Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

My presentation tackles the underlying and rapidly growing social disconnect in the “real world” associated with the hyper-connectivity in the digital realm. We are losing timeless and basic human social skills like maintaining eye contact or engaging fully focused in a face to face conversation. Most of the solutions to this problem that I came across are based on a reactionary return to how things were in the pre-digital world, in total denial of our here and now. They impose some sort of a ban on digital devices in space or time. I believe that the problem is not in the tool itself but in its usage and that’s why I’ve created CEEMI, a digital Trojan horse that challenges groups of people to play music together using the same tools that are separating them. The vision behind CEEMI is to harness the power of technology and music combined to connect people in real time, in a live setting. It’s not so much about humans interacting with technology, but about technology as a means to human interaction.