ABOUT

The Institute For Comedic Inquiry is an experimental comedy research institute founded by Laura Allcorn. We collaborate with scientists and make it fun for the public to explore complex topics like AI, surveillance, and data privacy. We’re always on the comedic lookout for emerging science and technology that will shape our future.



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EVENTS

Schedule a visit or check out our upcoming programming.

1. Emerging Etiquette: advice for the AI era — a participatory project where you become an advice columnist

2. Laugh Crying — a research project launch

New experiments coming soon!


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EXPERIMENTS

We like to ask: In the future, what absurd situations might we find ourselves in? 

Then we go all out rendering them real and invite you to participate. All you have to do is bring yourself.

We’ve made a mini-market about social profiling algorithms.

A workout about surveillance.

A laughter-producing machine about humanizing voice assistants.

And experiments about humor at large.


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WORKSHOPS

We offer workshops for people with zero interest in performing comedy, but are curious about how they can apply its philosophies and methods to their work.


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QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“Without having a sense of humor to take pleasure in the incongruous or absurd, we might spend our whole lives in a perpetual state of confusion, rather than occasionally transforming those feelings into amusement. In this sense, humor is as important an evolutionary trait as intelligence, because without it we wouldn't be able to cope with the complex world we’ve created.”

- Scott Weems, HA! The Science of When We Laugh and Why


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