Arts & Experiences

Nora Morales Zaragoza, Researcher Professor, Autonomous Metropolitan University Cuajimalpa
Blanca Miedes, Research Professor, University of Huelva

Explore the body as a living form of intelligence that connects perception, thought, and action. Using the methodology of Social Presencing Theatre, you’ll engage in simple movement, presence practices, and visual scribing to reveal the hidden dynamics that shape “stuck” situations in complex systems. Through guided group exercises, you’ll learn how embodied awareness can unlock fresh perspectives, spark creativity, and activate intuitive capacity for navigating change—no prior movement or theatre experience required.

Location: Thursday, 1:25-1:55 pm, Palaver

Capacity: 23 participants. Pre-registration is required. Conference attendees received a sign-up link via email and participation is first-come, first-served.

Creators

Nora Morales is an Information Designer and researcher professor at UAM Cuajimalpa in Mexico City. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences and is interested in participatory research and visual practices as a tool to understand complexity and guide transformative change.

Blanca Miedes is an economist and research professor from Huelva University in Spain. She likes to think outside the brain, using the feelings and movements of our bodies in the physical space to comprehend more deeply and imaginatively.

Almina Karya Odabasi, Education and Research Officer, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

This interactive performance explores embodied intelligence and real-time decision-making through improvised movement shaped by audience input. By positioning the body as a site of sensemaking, it challenges our notions of control and highlights how embodied values and decisions exceed what can be captured through quantification. Using a structured prompting method, audience members become co-creators, providing input that influences the dancer’s movement in real time. Attendees will gain insight into how bodily, environmental, and social dynamics inform creative action, offering fresh perspectives on adaptability, agency, and intelligence.

Time & Location: Wednesday, 6:30–7:00 pm, Ravintola Töölö (conference dinner venue).

Capacity: All attendees who have purchased a dinner ticket can participate. Note: this experience does not require pre-registration, but dinner tickets must be purchased in advance.

Creator

Almina Karya Odabasi is an Education and Research Officer at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Organization Sciences Department. She holds dual BScs in International Relations and Business Administration and an MSc in Culture and Management. Her research explores embodiment to understand culture as lived and experienced through the body, focusing on how physical being intertwines with norms, power dynamics, and identities. She has a close affinity with performing arts and professional groups with high physical engagement. Karya is also a trained dancer with experience across several genres, with practice spanning both choreographed and improvisational forms. Through a comprehensive embodied and theoretical lens, she investigates how movement and physical presence shape cultural and organizational life.

Michael Hallam, Consultant, IS IT A BIRD
Carolina Sarmiento, Senior Consultant, IS IT A BIRD

As social complexity increases, so does the need for creative and collective solutions. This experience invites attendees to attempt to build a collective problem-solving intelligence based on the wisdom of crowds – the idea that a collective of heterogeneous opinions can outperform the reasoning of a single intelligent individual. Attendees will attempt to solve a simple yet elusive puzzle. After each solution attempt, learnings are passed on to the collective, building a common pool of knowledge for future generations of puzzle-solvers to access over the course of the conference. As the collective intelligence grows, attendees will be prompted to reflect upon their role in it’s creation and development, providing new perspectives on the relations between individual and collective intelligence.

Attendees can participate in this experience throughout the conference.

Creators

Michael Hallam is a researcher driven by excavating the hidden facets of human experience to develop long-lasting and meaningful solutions. With a background in sociology and strategic design, he brings together diverse perspectives in his approach to problem-solving creating social solutions. Michael has a passion for game design and previously developed games and large-scale interactive experiences.

Carolina Sarmiento brings her background in design and innovation, and years of experience in the world of ethnographic research and insights communication. Her strength lies in making complexity feel simple, whether through storytelling or conceptualisation of visions and solutions. She designs artefacts as a means to explore human attitudes and behaviours – this game offers one more tool to do that.

Meghan McGrath, IBM Future Demands, IBM
Sarah Brooks, Director, Human Interface Design, Apple

These cards prompt engagement with non-human beings in EPIC2025 conversations. Bringing in the qualities and capabilities of plants, animals, and ecosystems, they are a mechanism to de-center humans as the sole planetary intelligence. We’ll engage with slime molds, bioluminescent algae, the Mariana Trench, and others to enrich our conversations.

Attendees will receive cards with their conference badge at check-in. An audio version also will be available.

Creators

Meghan McGrath is the Future Demands Lead for IBM Infrastructure. She led the design and ethnography work on IBM Pervasive Encryption, which work has been featured in Fast Company and in a HBS case study. She represented IBM at the 3Ai Institute from 2019-2020.

Sarah Brooks is a designer and inner-world explorer who believes in the power of applied creativity and imagination to foster lasting, positive social change. With a cross-disciplinary approach and academic training in futures, film, fine art and fashion design her multi-decade career spans both the public and private sectors.

Michael Powell, Partner, Practica Group
Gregory Weinstein, Design Researcher and Inclusive Designer, Independent Consultant

This 2-hour soundwalk invites participants to engage deeply with listening and sound as embodied intelligence. We will expand our sensory focus and investigate why and when to employ listening practices in our ethnographic and qualitative research projects.

Time & location: Tuesday, 10:00 am–12:00 pm, meeting point in downtown Helsinki TBA.

Capacity: 20 participants. Pre-registration is required. Conference attendees received a sign-up link and participation is first-come, first-served.

Creators

Michael Powell, PhD, is Partner at Practica Group, a strategic insights and ethnographic research consultancy. He has worked with clients and research teams in diverse sectors and industries, from mobility technology, health care, and consumer retail, to architecture, civic participation, and food justice. Michael teaches an EPIC course on ethnographic interviewing and has worked on multiple projects around listening as a research method and as a practice of everyday life.

Greg Weinstein is a design researcher, acoustic anthropologist, and accessibility evangelist. He advocates for making user research inclusive from end to end, so that design can serve and empower people in their limitless diversity. Before working independently, Greg was at CVS Health, leading Inclusive Research for the Design Accessibility team. Outside of work, you’re likely to find Greg watching a ballgame with his cats, reading a good mystery, or supporting the EPIC conference.