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Clista Townsend

@clistatownsend

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16 days ago

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17 days ago

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22 days ago

Have you ever wondered what sort of classes take place at College? Here’s a rare opportunity to take a look inside.
Last year, David Bassuk and Clista Townsend invited participants to imagine their biggest challenge as a creature they'd meet in the forest — and from that strange, playful starting point, people ended up seeing the hidden patterns behind how they lead, connect, and move through the world. This is the kind of thing that sounds odd on paper and lands completely differently when you're in the room.
We're happy to share that both of them return as Professors at the College this year, and where they'll take participants next, we can't wait to find out ourselves.

#extraordinarycollege #meaningfullconnections by @clistatownsend

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a month ago

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a month ago

Four days in Nairobi reminded me that the future is not something we simply inherit—it is something we shape together.

Convened by Karen Palmer at Black Rhino VR, Hack the Future Lab Kenya was a Think and Action Tank grounded in Kenyan, African, Ubuntu, Indigenous, and relational worldviews. Through resistance, recollection, repurposing, worldbuilding, and future artifacts, we explored AI’s connections to hidden labor, mineral extraction, land, data ownership, infrastructure, governance, memory, and culture. The emerging Griot carries this work forward as living memory and relational intelligence.

On Day Two, I led *The Future Watches Back*, a Protopian Worldbuilding Lab grounded in my Spatial Narrative methodology. Participants transformed signals about invisible AI labor, resource extraction, and algorithmic scoring into inhabitable “World Cells”—small, testable futures restoring choice, refusal, repair, accountability, and shared power.

I was honored to work alongside Wakanyi Macharia-Hoffman, Mophat Okinyi, Kambale Musavuli, Rex M. Lee, Odanga Madung, Angella Ndaka PhD, Mary Bitta PhD, Kainyu “Kai” Njeri, Mario Marquez Lartigue, Yvonne Cho, James Oyange, Julita Bhagat, Leonard Kambona, Jabez Mutoria King’ori, Calvin Odera, Kings Korodi, Brian Afande, Bereket Afewerki, and my partner, Clista Townsend.

My deepest thanks to Karen for her vision, trust, and care; to the British Council for supporting this vital exploration; and to every participant who shared lived experience, cultural knowledge, difficult questions, imagination, and hope.

Beyond the Lab, Nairobi offered another kind of learning—from witnessing conservation at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and a Kenyan wildlife preserve to visiting Karen Blixen’s home. Across the city, I encountered bold ambitions for technology, culture, work, and community, alongside urgent questions about opportunity, ownership, infrastructure, and who benefits from technological change.

Nairobi is not merely a backdrop for conversations about the future. Its people are actively questioning, building, and negotiating that future every day. taken in Nairobi, Kenya by @clistatownsend

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2 months ago

Giraffes have purple tongues. taken in The Giraffe Sanctuary, Nairobi by @clistatownsend

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2 months ago

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3 months ago

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3 months ago

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3 months ago

OUR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
And one year anniversary of leaving USA
Posting for David too, since he’s struggling to get his Facebook account reinstated after identity theft. Feeling blessed to share this life, share the love, the many places, the many dreams, the dreams of many adventures yet to come. Having in each other a North Star, a fixed point in an endlessly wheeling, wondrous world.

The following poem David wrote for my Birthday:

We left the country
Slowly, then all at once,
Pulling pieces of ourselves
Into the unfolding ‘next’

Love traveled too,
Packed between the shirts,
Tucked inside the books,
The way seeds cling,
To the souls of migratory birds

Ever in new lands of the old world
Bridging the vitality of our new roots - Still,
Each morning
Your hand is a familiar country
I never want to leave”

David Bassuk
11-15-2025 by @clistatownsend

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5 months ago

I’m excited to introduce my upcoming talk, “Theatre, Myth, Music & Games: Designing Live Experiences in Hybrid Systems,” tomorrow at the WXO - World Experience Organization London Experience Week event at the Ministry of Sound.

As live performance increasingly overlaps with games, AR, AI, and participatory media, I keep returning to a central question: How do we design audience participation without fragmenting attention or diminishing the work's emotional meaning? I’ll present AURORA as a case study in entangled experience design: an approach in which theatre, myth, music, and game systems are not treated as separate layers but as a single-authored whole. The most challenging aspect is not simply adding technology to performance; it’s about making technology function as dramaturgical material—shaping agency, pressure, consequences, and emotional transformation. Through AURORA, I’ll explore how interior states can be externalized through playable systems. How can Augmented Reality carry narrative weight? How can AI behavior reinforce the stakes of a scene? How can a game mechanic deepen, rather than distract from, the audience’s emotional experience?

Produced by my company, White Horse Immersive, with Wan Zhao and Clista Townsend, in partnership with Sheung Chueng Performing Arts Center in China and Niall Austin’s Second Screen company in Ireland. The production is now scheduled to open in Hangzhou this November. Also pleased to to sharing on a panel the Business of Experience representing my international work in both Ireland and China.
Also pleased to share on a panel the Business of Experience, representing my international work in both Ireland and China. taken in Ministry of Sound by @clistatownsend

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