Nicholas Pilarski - "Dialectics of Civic Imagination: Four XR Experiments in Participatory Governance, Their Evolving Pipelines, and Lessons Learned at the Resilient Visions CoLab"

 

 

This talk presents four collaborative projects that deployed extended reality and augmented intelligence as tools for civic imagination at the local level, creating technological pipelines which attempt to help communities think differently about their relationship to governance. Drawing on Brecht, Boal, and Artaud's insight that consciousness changes through experience, and recognizing local governance as democracy's crucial arena amid shifting notions of federalism, these projects reveal both the potential and limitations of immersive technology for civic participation while focusing on replicable infrastructure and workflows. Through candid assessment of our successes, failures, and necessary pivots in response to shifting policy environments, we outline how the RV CoLab's evolving pipeline balances technological innovation with the deeper historical project of making governance a collective, imaginative act rather than a spectator sport.