I entered Day 3 of SXSW feeling exhausted, but left feeling reinvigorated.
In the morning, I attended a panel discussing how to rebrand STEM as cool for girls with YouTuber/influencer Sara Dietschy, Justina Nixon-Saintil from the Verizon Foundation, Rowena Patrick from the Ad Council, and Francesca Rossi from IBM. With this diverse panel of women in STEM, they discussed how to stop the high dropout rate of girls from STEM in middle school and the importance of having women representation in the field.
Nixon-Saintil used “Reviving Ophelia” as a story for how girls start to become socially aware of themselves, of boys, and of being smart in middle school. She strongly emphasized the importance of role models and media to keep girls feeling confident in themselves. Rossi emphasized the role of family in making girls feel like they can do anything. And Dietschy advocated for social media as a way for girls to find niche communities to support them.
All the while preaching for the need of girls in STEM to think about how to design for women. Rossi gave examples of how the dummies used for car crash tests have men’s proportions, how medicine is predominantly drug tested on men, and how women can bring empathy to the development of AI. While Dietschy asked the hard pressing question: why are women’s pant’s pockets getting smaller while phones are getting larger? No but seriously, why?
In the afternoon, I waited for a good 45 minutes in line (the earliest I arrived at any session) to snag a seat at the Cirque du Soleil talk: “Defining Awe: The Science Behind Cirque du Soleil.” I was very torn between attending this talk and the immersive experiments in museums talk. The latter would have been better fitted to my current educational needs (I am currently pitching a student project to design an interactive art/tech installation), but when would I ever get a chance again to see a talk by the Chief Creative Officer at Cirque du Soleil? AND through the lens of science (which if you haven’t already picked up on, I’m a fan of).
My parents were strong believers in experiences over things. I was never bought the latest toy or gadget or gizmo, but my parents did take me to travel all over the world. And when we would travel to new places, if there was a Cirque du Soleil show, you could guarantee that we were going. Quidam was the first Cirque show that I ever went to, and I was blown away. I remember wanting to become one of the Diabolo girls. I even got my own Chinese yo-yo (and that’s when I discovered that hand-eye coordination is not a skill of mine).
As we walked in, we were handed a red clown nose before getting seated. That’s when I (k)nose I made the right choice in my selection.
Nose provided by Cirque du Soleil. Image provided by myself.
Dr. Beau Lotto from the Lab of Misfits opened the talk with a deeply passionate and heartfelt presentation of the introductory science. He began with an experiment using our finger placed up to our eye to obscure our vision of his body. Lotto explained that we obviously know that his body and our finger are not the same size. Our brain uses history and biases to figure out what’s in the world, and simultaneously we project our own biases into the world. He quickly yelled out “When the tree falls, does it make a sound? No!” He described sound as a human construct, we must be there to hear it for it to make sound. But the tree does release energy.
He showed us the famous Heider-Simmel Illusion, in which we impose characteristics onto inanimate objects and feel emotion towards these shapes even though they are just shapes. He described how the brain has evolved to determine certainty, and how certainty was crucial to survival. Which is why, when we are uncertain, we feel emotionally unwell, and why we typically respond to uncertainty with anger and judgment as a way to immediately resolve the feeling.
We stood up together as an audience and conducted Strauss up until Lotto left us hanging without hearing the final drop, which was deeply unsatisfying. He explained that we all need closure, and that DJs rely upon this when they mix their music. He even showed that animals need this closure as well.
But Lotto emphasized that the only place that we can be creative is in uncertainty, that it all begins with not knowing.
From there, Chief Creative Officer Diane Quinn took over. We all put on our red noses and took a big selfie together. She emphasized that their team does their best creative thinking by working through vulnerability, with a “yes and” mentality where nothing is impossible (thank you Brenda for teaching me this in improv). She demoed videos from their newest shows that use drones, cold fire, and moving audience seating to push the edges of entertainment.
But back to the science! Lotto is a neuroscientist studying perception and awe. He defined awe as a feeling in which you feel small, but fundamentally connected to the world. In this experiment with Cirque du Soleil, he measured the brain activity (with EEG caps) and unconscious bias (with surveys) of 60 participants witnessing a live Cirque show.
After collecting the data, Lotto’s team found that after watching the show, in perception guests feel:
Closer to others, demonstrate more prosocial behavior and a diminished ego
Less need for closure, comfortable in uncertainty
Increased desire for risk
Change perception of self (they believe they are someone who can experience awe)
In the brain, they found:
Lower activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the source of control, if it is lower, guests are more immersed in their environment
Increased activity in the default network, which is responsible for daydreaming and contemplative thought
Asymmetry in the prefrontal cortex (which I am going to be completely honest, I don’t remember what this does, but I do have a note that says “step forward” - so if anyone can interpret that please let me know)
The brain activity is similar to being on psychedelics (that’s pretty rad)
That they could use AI to predict that people were feeling awe to about 75% accuracy, which shows that there is a synchrony brain waves (which explains why we feel connected to others)
Overall, Lotto concluded that people left Cirque being transformed.
But why does this matter to Cirque and how will they apply it? Quinn answered quite bluntly, “it doesn’t.” As the Chief Creative Officer, she expressed strongly how Cirque is here to tell a story, to take the guest through an emotional journey. While it is great that the data suggests that what they are doing is transformative, they didn’t need that data to tell them. They both emphasized that science has its place and time, but not in the circus.
This was by far the best talk that I have ever attended in my life, and if I had only seen this one talk at SXSW, it would have been worth my time to come. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, enthralled by their presence. Their presentation was an experience within itself. They kept the audience captivated with case studies, videos, and interesting visuals. There was never a dull moment.
During questions, an audience member asked if Cirque is planning on using XR ( an umbrella term for mixed reality, virtual reality, augmented reality) in their future performances. They responded that the technology is not there yet to touch all audience members at the same time. They have prototyped an experience, but it can only reach 20 audience members. I genuinely appreciated their answer to this question, because while I’ve done work in VR/AR and see its potential, I don’t believe in the hype. I also don’t believe in just throwing tech at things to make them better, and appreciated how Cirque is not just jumping on the bandwagon.
However, my favorite quote from this talk was “science is play with intention.” As a former scientist, I have never heard of science being described that way and I absolutely love it. Because science IS playing with intention. It’s figuring out the rules to a game defined by nature. And play is something that everybody likes to do. If we can just teach science in a way that focuses on play, we can bring more people into the fold and make science more approachable.