# The Event Machine

Things happen in the Learning Lab Studio. Let's call them events.

(Though secretly we'll call them [Happenings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happening))

These events, like all events, like all things that happen in time--they're precious. They only happen once, and then they're gone.

Because time moves in one direction and doesn't stop.

Anyway.

We want to do some things at these events and with these events that does justice to their preciousness.

And that's what the Event Machine is for.

## The Theatre of the Event

What we do live at the Event is the domain of the collaborative working group we call theatreLab. TheatreLab has as its goal the collaborative devising of new experiences for students and teachers, experiences that should be thought of as closer to what you encounter when you attend *Sleep No More* than what you have in mind when you think of the typical lecture class or proscenium-centric piece of drama.

## The Capture of the Event

One way we'll attempt to do justice to the Event is to hold on to it. To push back--even just a little bit--at the one-way-ness of time.

We'll do this by capturing as much as we can. Video, photos, audio, scraps of paper and fragments of materials left behind.

This will be the domain (for the most part) of the collaborative group we'll call AVLab.

## The Story of the Event

We need a second-order experience of or reflection on the event for it to really feel like an event. I mean, things are happening all the time, you can't STOP things from happening. But people don't always recognize that they've been at a Happening.

StoryLab is going to take AVLab's documentation of theatreLab's work and turn it into narratives. Visual essays, videos, infographics, reports, texts, gifs, photo-essays, galleries, installations. It will take all the "stuff" our student and faculty collaborators do and it'll make it meaningful.

One key goal is to send clients stories back ASAP. Little thank you notes, micronarratives, peakGifs, and flickr galleries.

But we'll also want to work towards more elaborate narrative forms as the year progresses.