GIANT Next Exhibition: Create Mode in Progress

The GIANT Room Brings “Create Mode in Progress”— a meta-experience to their studio and partner locations this summer.

(New York, NY - July 6h, 2022) --- The GIANT Room is pleased to announce the opening of “Create Mode in Progress”. A mixed reality exhibition that showcases children’s ideas on top of books through Augmented Reality (AR) technology, and invites the audience to create their own ideas and add them to the exhibition. Throughout the months of July and August, families from all around the world are invited to contribute to this exhibition by becoming a member (free for a limited time, no cc is required), participating in daily live workshops, and submitting photos of their creations for a chance to be exhibited. New York families can also join in-person workshops at The GIANT Room’s Chelsea Hub, Southampton Arts Center, and Little Island to build and submit their work.

A final exhibition of curated works submitted throughout summer will be held at The GIANT Room and Southampton Arts Center in Fall.

Kids’ ideas are often unnoticed and invisible. They read a book and their imagination takes them to 100 new places, each an opportunity to learn, to feed their curiosity, and to set the path for new explorations and experiences. The “Create Mode in Progress” exhibition spotlights those unseen “real” experiences kids have when reading books. Augmented reality tools bring a new capability allowing us to share and showcase these intangibles in powerful ways. By creating spaces of extended reality, more people can participate, and we can connect on new and different levels.

“Over the last three years, thousands of GIANT kids have participated in GIANT programs; we have documented over half a million ideas with more than 100 tools, and thousands of skills, mixing diverse interests. What we realized is that the physical world by no means defines our real world. Our thoughts, ideas, emotions, way of looking at the world— that meta layer on top of our physical world — is the real thing,” said Dr. Azadeh (Azi) Jamalian, founder of The GIANT Room. “What’s exciting is that we can now use AR tech to open a window into this meta layer of kids’ reality. Our next exhibition invites families to interact with books and see all the ideas they sparked as an AR layer on top of each page.”

The term “metaverse” has been swirling and causing quite a buzz in various spaces, having many believe we need to create fully immersive alternate worlds to be a part of the future. However, as educators, The GIANT Room founders believe the opportunity lies in the blending of physical and digital experiences to enhance the learning process.

The GIANT Room founders are cognitive scientists that have been obsessing over our cognitive “meta” layer on top of the physical world. Their team is a diverse group of artists, designers, creative technologists, and educators. As a collaborative effort, through the AR metaverse, they have made it possible to access extended experiences independent of where you are. You can be at The GIANT Room in Chelsea, at a public park like Little Island, at a museum like Southampton's Art Center; or even in your own bedroom, flipping through the pages of a book, and participate in this exhibition of kids' ideas. You will be exposed to ideas that will spark new thoughts and ideas in your own meta, and in some cases the spark is strong enough to encourage new creations. The interaction is iterative and generated by kids. Books spark ideas, ideas spark creations, creations spark new ideas, and soon you find yourself in a state of creative flow which should be the ultimate goal of education.

“We’ve always called our work ‘tech messy’ because we view the latest tools like AR apps just like scissors and paper as vehicles for expression” says Dr. Jessica Mezei, co-founder of The GIANT Room. “The future requires creative agile thinkers, and in order to help prepare kids to become this, they need to practice interacting with tools that help them build their ideas. We can unlock children’s ideas and make them accessible to others, and create a new platform of sharing their ideas, as well as new opportunities for collaborations to re-mix or add to them.”

“We are building ‘Create Mode’ in education,” said Dr. Azi Jamalian, “and this is only Part 1 of our progress”.

Become a free member of The GIANT Room to participate in “Create Mode in Progress” exhibition. Be inspired by works of other children, create your own work, and submit your work for a chance to be included in the final exhibition. You don’t need to be an ultra technologist to create or enjoy an immersive creator world. All you need are some very basic tools like paper and markers, your imagination, and collaboration with GIANT Creative Tech Residents. GIANT Members can join live online workshops and book-reading events announced throughout the summer. NYC families can also join in- person workshops and events at The GIANT Room in Chelsea, and at partner locations like Little Island (every Thursday in July) and The Southampton Art Center (every Thursday in July and August except the last week of each month).