How did this project come about?

Adelle and Nour met through the Wide Awakes,an open-source network who radically reimagine the future through creative collaboration. We organized and participated in many Wide Awakes activations such as Wide Awakes Day March and Block Parties, Teach-in at Pratt, marches and workshops. 

For this collaboration, we created a version of Tonii called: Embodying Responsibility. We set out to experiment with new tools to engage in discourse around values. Our intention was to create new ways for people to relate to their digital footprint, to their agency and the ripple effects in shaping current and future web environments 

What methods did we use?

One of the goals of our project is to help people see their agency in shaping current and future web/connected virtual environments. We created spaces where people can sit with and explore the connections between the physical and virtual, considering values that we want to hold as stewards of these spaces.We want to give communities artifacts and the authority to speak to metaverse technology as a vector towards tech equity, access and literacy.

Our research included: current ethical design considerations, governance, artistic influences/impact of web3, immersing ourselves in the existing culture of web 3, and scenario building of how people might engage and use Tonii. 

We chose three communities to prototype with - artist technologist community, high school students in the philippines and burning man community.

For every workshop, we wanted to create a space for slowness, mindfulness and intentionality. We started with the Embodied Land Practice, which is a grounding meditation from OOM studio and discussed what it means to be a future ancestor. We create space for conversations around how people are already connected to “the metaverse” - creating context and level setting to help people understand how they fit in this conversation.

The participants also generated a list of values and prototyped symbols that represented them.

What did we learn?

It was a privilege to have two experts in this field, Amelia Winger Bearskin and Dorothy Santos to share their wisdom, hopes and fears. 

We discussed harm mitigation and mutual networks. One of the key things that surfaces is how Decentralized tech doesn’t equal distributed power and it’s not always about building new tools, but perhaps using what exists in a more decentralized way, how social documentation can preserve culture for future generations but also honoring our ancestors, thinking about how we can continue to work after the presentation

From the workshops and conversations, we established a set of design principles for embodying responsibility in the metaverse. 

No Gatekeeping 

Level the playing field

Center Ancestral Intelligence 

Create decentralized spaces

Sharing responsibility 

Slowing down 

What did we create?

We took their values and codified them as symbols for their amulet.  

The values prototyped from the workshop are on the circular design 

We see the Amulets as a gateway to a more nuanced conversation around values and can be used as a pledge and acknowledgment to uphold them. 

• When you receive the amulet, you are able to activate it with Augmented reality:
• We take you through a guided meditation to slow down and find presence