Back from Bhutan

So I’ll have to admit it is actually going on 2 whole months since I arrived back from Bhutan, but I had such an inspiring time that I had to share the experience. I went to Bhutan to work on the first ever Bhutan International Festival (BhIF) to help install an interactive simulation of the molecular nano-world with a collective of artists and scientists I work with called Danceroom Spectroscopy (dS). dS was installed in a custom build geodesic dome, nestled in a park at the foothills of the Himalayas, in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan

It looked a little something like this:

I lead workshops with the technology. We found out about BST (Bhutan Stretch Time) early on, and decided to make all our workshops impromptu or spontaneous rather than scheduled.

School children playing. They are wearing traditional Bhutanese dress -a Gho for men and boys and Kira for women and girls. Traditional dress is worn at school, on national holidays, and by official workers.

Children in Buddhist robes.

Coronation Park -our home for a week.

I have worked on a few installation with the dS team, and I hadn’t experienced this level curiosity and commitment to learning about the system before. Participants were engaged in the experience for hours, sometimes even days, as they would come back to our dome again and again. I wrote a post about the trip for dS, and you can see this wonderful moment when 10 Assamese monks made an impromptu dance.