HOW DOES CHANGE ACTUALLY HAPPEN?  This slippery question has been driving all of Stephanie Lepp's experimental interventions in art & media. 

You should probably know who Stephanie is: an increasingly prominent producer, artist and integral futurist who has been deeply engaged in creating and curating new media projects that hold up an inquisitive mirror to the process of perspective-taking & moral transformation. 

The integration of perspectives is a powerful idea.  It is not the whole story of human transformation (perhaps the incompatibility of values & views has just as much to teach us) but it is certainly one major engine of inner growth. 

What is the special mixture of support and challenge which allows us to freshly hear a concern or insight that we previously marginalized?  What are the social conditions that facilitate this?  What is required to phrase the "opposite of our views" in a way that could be hybridized with them in our lived experience?  And are these the same or different from what our models of change would lead us to believe?

These are the kinds of questions that Stephanie has sought answers for in both real and imagined narratives of human change.   

Currently (Oct 2022) she is transitioning from an Executive Producer at the Center for Humane Technology (see her description of it here) to the Executive Director for Steve McIntosh's post-progressive think tank, the Institute for Cultural Evolution (see their description of her here). 

So this may be an apropos moment for people more deeply familiarize themselves with the flavor of her trajectory and efforts in the Emerging fields.

Stephanie is one of the primary voices calling out for experimental new media networks and projects that can address the informational and transformational needs of people inhabiting an ideologically-diverse digital playground.  And the best place to start exploring her work is probably with her (currently on hiatus) Deep Reckonings project. 

Deep Reckonings is a series of "explicitly-marked deepfake videos that imagine morally courageous versions of our public figures" -- but the background query is just as important: how do we make useful sense in a post-truth world?  (Her work on troubled American Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh was notably intriguing.)

Let's hope the folks at the Institute for Cultural Evolution let her take some interesting creative risks...


* BONUS *

For a little more background, check her out on the Integral Stage -- after Deep Reckonings won a couple of Webby Awards -- and in discussion with that great old coot Jim Rutt.  You can also stay updated with her Twitter stream.