I’m so excited that my workshop proposal for the JSSS conference this summer was accepted!! It will be my first time attending and first time presenting my creative workshop at a conference.
What is JSSS?
TheĀ Jungian Society for Scholarly StudiesĀ was founded in 2002 by an interdisciplinary group of academics seeking opportunities for scholarly discourse on analytical psychology, focusing on the research and theories of Carl Gustav Jung and the post- and neo-Jungians.
Membership in the society is open to all academics, analysts, therapists, practising artists, students, candidates in training, and interested members of the public.
JSSS publishes an academic, peer-reviewed, electronic journal, entitledĀ Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies,Ā formerly known as JUNG: theĀ e-Journal of the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies.
JSSS serves to organize interdisciplinary conferences through which members can present scholarly papers, organize roundtable discussions, and provide interactive workshops.
My Workshop for the JSSS Emerging Conference in Portland, Summer 2018
Abstract:Ā This workshop will be a playful and imaginative exploration of creative and therapeutic potential in virtual and augmented reality gaming devices. Participants will engage in active imagination with mermaid love letters on paper and mixed media, iPhone, iPad, Laptop, 360 degrees camera, virtual reality headset, and augmented reality cube toy.
Title of presentation: Mermaid Love Letters Emerging in Virtual Reality
Proposal: Mermaid LoveĀ Letters Emerging in Virtual Reality is a workshop proposal explicitly designed for the JSSS Emerging conference. I’m a professional visual artist who recently completed the MA program in Humanities at the Pacifica Graduate Institute. During dreamwork at Pacifica, a commanding voice told me, ‘You are a game designer.’ With this clear job title in mind, I promptly went about individuating my game designer potential through scholarly studies and professional creative practice. What I am now prepared to present is my methodologies for innovative game design, separated into three parts. In separating what is naturally intertwined, I hope to illustrate what and why I consider virtual reality relevant to Jungian psychology and explicitly emerging ways of knowing. In addition to sharing my story, the original workshop I am prepared to offer will let attendees be playful and imaginative while getting familiar with some VR/AR gaming devices. I will provide material so participants can engage in active imagination with mermaid love letters on paper and mixed media, iPhone, iPad, Laptop, 360 degrees camera, virtual reality headset, and augmented reality cube toy. I will introduce these materials by guiding participants through three stations. The first one will engage the imagination with a laptop and timeline of relevant published posts from MyArtistDiary.com. This activity will stimulate ideas about what online actions we track and possible data visualizations concerning emerging consciousness. The second station will be engaging with the game and art materials I made over 3-years of following the call to be a game designer. The third station will be an opportunity to discuss Jungian symbolism in virtual worlds, starting with the 360 eye. I will present images for discussion from the most surprising behavior I noted while playing three specific MMO games. I have an uncommon perspective on creativity, technology, and psychology because I am growing up along with personal computers and I am a professional artist who studies archetypal psychology. I want to share my unique approach to combining Jung, interactive design, and emergence to further imagine the therapeutic and creative potentials within virtual reality.
