{"id":5083,"date":"2011-02-04T13:19:39","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T20:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/?p=5083"},"modified":"2017-08-18T17:58:51","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T17:58:51","slug":"lab-coats-in-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2011\/02\/04\/lab-coats-in-hollywood\/","title":{"rendered":"Lab Coats In Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"
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At long last David A. Kirby’s<\/a> book Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema<\/a>\"\" will hopefully actually finally be released this March 2011. For those of you who haven’t followed the Design Fiction citational and bibliographic rabbit hole, you’ll be delighted to find out that one of the cornerstone insights \u2014\u00a0the idea of the “diegetic prototype”<\/a> \u2014 was inked by Kirby in his essay “The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films in Generating Real-world Technological Development”<\/a><\/p>\n

\nI introduce the term \u2018diegetic prototypes\u2019 to account for the ways in which cinematic depictions of future technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology\u2019s need, viability and benevolence. Entertainment producers create diegetic prototypes by influencing dialogue, plot rationalizations, character interactions and narrative structure. These technologies only exist in the fictional world \u2014 what film scholars call the diegesis \u2014 but they exist as fully functioning objects in that world. The essay builds upon previous work on the notion of prototypes as \u2018performative artefacts\u2019. The performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic prototypes because a film\u2019s narrative structure contextualizes technologies within the social sphere. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial \u2014 all aspects of their depiction are controlled in production \u2014 and normalized within the text as practical objects that function properly and which people actually use as everyday objects.\n<\/div>\n

In this book is the chapter that cornered in my mind the relevance of Kirby’s work to the practice of design. Which is awesome as it’s a kind of closing-of-the-circle between earlier interests of the Laboratory in the study of science, technology and society (a field of study of which Kirby is associated) and are more recent activities trying to understand and practice and advance what design can do to make things better.<\/p>\n

The book is an study of the relationship between science and technology consultants and their role in helping Hollywood tell science-based, typically fictional visual stories \u2014\u00a0sci-fi film! Their role is one that ultimately shapes the way larger movie-going publics come to understand what science and technology is capable of, and even influences desire, hope, aspirations and fears. Think of the ways that sci-fi film becomes part of a larger collective conversation about how the world works, what the future holds (both hopeful and apocalyptic), the viability of space travel, cyberterrorism, new paradigms for computing \u2014\u00a0so much.<\/p>\n

In this book, I’m certain Kirby walks through these topics in what I am sure is a thoughtful, engaging and entertaining read. Anyway \u2014\u00a0I’m super looking forward to this book and, well \u2014\u00a0I’ll just go ahead and preorder mine.
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At long last David A. Kirby’s book Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema will hopefully actually finally be released this March 2011. For those of you who haven’t followed the Design Fiction citational and bibliographic rabbit hole, you’ll be delighted to find out that one of the cornerstone insights \u2014\u00a0the idea of the … Continue reading Lab Coats In Hollywood<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,47,50,152,153],"tags":[1188,458,940],"yoast_head":"\nLab Coats In Hollywood - Near Future Laboratory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2011\/02\/04\/lab-coats-in-hollywood\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lab Coats In Hollywood - Near Future Laboratory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At long last David A. Kirby’s book Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema will hopefully actually finally be released this March 2011. 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