September 2010 - Page 2 of 2 - Near Future Laboratory

Made Up Panel Discussion September 17 at Art Center College of Design

One week from today I’ll have the pleasure of sharing a panel discussion with my old chum Sascha Pohflepp and the eminent Norman Klien as Art Center rounds out its summer “Made Up” residency studio program. Fun. Come out and check it out!

Join the Media Design Program
Friday, September 17, 2010
3:00 to 5:00 pm
Wind Tunnel Gallery, South Campus, Art Center College of Design
950 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105
FREE TO THE PUBLIC
PARKING ON SITE

AS IF: alternate realities

This panel discussion, moderated by MADE UP organizer Tim Durfee, will consider the value (or perhaps merely the appeal) of a methodology that could be characterized as: assume a set of conditions (abitrary, absurd, speculative), play it straight. Historically, alternate realities have been the realm of literature and film but what might be the effects of such an approach within a field (design) that is conventionally concerned with the cold, hard facts of the real world, of the here and now. And importantly, why does this work feel uniquely relevant NOW?

Detail from SUPERCALIFORNIA! by Sascha Pohflepp

Panelists:

Sascha Pohflepp, London-based designer and artist, was one of this summer’s researchers-in-residence. As part of the MADE UP theme, he produced the project “SUPERCALIFORNIA!” which turns the phantom futures of Southern California into compelling design fiction.

Julian Bleecker, a designer and technologist, is a researcher at the Design Strategic Projects studio at Nokia Design, and the co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory, a “design-to-think” studio.

Norman Klein is a cultural historian, critic, and novelist, and the author, with Margo Bistis, of the multi-media database/novel/website/art installation titled “The Imaginary Twentieth Century,” a historical science-fiction novel. His forthcoming book is called The Dismantling of the American Psyche: MediaBuzz, Political Branding, and Collective Amnesia: 1968-Present

“For alternative realities, I see many options in work that I have doing recently: from parallel worlds models to ‘wunder-romans’ (archival/media novels), to the misremembering of the future, and ‘the dismantling of the American psyche’…” —Norman Klein

“I have long been interested in how science fiction has influenced science fact. To me, design fiction encourages peculiar design practices in an attempt to create different sorts of near future worlds. The Made Up project promises to illuminate the future-oriented practice of design and help us understand how design probes imaginatively and materializes ideas, oftentimes through stories.” —Julian Bleecker

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Stuart's Fragments of Possible Worlds / Reperceiving The Future

Just a fragment of a post — something that’s been sitting in drafts for a few months now for some reason. I guess I was trying to find something to put alongside of it, but it sits well by itself.

It’s from a post by Laboratory cousin Stuart Candy and its got some suggestive little nuggets — particularly appealing to me is “reperceiving.” This is the way he is describing what artists and futurists do as their vocations — “enabling new perceptions.”

Stuart Candy Reperceiving Detroit

" Called “Fragments of Possible Worlds: The Art and Design of Experiential Scenarios”, my presentation encouraged the audience, mostly Cranbrook students and faculty, to consider the resemblance between the role of the artist and that of the futurist. What the two have in common, as I see it, is the vocation of enabling new perceptions. Compared to the artist, whose self-understanding frequently seems to include a studied refusal of the constraints to which many other kinds of work are subject (viz. “artistic licence”), the futurist’s role may be somewhat more circumscribed, especially in a consulting setting, by the client’s needs. But the general role is fundamentally similar. And, while there is a conscious turn towards public and political engagement in my recent work, compared to the more narrowly targeted, strategic use of foresight as used in organisational settings, this common ground shared by art and futures is well captured by the elegant phrase of Royal Dutch/Shell scenario planning pioneer Pierre Wack: “the gentle art of reperceiving”."

Why do I blog this? I like this way of describing the work of creating new visions of possible worlds as reperceiving, or helping people to reimagine what the world could be like. Finding new ways of describing the work we do here in the Laboratory is quite helpful. Related is this diagram by James Auger that I recently came across on Nicolas’ blog in which he describes Auger’s diagram showing how paths to the future can be mapped out in a specific way. This might be a side, side project — to create a visualization that describes this action of re-imagining and reperceiving.

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The Design, Art, Technology & History of Arduino

That little guy up above has finally got its own academically written *History. The Arduino is historical! That means something. It means that it is significant enough to warrant a retrospective look back on its when and where and who kinds of questions. I’m glad that’s been done. There are good stories swirling around about Arduino — cafe-bar style stories and anecdotes that you’ll get from the Arduino Wizards like Massimo and Tom and Casey and Golan and Tod. Now Alicia Gibbs has written her masters thesis called New Media Art Design and the Arduino Microcontroller. It’s all about the history and why-for of the Arduino.

The Arduino microcontroller is a malleable tool used in art and design. Started as an educational prototyping tool it contiues to expand due to the thriving community and open source nature. Because open source initiatives allow for modification, derivatives, and sharing of intellectual property, artists and designers can evolve new Arduino-based microcontrollers specified to their work.

Why do I blog this? Alicia sent this to me a couple of months back and I keep trying to find it in my bottomless email database and everytime I do, I forget to blog it so I can have an easy place to find it when I need it. Now — here it is.
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Weekending 08292010

Last week, or the weekending on August 29 2010, I noticed and took stock of more and more of this kind of behavior. I mean — I really noticed the ways that people get locked into their screens. It’s like “we” (those with jobs and fancy fuck-off phones and stuff) have evolved into a different kind of species.

I worked a bit on finishing up the essay on Design Fiction due for the Swiss Design Network conference at the end of October. I’m trying to reflect on the precise ways in which science fiction makes itself imminent and possible — mostly the near-future science fiction, or the science fiction that is close enough to our experiences and ways we imagine the future to feel legible and possible.

Besides this there was lots of work in the studio to package a few nuggets for a healthy creative review, which was good work and good fun. That was the bulk of the week’s work — packaging and reviewing stuff.

There was a quick trip to San Francisco on Saturday for Chili and Morning Buns. The Sunday before I went to Tigard Oregon, just outside of Portland, for the last leg of the Oregon Trifecta.

Some thoughts for the future:

* It would be good to collect and make a list of “Wheels on Luggage” things. Those things that would count as exemplars of what “wheels on luggage” means — things that just didn’t exist in the world and might seem bizarre or otherwise challenge convention until they appear and then we wonder how the world once did without them.

* I need to make an embroidered patch for the Odyssey mission’s maintenance department and an AE-35 service manual.

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