Laura Allcorn

Laura is an artist, humorist, and designer. She founded the Institute for Comedic Inquiry where she creates interactive objects and performances that point out absurdities through a technique she calls “Participatory Satire.” All are based on her research and collaboration with scientists, and they share a common goal: using humor, science, art, and performance as tools for publicly debating ideas. She’s made fashionable pollination accessories, turning people into honeybees to draw attention to colony collapse. She’s created a machine that remixes your fake laugh to ‘real’, questioning the danger of humanizing digital assistants. She’s designed a humor-first dating program to mock appearance-first apps that can have negative affects on our mental health.