P.I.H.E (Projects for Interactive Human Experience) represents a coalition of artists, scholars, and community members who work together within the field of human interaction and communication, specifically to explore the essences of understanding and conflict through the examination of personal, relational, and social human exchanges with the encouragement and development of innovation in empathic listening.

Our organization fosters pluralistic perspectives in a wide range of interdisciplinary fields--including but not limited to social studies, environmental studies, psychology, history, language and literature, multiculturalism and cultural studies, the arts, sciences, economics, legal studies and philosophy, religion and spirituality--in order to pursue a free-thinking inquiry within human awareness through projects that facilitate this exploration for the benefit of the members and others.

P.I.H.E began in 1992 during a field research project sponsored by a group of students from Prescott College, The Evergreen State College, and University of Maryland as well as other community members. The project focused on the impact that innovative approaches in empathic listening bring to human communication, especially involving individuals and/or groups that some consider extremist or in conflict with society at large.

Our listening approach utilizes the creation of video documentaries to help record the communication process in human exchanges that present as polarized or disenfranchise segments of society, P.I.H.E studies these critical human exchanges within their natural contexts by maintaining an on-going emphasis on the unlimited relationships between humans and all forms of life. P.I.H.E actively seeks new opportunities to faster learning through communications studies.

Our community recognizes and promotes the idea that the on-going communication exchanges between its members form the core relational experience upon which our projects rest.

P.I.H.E strives to conduct inquiry into the human experience of communication using an ethnographic and non-sensationalistic method. This approach elevates the personal perspectives, meanings, and stories of the concerned individuals and groups considering these the primary units of learning. We avoid drawing rigid conclusions and reject the stereotyping of reducing of subtle facets of human interaction into so-called "facts" for public consumption instead, the methodology draws on a variety of learning models that work to create and environment of trust and rapport within which the rich and individually unique experience may emerge.

P.I.H.E chooses to dedicate its activities to objectives that foster meaningful confusion as a prerequisite for open learning. We conceive a genuine communication as beginning from a point of risk when an individual becomes willing to contain her/his own preconceptions, judgments and biases--while maintaining self-respect and identity--in service of experiencing the worldview, ideas, and perspectives of another.