and the critical studies of media arts and techno-science. Topological media are physical and computational matter, image or sound fashioned as substances evolving under continuous action.