"Space Messengers AI" @ The PASEO Festival

Start: Friday, September 12, 2025 8:00PM
End: Saturday, September 13, 2025 11:00PM

Experience Space Messengers AI: Exploring a Participatory Universe, live at The PASEO Festival in Taos, September 12–13, 2025. Step into a participatory universe, interact with the AI Messenger, and add your voice to a living constellation of messages—guided by STEMarts Youth Ambassadors. "Space Messengers AI" is an immersive SciArt experience that merges light, sound, motion, and responsive artificial intelligence technology to create a dynamic multisensory display with audience input. At the heart of Space Messengers AI are thousands of human-generated messages—reflections from youth and communities from around the world. The Space Messengers project has been traveling to festivals and workshops since 2020, collecting the voices of youth and communities in New Mexico and around the world. This year, thanks to a grant from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we are deepening the experience through the integration of AI. At its core is a guiding question: What is our place in the universe—and how can reflecting on cosmic phenomena, scientific discovery, and the intersection of technology, ethics, and society inspire greater care for each other, our planet, and our shared future? Through this journey, we invite youth and community members to reflect on their place in the universe and consider how space can inspire empathy, connection, and stewardship. Through year-round STEAM programming and workshops, youth participants gain artistic, scientific, and humanistic literacy—cultivating their potential as future leaders in an interconnected world. Messages are gathered both during live events and through this web-based platform and mobile interface that allows people worldwide to contribute their voices. These contributions form a growing AI-driven knowledge field, where human curiosity and machine learning converge—revealing new connections and reshaping how we imagine the universe and our role within it, while leaving behind reflections for our future youth leaders.