The Lattices

Life Itself Events

Flagship Playjacent™ Experiences

#NormalizePlay

Life Itself Events is our largest and flagship event-producing lattice.

Its signature format is Playjacent™: multidimensional events designed to create connection by bringing together music, art, performances, games, workshops, installations, conversations and other interactive experiences. Some also include optional, designated, regulated spaces for public intimacy.

Guests explore, participate, meet people and author their own experiences. The ambition is to make Play a normal and accessible part of contemporary social life.

New York Play Week™

One City. A Week of Play.

New York Play Week™ brings Playjacent™ events, pop-ups, conversations, creative activities and experiments together across New York City.

Rather than confining Play to one venue or single event format, the week is intended to connect people, producers, organizations, artists and spaces while demonstrating the diversity of the emerging cultural sector.

As participants find one another and collaborate, Play Week can help Play become a recognizable cultural category in its own right.

The long-term ambition is Play Weeks in cities around the world: recurring, citywide cultural calendars in the spirit of the growth of Pride celebrations and Tech Weeks.

New York is the beginning, not the boundary.

GRIT

Performer-Driven Play

#PerformerDrivenPlay

GRIT combines highly curated live music culture with Play.

Electronic music, underground raves, festivals and experimental performance have long overlapped with nonconventional socializing and self-expression.

GRIT builds on that tradition, emphasizing DJs, performers, music, movement and the intensity of live productions while integrating participatory activities and regulated Play Spaces.

Club Soda

Substance-Free Play

#SubstanceFreePlay

Club Soda produces substance-free Playjacent™ events.

You shouldn’t need alcohol or other recreational substances for an exciting social life. With younger generations questioning conventional drinking culture, and increasing interest in wellness, longevity and biohacking, we see substance-free Play as an opportunity rather than a restriction.

People in recovery are welcome, but Club Soda is not exclusively a recovery program. It’s for anyone interested in connection without intoxicants.

Echelon

Elevated Play. Without the Pretension.

Echelon produces more intimate, curated experiences, including VIPlay™ and AfterPlay™.

It draws inspiration from high-end private Play parties: distinctive venues, black-tie aesthetics, smaller gatherings and careful curation. But it rejects the idea that sophistication requires stuffiness, homogeneity, or exclusion based on wealth and status.

Its productions retain Life Itself’s experimental energy. At one event, for instance, a playful Bedding War invited guests to pitch exceptional properties as future event locations, with women in attendance selecting a venue through ranked-choice voting before the gathering transitioned into intimate Play.

Elevated doesn’t have to mean predictable.

Sapphish™

Sapphic-Led Play

Sapphish™ is a sapphic-led Play and afters format with an emphasis on connection, women’s agency, and self-directed participation.

It creates opportunities for social experimentation and intimate Play with its own identity and programming, while belonging to the broader Life Itself network.

Playjacent™ Media

Editorial concepts in development

Making a New Cultural Sector Visible

Playjacent™ is also part of our media work, distinct from Playjacent™ as the event format.

Events demonstrate new ways of connecting. Media can document, explain and develop the culture around them.

This includes interviews, journalism, essays, guides, commentary, cultural analysis and stories about the people, productions, ideas and infrastructure shaping Play.

Our longer-term ambition includes an editorial and trade-publication function for the emerging sector. Some ideas, including our media and newsletter concepts, remain in development rather than being established publications.

Playfinder

Early exploration & beta experiments

Playjacent™ Events, On Demand

You can hire an events company to organize a wedding, conference or festival. Why not hire one to produce a fully realized Playjacent™ event?

Playfinder explores turnkey Play event production: curation, performers, interactive activities, Play Stations, designated regulated Play Spaces, trained Regulators and appropriate operational arrangements, including Play Insurance™ as part of the service.

What’s a Play Station?

A Play Station is a pop-up experience that facilitates connection through Play: games, body painting, workshops, creative activities, conversation prompts or installations.

A Play Space, by comparison, is a designated, regulated area for consensual public intimacy.

Both can be combined in different configurations within Playjacent™ events.

Beyond Production

Playfinder also envisions a resource-sharing and collaboration network of socially inventive artists, entrepreneurs, technologists, venue operators, educators, producers and organizations.

A sex-positive connection component may exist within it, but the wider ambition is much broader: help people building new ways to connect find one another and collaborate.

Early exploration and beta experiments have begun. The final structure or platform is still to be determined.

Fourth4Space™

Developing concept

Co-Working & Co-Playing™

What if Play didn’t have to end when an event concludes?

Fourth4Space™ imagines permanent, multidimensional environments combining work, leisure, creativity, rest, recreation and consensual intimacy.

Imagine working in the afternoon, taking a class, exercising, napping, meeting friends, hosting a hackathon, watching a performance or attending a party in one flexible place.

Coworking spaces often sit underused outside business hours. Other venues are empty between productions. Why not rethink real estate so the same infrastructure can accommodate coworking, recreation, events, and designated Play Spaces? Why should social clubs be inherently exclusionary?

Fourth4Space™ is an ambitious developing concept, not a claim that every envisioned facility currently exists.

Compersion

Speculative long-term ambition

The Furthest Horizon of Play

Compersion is a term associated with polyamory, describing happiness in another person’s happiness.

At Life Itself, it also names our most speculative long-term ambition: exploring whether future advances in AI and consciousness research could someday make richer forms of subjective experience-sharing possible.

Might these technologies eventually allow people to communicate feelings, preferences and boundaries with greater clarity? Could consent become more continuously understood without sacrificing agency or anyone’s right to refuse?

These are speculative questions, not existing services or promised technologies.

One Mission. Many Expressions.

Life Itself Events creates flagship Playjacent™ experiences. New York Play Week™ brings a citywide cultural sector together. GRIT integrates live music and Play. Club Soda explores substance-free experiences. Echelon reimagines elevated intimate gatherings. Sapphish™ brings a sapphic-led format. Playjacent™ Media develops editorial coverage of the sector. Playfinder explores turnkey event production and collaboration. Fourth4Space™ imagines permanent places for everyday Play. Compersion examines distant technological possibilities for connection.

Together, they’re different expressions of one mission: better social infrastructure for human connection.

Join the Network

Want to produce an event, collaborate on a lattice, share resources, develop a space or help build this new cultural sector?