Produced by B21 – Building 21

Produced by B21

Speaker Series

Over the years, we have invited a diverse range of thinkers to engage with our community and share their perspectives.

Prof. Michael Levin: Planarians and Intentionality

Michael Lapsley: Founder of the Institute for Healing of Memories

Professor Darryl Haggard: Observing Black Holes

Professor Paula Williams: The Psychology of Awe

Author Alexander Weinstein: Creative Writing Workshop

Artist Karen Tam: Eating Gold Mountain Dreams

Betty Edwards: Learning to Draw for Thinking's Sake

Dr. David M. Peña-Guzmán: When Animals Dream

Professor Leah Price, Author & Book Historian

Francesca Panetta, Creative Director at the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality

Professor Angus Fletcher: The Brain and Narratives, The Limits of AI

Professor Paul Yachnin: "What did we do right?"

David Krakauer: President of the Santa Fe Institute

Professor Frédéric Gilbert: The Ethics of Implantable Brain-Computer Interfaces

Refik Anadol, Media Artist & Director

Azeem Azhar, Founder of Exponential View

Podcast

McGill's Building 21:
Thinking beyond the acknowledged, the recognized and the comfortable

On Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Special Projects

Projects conceptualised, prototyped, and created at Building 21.

Poetry and VR: “Scène de la Mer” (2023)

A brief, atmospheric poetry experience in French and English, created by scholars at McGill's Building 21.

The "Matterless Matters" Talks (2022 - 2023)

There are some questions that sound pointless, but aren’t. In the Matterless Matters talks, the answers don’t matter very much – but the questions, surprisingly, do.

The "I'm Not Sure" Talks (2022 - 2023)

What is beauty? What is knowledge? Are there limits to human understanding? Can a machine create moving poetry?

Virtual Open House (2022)

Created as part of a summer research project at McGill's Building 21: "Foundations of a Better World"

Poetry and VR: Ollivier Dyens & John Mac Master (2021)

What are poetry and literature when transformed and modified by technology?

Letters From the Future (2020)

Letters from the Future are archeological fragments of a time to come. The future is like quantum theory, all possibilities existing simultaneously until one collapses into an event. These fragments are both.

The BLUE Magazines (2018-2019)

A review of the Summer '18 & '19 BLUE Programs and scholars' projects, produced by Rebecca Brosseau