Carolyn Yim

What did you explore in your Residency?

The Problem:

I explore the problem of how we build human flourishing alongside incoming superintelligence. In the Digital Swarm, contemporary philosopher Byung Chul Han describes postmodern society as increasingly fragmented with crises of narration, isolation, and auto-exploitation. However, technoaccelerationism is not the problem, but rather, it is our human response and evolution to it that cannot catch up. We talk about bigger batteries and more compute to build AGI– but what about us, humans? While we may not evolve at speeds of Moore's Law, how do we not get left behind by superintelligence, but instead build a society for man and machine to thrive together? What makes us more human?

Consider: better "physiological software": improved bioelectricity for our cells. Enhanced attention mechanisms for stronger social connection. Deeper work for anti-mimetic creation. More joy with our loved ones. In other words, we need aura.

The Exploration:

During my Residency, I explored tea and tea ceremony as a technology for humans to not just Don't Die, but be More Alive! I designed and built a techno Tea Chapel (2025), and hosted 8 weekly "Tea and _" workshops in it, to test different permutations:

1. Tea and Postcard Writing with Noah Smith
2. Tea and Coffee Science
3. Tea and Speculative Fiction with Tina He
4. Tea and Techno with DeepMind / DJ OCCO
5. Tea and Drone Mass
6. Tea and Ikebana
7. Tea and Attunement
8. Tea and Fermentation & Ritual of Making Mooncakes with Nish Bhat

The place and setting of the tea ceremony required an investigation of first principles. The Tea Chapel (2025) is intentionally non-denominational and severed from its 600AD Buddhist and Daoist origins. There is only the intention of building a container with a "roof" framework, which traditionally was the case so spirits could go inside; and for participants to need to lower their heads in humility.

Rather than use regular teacups and teapots that would scaffold into familiarity heuristics, I commissioned sculpture artist Nicholas K Bird for a ceramic tea set that referenced primordial, Jomon-era, beverage vessels. He also built and installed Tea Lamp (2025), an interactive sculpture designed as a tokonoma-style focal point, with in-built ultrasonic distance sensors and a small processor. The sensor points to the center of the tea ceremony table, so that when tea is exchanged between hands, Tea Lamp glows brighter — emitting a soft aura and triggering positive phototaxic instinct. Lastly, a set of Devon Ojas Bookcase speakers delivered precise, sonorous resonance at extremely low 136.1Hz frequencies — believed to be the primordial, sacred ohm sound that has physiological effects of calm and centeredness. Tatami mats, floor pillows, a tomeishi stop stone, and a stepped up platform demarcate the entry from a Durkheim-esque "profane" space into a "sacred" setting, unspokenly signaling to participants to take off their shoes and enter a state of collective social consideration.

I served only fermented tea from 1000 year old ancient puer trees, from a bucolic forest high in the Himalayan foothills of Yunnan. The region's rich floral microbiome means the tea's post-fermented metabolites such as l-theanine and theabrownin are exceptionally efficacious, which then neurochemically produces more serotonin through the gut-brain axis. Indigenous minorities who ritually drink this tea call this feeling "tea drunk"— calm, attentive euphoria.

Did we aura farm? When, at the end of each hour of tea ceremony, participants initially jittery-eyed returned my gaze in stillness, wrote their first ever poems and science fiction short stories, or made new friends— I think, yes, even if just for a little bit, before we return to our thumbs and screens.

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Key insights and learnings

1. Care games - when two entities get together, there is a third entity that forms between the two from the choices of what communication is revealed, and the context cues of what each comes from. This is an extension from Wittgenstein's "language games", combined with Michael Levin's "care intelligence".

2. Compounding relational intelligence - multiple sensory dimensions of input combined with intelligence processing, plus lowered ego temporality, compound towards the asymptote of "aura". One-dimensional inputs, ie, from single vectors from linear regression of language, is flat and low signal, which is what causes art slop and dullness.

In a tea ceremony, there are multiple dimensions of sensory vectors: visual beauty, textural beauty, smell, temperature, place, object permanence, social biological chemical change. Randomness from is also a factor. Altogether they compound.

In Kevin Kelly's new book 2049, he predicts we will live in a world superimposed with a virtual "Mirror World" by 2049, as mobile phones are fully replaced by smart glasses with gestural interfaces. In this Mirror World, eye contact, embodied gestures, and post-language knowledge will matter most. What kind of compounding, superimposed HCI can we design and build for humans?

An analogy is to think of AirPods as a present technology to transmit the one dimensional sound waves of verbal language (somewhat imperfectly, sometimes tone is lost). Mobile screens with sound are two dimensions. What is the future technology that is needed to transmit the multiple dimensions of awe and aura?

3. Fermentation – Not one size fits all. Quality of probiotic bacteria and the post-fermented metabolites matter more.

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What's next?

I am exploring how to share this "aura" with more people — is it through a CPG tea company, a lifestyle brand, a more permanent tea ceremony space, more art performances? Without rushing in to build another company, what is anti-mimetic?

I'd like to do more scientific tests on Puer tea and its correlation to bioelectricity, brain energy, and mental health.

I am also taking Kevin Kelly to his first ever fashion show (!) at Shanghai Fashion Week, as he is keen to meet futurists that make China cool. I will write my observations in my new Substack, Designed in China, from my over a decade in operating a cross-border manufacturing and design company based between New York and Hong Kong.

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Favorite memory from the Residency

Too many to pick one.

At the first Interact 2025 Happy Hour, the supermoon rose low and full on the horizon across The Mission. The room of thirty Interacters– as if through networked intelligence and without priors– ran out onto the HQ roof and suddenly, simultaneously, howled like wolves.

Seeing and reading what people made during the tea ceremonies— Alexia's charcoal portrait; Tina's science fiction prompts; Toby's tea poem; Noah's short story ready for a Hollywood screenplay.

Most indelible is the full index of high caliber, creative, deeply intelligent yet low-ego quality of Interact fellows, through small moments: Nicole delivering her profoundly deep demo on memory and philosophy, then code-switching to lighter topics like snacks; Michael's swearing-in ceremony as the Sunshine Ordinance at the Mayor's office; Eugene after he landed from his flight to immediately deliver a sharp panel at Symposium on taste as the peerless "intellectual teddy bear"; Kevin's LLM-enabled stochastic parrot called Stocchi; Liz's AI lamp Lampy's activation sequence; Darren's anti-mimetic ability to live at the frontier of both art and technology; the hyperstition of suddenly pulling together a panel on China culture called "Say Lanono to Labubu" with Tina and Noah; exploring Et Al with Julia; eating mint chocolate ice cream cake with Dan and Maran!

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How has Interact shaped your relationship to technology?

Meeting other Interact fellows who all can balance both technology and humanist philosophies in their bicameral minds made me hopeful for future technology to come, especially knowing how many Interacters are at the forefront of building or influencing new technologies. However, it will take consistent critical thinking, humility and self awareness to avoid monocultural feedback loops, which I am optimistic Interact fellows will achieve.

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About Carolyn

Carolyn Yim is a "softwear as a service founder" – she thinks about and builds soft, humane things at the intersection of computational manufacturing, design, and culture.

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Artifacts & Links