Speakers

Heidi Boisvert, PhD is an interdisciplinary artist, experience designer, creative technologist, and academic researcher who interrogates the neurobiological and socio-cultural effects of media and technology. She studies the role of the body, the senses, and emotion in human perception and social change. Boisvert is mapping the world’s first media genome, while taking great care with its far-reaching ethical implications. She also architects expanded reality and transmedia storytelling experiences, and devises large-scale networked dance and theatre using biocreative technology. She founded futurePerfect lab, a creative agency and think-tank that works with social justice organizations to design playful emerging media campaigns to transform the public imagination. She also co-founded XTH, a company creating novel modes of expression through biotechnology and the human body. She worked with David Byrne on Theater of the Mind, an immersive theater piece and co-curated EdgeCut, a live performance series that explores human-digital relationships. Boisvert is Associate Professor of AI & the Arts at the University of Florida, a Senior Research Fellow at the Norman Lear Center, a research affiliate in the Open Documentary Lab at MIT, and a member of NEW INC’s Creative Science track. Her work has been showcased at venues including EMPAC, New York Live Arts, Banff, the New Museum, Los Angeles Music Center and Waag, and featured in TIME, Wired, Fast Company, The Atlantic, NPR, and The New York Times.