NEXUS

Created with Microsoft for the HoloLens with Mike Golembewski

neXus – designing the next designers

The ability to think holistically is a key factor in the shift towards sustainability. To create better, more conscientious designers and consumers, an understanding of the underlying connections between man, nature and the built environment is not only as essential as it is urgent, but it can also be highly productive. Fruitful design areas like the Circular Economy understand and harness the power of connection and cyclicity. Our actions have consequences; the plastic bottle we throw away today enters into the fish we consume tomorrow.

The choice we make as to whether we see ourselves as solitary creatures, disconnected from each other and our world, or as co-creative participants in a continuously transforming, sacred and meaningful process, determines how we understand and employ ethics, design, and technology.

But how do we teach others to comprehend systems whose very vastness defies comprehension? It is not possible for a single adult brain to envision the full complexity of the networks of which we are a part, so the vastly elaborate system is broken down into understandable ‘truths’. This has been very successful, leading to scientific understanding, medicine and technology. Recent work in fields such as Quantum Physics and Quantum Computing have shown our past models to be incomplete, but as children we are still taught mechanistic, reductionist worldview.

We must focus on opening the minds of the next generation, of creating a new type of designer and consumer with an understanding of the sacred position they hold in the network of reality. We can teach them as we have always taught them, with stories, with play and archetypes. All humans learn through narratives and games, the video games our children are playing now are teaching them something… I think it’s time we started seriously considering what that is.

NEXUS is piece of interactive philosophy. It aims to teach the fundamental lessons of holistic thought to young adults, at an age where the stories we hear can have a huge effect on the way we view the world.