Uploaded July 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
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Sean is a British Futurist working in the field of experimental performance, XR and neuroscience. His work has been exhibited globally. From 2012 he has been leading a team of future thinking artists, designers and scientists to explore the full potential of his Waldorf Project experiment which became recognised as the world’s most extreme immersive art performance. Amongst its many accomplishments is the world’s largest empathy engineering experiment to 5,000 people in a jungle in Thailand and the world’s highest altitude empathy engineering experiment for 400 people on a special Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Austin Texas as part of SXSW.
Sean’s work in Immersive experiences dates back over fifteen years and includes five ground breaking chapters of his globally recognized art/science hybrid - the Waldorf Project. Each chapter led his work to be more radical, deep and emotionally impactful. More than 10,000 people experienced consciousness transformation, empathy engineering, altered states of reality and unexpectedly, therapeutic responses all through the power of his groundbreaking awe inspiring content.
What is more important though is the impact his work had on his audiences and the scientific community, that slowly started to emerge around him, to try to understand how he caused the profound emotional reactions experienced. The hypothesis was that Sean had found a way to engineer empathy through awe. Over the following years he perfected this language to the point where he had what he called an “Algorithm” for engineering empathy, which can be summarised as: “trauma” followed by “euphoria” equals “empathy” and so “presence” followed by “self-reflection” leads to growth. This same hypothesis is being explored at Imperial college with their psilocybin trials on PTSD. With this new revelation and years of preparation to bring his work on awe into the digital space, Sean went on a very deep dive into VR technology and is now exploring the full potential of these ground-breaking ideas with his new company Awen. He continues to push the boundaries once again into the digital space, with bold ambitions to change the way mental health is explored and treated.
Please support our work and enable us to continue to share these talks for free by donating at paypal.me/breakingconventionuk
Sean is a British Futurist working in the field of experimental performance, XR and neuroscience. His work has been exhibited globally. From 2012 he has been leading a team of future thinking artists, designers and scientists to explore the full potential of his Waldorf Project experiment which became recognised as the world’s most extreme immersive art performance. Amongst its many accomplishments is the world’s largest empathy engineering experiment to 5,000 people in a jungle in Thailand and the world’s highest altitude empathy engineering experiment for 400 people on a special Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Austin Texas as part of SXSW.
Sean’s work in Immersive experiences dates back over fifteen years and includes five ground breaking chapters of his globally recognized art/science hybrid - the Waldorf Project. Each chapter led his work to be more radical, deep and emotionally impactful. More than 10,000 people experienced consciousness transformation, empathy engineering, altered states of reality and unexpectedly, therapeutic responses all through the power of his groundbreaking awe inspiring content.
What is more important though is the impact his work had on his audiences and the scientific community, that slowly started to emerge around him, to try to understand how he caused the profound emotional reactions experienced. The hypothesis was that Sean had found a way to engineer empathy through awe. Over the following years he perfected this language to the point where he had what he called an “Algorithm” for engineering empathy, which can be summarised as: “trauma” followed by “euphoria” equals “empathy” and so “presence” followed by “self-reflection” leads to growth. This same hypothesis is being explored at Imperial college with their psilocybin trials on PTSD. With this new revelation and years of preparation to bring his work on awe into the digital space, Sean went on a very deep dive into VR technology and is now exploring the full potential of these ground-breaking ideas with his new company Awen. He continues to push the boundaries once again into the digital space, with bold ambitions to change the way mental health is explored and treated.
