EP. 70 AI AND THE NEW DATA CANVAS OF CREATIVE COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE with Samar Younes, Founder SAMARITUAL

ABOUT SAMAR YOUNES:

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samaryounes/

Websites:

bio.site/samaritual
www.samaritual.com

Bio:

Samar Younes is a Beirut-born hybrid artist, futurist, and creative catalyst whose work embodies a transcultural approach. As the visionary behind SAMARITUAL, a multidisciplinary creative studio, she weaves multidimensional narratives at the intersection of humanity, technology, and nature. With over 20 years of experience as an artistic director and brand strategist, Samar blends generative AI with artisanal craftsmanship and ancestral wisdom to create immersive experiences that challenge stereotypes and envision nuanced futures.

A Central Saint Martins alumna, Samar's work explores global south futures, otherworldly narratives, and interspecies harmonies through three interconnected spheres: Creator, Catalyst, and Cultivator. As a Creator, she crafts visionary artworks and installations that blur the lines between art, fashion, and architecture. In her Catalyst role, she provides strategic foresight and cultural alchemy for organizations navigating our evolving world. As a Cultivator, she nurtures future creativity through her Imaginalogy hybrid future edu lab, empowering individuals with tools and perspectives to thrive in an ever-changing creative landscape in the age of AI.

Samar's transcultural perspective allows her to seamlessly integrate diverse cultural influences, creating a unique aesthetic and transcultural language symbiotic to her diasporic and third culture experience. Using a neuroaesthetic lens, she celebrates kaleidoscopic identities that resist binary categorizations. Through SAMARITUAL, Samar fosters interconnectedness, radical imagination, and visionary world-building, inviting us to participate in crafting inclusive, sustainable narratives that bridge ancestral wisdom with speculative futures.

 

SHOW INTRO:

Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.

Well here we are…SEASON 6…our 70th episode. And we’ve had some great interactions in the first 69. 

This season will be no less engaging.

In the coming weeks we’ll have artists, architects, authors and educators. We dig into tech issues with people who make crafting a digital future their lives work. Scientists who will expand our understand of the way we work and how the environments around us work on us. 

These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.    

The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD Magazine part of the Smartwork Media family of brands.

VMSD brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant. 

You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.

Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience. 

SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org

In this 70th episode I talk with Samar Younes is a Beirut-born hybrid artist, futurist, and creative catalyst whose work embodies a transcultural approach. 

Samar blends generative AI with artisanal craftsmanship and ancestral wisdom to create immersive experiences that challenge stereotypes and envision nuanced futures.

First though, a few thoughts…

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At the core of this podcast is the idea of fostering “dynamic dialogues on data DATA” an acronym to include Architecture, Design, Technology and the Arts. 

Of course, the idea of talking about DATA is that it's a double entendre that allows me to dive into subjects about the impact that a data-driven society has on a myriad aspects of our human experience. 

Since writing my book “Retail Revolution: Why creating right brain stores will shape the future of shopping in a digitally driven world,” I've had a persistent interest in studying how technological advances are reshaping the way we interact with each oth