Transdisciplinarity

A critical 21^st Century learning skill, transdisciplinarity, is potentially the foundation for a new, and much needed, approach to inquiry. Transdisciplinarity goes beyond the dualism of opposing binary pairs: subject / object, subjectivity / objectivity, matter / consciousness, nature / divine, simplicity / complexity, reductionism / holism, diversity / unity, all of which have marked the history of ideas for millennia. Transdisciplinarity is radical, in the sense that is goes to the roots of knowledge, and questions our way of thinking and our construction and organization of knowledge. It is a new type of intelligence that theorist, Basarabab Nicolescu illustrates in terms of reflecting a harmony between mind, feelings, and body.

In the field of experience, we are seeing the power of multiple interactive technologies working to achieve this harmony. Whilst establishing a new paradigm for technology integration and its relevance to new approaches to experience-building, both in terms of the show environment and structures, as well as the affective performance, we are beginning to see how disparate concepts can be fused to create totally new means of content delivery and reflection. Here we are referring to ideas that we have presented in our shows such as STEAM³ where nanotechnology meets art or electronics / computerization meets civic evolution and new living narratives or in our Plutopia events involving robot soccer, bioscientists working with transhumanists to create unusual specimens, or designing interactive data sculptures as beacons.