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two patterns of fluctuating stripes meet on a plain...

WHAT'S YOUR PATTERN?

embodied algorithms is a
game + system + process + method
for discovering, inventing, noticing, responding to, interacting with, altering, shifting, redirecting, and,
perhaps, unraveling patterns.

With embodied algorithms, we explore how patterns might shift: What happens to cause change, what happens during and after change?

 

Using analog tools, embodied algorithms mixes visual pattern recognition with serious / fun, open-ended, non-competitive play. 

WORKSHOPS +

Customizable workshops + facilitated experiences for teams, groups, and individuals. 

embodied algorithms workshops feature patent-pending visual pattern-play decision games. Through play, we invite participants to explore relational and communication patterns. 

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Our workshops prompt development around seeing, recognizing, and understanding patterns; and learning to shift or deconstruct patterns. 

Visualizing, inventing, adjusting, transforming visual patterns offer a distinct and supportive perspective on change, growth, and transformation. 

We've designed our workshops as platforms to support you and your team—in all your unique capacities—to grow in awareness, choice, collaboration, connection, and spaciousness. 

Designed to support your goals,
with a particular focus on—and care around—individual and group patterns, team dynamics, and relational communications.

ABOUT

embodied algorithms is an innovative, experiential organization founded by Ri Dym and Leisel Whitlock, who are into noticing patterns—personal, relational, and organizational. Leisel and Ri, friends and sporadic collaborators for several years, together bring wild creative, organizational, and playful capacities to this org (and in all they do).

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PEOPLE

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LEISEL WHITLOCK-PETERSEN
​She/her.

Co-founder of Embodied Algorithms and founder of PenseTu, a consulting firm that provides start-up and established non-profit organizations with the tools and resources they need to make a lasting impact.

With over 25 years' experience in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations, Leisel is a versatile artist, explorer, teacher, and perpetual student. She studied at the Welch School of Art & Design, Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA, and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. She has an M.A. in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, Leisel lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner and their two children.

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RI DYM
They/them.

Co-founder of Embodied Algorithms. Ri, a serial entrepreneur with a focus on systems and materials flow, brings their wild creativity and inventiveness to the workplace

​Ri's 25 year practice as an artist, including pioneering digital art in the early 1990s, plays well with their passion for mathematics (particularly Category Theory and graphical calculi https://graphicallinearalgebra.net/). Recently, their study of embodiment/soma, meditation, and cranio sacral therapy, has offered depth and gravity to their prior projects. A graduate of Yale University, Ri has an MFA from Columbia University. They live in intentional community near San Francisco.

INSPIRATION

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FINITE AND INFINITE GAMES. James Carse.

A unusual and unusally entrancing book. James Carse distinguishes between infinite games—endless with ever-evolving "rules" and no winners—and finite ones. Finite games are what we so often learn competing in school, at work, in life, and, yes, in play. In beautiful prose, Carse unfolds his thoughts patiently and with increasing complexity. 

 

You can play embodied algorithms as an infinite game.

“Pattern recognition. It's a thing. You need skill to be able to pick out patterns, to find patterns—and also to notice false patterns. When I extend my view, I see that some of what I thought were patterns were more like random noise.”

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