T.L. Taylor

While at CASBS, T.L. Taylor will be focusing on her current book project exploring the rise of “immersion” in physical spaces as a contemporary cultural pursuit. While new entertainment undertakings like The Sphere in Las Vegas, interactive theater like Sleep No More, or Meow Wolf’s growing list of city-based immersive art projects have captured popular attention, Taylor’s project turns to their progenitor, a much older, more widespread instantiation of the immersive experience — the theme park. 

Building on fieldwork undertaken over the last several years in Disney parks around the world, as well as interviews with both designers and attendees, she will be working on a new book that examines theme parks as sitting at the analytically rich intersection of design, infrastructure, and play. Drawing on her empirical work, the project frames theme parks as simultaneously operating on several levels: intentionally designed worlds that invite people to step into them, socio-technical infrastructures meant to facilitate affective, embodied experience, and as playgrounds that at times afford participation beyond corporate control and governance.

Taylor is a professor of comparative media studies at MIT. She is a qualitative sociologist who has focused on the interrelations between culture and technology in online environments for over thirty years. Her work sits at the intersection of sociology, media studies, and science and technology studies.

For more information, please visit http://tltaylor.com.