Embodied Systems Learning through Immersive Media: Advancing SDG Innovation in Global Health, with Pravin Pillay
The current metacrisis—marked by climate disruption, ecological degradation, humanitarian emergencies, and weakening global governance—poses profound challenges for global health. In this context, the critical question is not only what we know but how we act wisely. Responding well requires new forms of sense-making that integrate analysis, embodied awareness, and collective agency across individuals, organizations, and institutions.
This one-hour seminar, led by Pravin Pillay, Creative Director of MOVE37XR, introduces the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research (DIGHR) Community to experimental methods at the intersection of planetary health, humanitarianism, and foresighting. The session blends theory, immersive experience, and dialogue to consider how immersive media can inform global health scholarship and practice.
Key Themes
- Hyperobjects and Planetary Health: Framing climate change and other global phenomena as distributed, non-local systems that structure human and ecological futures, drawing on the 2023 Planetary Boundaries Report.
- From Systems-Thinking to Systems-Embodiment: Exploring how datapoetic and sensory practices connect intellect (analysis), heart (emotional attunement), and hand (agency), fostering coherence across scales of action.
- MOVE37XR Case Study: Examining the role of an emerging media research lab and creative studio in developing immersive experiences that support sense-making, empathy, and innovation in response to global challenges.
Methodological Innovation
Participants will take part in two short immersive practices (TBC):
- A datapoetic encounter that translates ecological and health data into sensory forms.
- An embodied listening exercise designed to cultivate relational awareness and systems-feeling.
Both exercises aim to extend conventional approaches to global health research by integrating intellectual, affective, and embodied modes of inquiry.
Relevance for the DIGHR Community
The seminar functions as an immersive learning system, modeling the adaptive, participatory, and transdisciplinary approaches needed to address global health in the 21st century. Students will encounter:
- Experimental methodologies bridging qualitative, quantitative, and experiential research.
- Practices that enhance capacity for sense-making and wise action in conditions of uncertainty.
- Frameworks for considering how individuals and institutions act as nodes within broader complex adaptive systems.
This session offers an opportunity to engage critically and experientially with questions at the heart of DIGHR’s mission: how to design, research, and enact the global health we want.
In preparation for this seminar, Pravin has recommended reading Sustaining planetary health through systems thinking: Public health's critical role, Planetary Health Check: A Scientific Assessment of the State of the Planet, Complexity as a theory of education, Beyond doomism and solutionism in response to climate change, and Building Community Resiliency through Immersive Communal
Extended Reality (CXR). He has also recommended listening to the “Deep Time Diligence” – Tyson Yunkaporta episode of the Emergence Magazine Podcast (the podcast transcript can be found here).
Speaker Profile
Pravin Pillay is a speaker, designer, artist, investor, and advisor whose work sits at the intersection of emerging technology, consciousness, and cultural wisdom. As Creative Director of MOVE37XR, he pioneers immersive storytelling experiences that foster empathy, sustainability, and inter-cultural exchange, drawing on decades of experience as a multimedia artist, permaculturalist, and practicing yogi.
A sought-after speaker and advisor, Pravin brings transformative insights to bioregional and global stages and organizations, cultivating complex adaptive systems with a focus on indigenous innovation, ancient wisdom practices, planetary health, and human-computer interaction.
As a designer and artist, his groundbreaking projects—such as Hyper Object 108 and The Rain is the River is the Ocean—blend bioregional knowledge with cutting-edge XR to create deeply resonant, systems-based experiences.
Beyond the creative realm, Pravin is an active investor and strategic advisor, co-founder of Humanitas Smart Planet Systems, founder of Emergent Performance Consulting and Creative Systems Architect for the Indigenomics movement where he champions progressive interdisciplinary ventures that bridge technology, tradition, and future-ready organizational and leadership development.
Register below and join us on Wednesday, November 5, at 1:00 p.m. ET
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