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My radio prefers baconAdventures in Speculative Culture
Justin Pickard, Superflux@justinpickard
Presentation by Justin Pickard (@justinpickard) on the theme 'Crazy Futures'
Delivered at the APF's V-Gathering, on October 27, 2011
Accelerated Biography:
1) BA (Hons.) International Relations & Anthropology @ University of SussexFinal-year work on data havens, the political geography of Mumbai, religion in post-crash Thailand, and Guantanamo Bay
2) Community Coordinator on IFTF's participatory foresight project SuperstructFocusing on 'Outlaw Planet' super-threat: http://youtu.be/TbpKA_2tZeg
Wrote up my experiences here: http://b.qr.ae/tKbCHo
3) MA in Digital Media: Technology & Cultural Form @ GoldsmithsTheory-heavy programme, with extended work on contemporary US literature, the technological imaginary, cartography, and visual culture
4) Associate at Superflux, focusing on foresight and written communicationSuperflux = a collaborative, Anglo-Indian design company, based in London, but with roots and contacts in the Gujurati city of Ahmedabad
Founded by interaction designers, focusing on the intersection of emerging technologies and everyday life
What is it?
I want to talk to you about:speculative culture
Bruce Sterling SF author, design critic, iconoclast, sarcastic Texan
Wired Italia as an icon of mainstream if offbeat foresight and futurism
Ralph Steadman cartoon as an icon of gonzo journalism
Eames Lounge Chair as an icon of twentieth-century modern design
FORESIGHT
GONZO
DESIGN
'GONZO'?
> crazy, madcap, unwieldy, or anarchic> a style of journalism in which the journalist becomes part of the action> writing with extreme subjectivity> freewheeling or unconventional, esp. to the point of outrageousness> live & first person> taking matters into your own hands
GONZO.
'GONZO'?
FORESIGHT
GONZO
DESIGN
DESIGN
FORESIGHT
GONZO
science fiction
'critical design'
interaction design
design ethnography
scenarios
design fiction
concept art
'new journalism'
experiential futures
user research
prototyping
horizon-scanning
roadmaps
futurescaping
culture-jamming
On 'design futurescaping', see our essay in: Blowup: The Era of Objects (pdf)
On 'experiential futures', see Stuart Candy's PhD thesis, 'The Futures of Everyday Life'
Kevin Kelly on Scenius, here.
(C) Russ Garrett
The London Hackspace: http://bit.ly/s1taWO
Robin Sloan's full article: 'Kanye West, Media Cyborg'
The titular, bacon-preferring radio
Designs by Anab Jain (Superflux) and Alex Taylor (Microsoft Research Cambirdge)
More on this project: 'Energy Autonomous Devices'
Rhodoferrax ferrireduciens as the substrate for a microbial fuel cell?
Policing GenesThomas Thwaites
Commissioned by the EPSRC, with the UCL Center for Security & Crime Science
'the techniques employed to insert genes into plants are within reach of the amateurand the criminal. Policing Genes speculates that, like other technologies, genetic engineering will also find a use outside the law, with innocent-looking garden plants being modified to produce narcotics and unlicensed pharmaceuticals.'
'Genetic Surveillance Hives' co-opting natural bee behaviour to collect pollen samples within certain parameters.
More on Thomas Thwaites' project can be found on his wesbite
I particularly enjoyed the accompanying video
Policing GenesThomas Thwaites
(C) Thomas Thwaits and Theo Cook
(cc) cesarharada
ProteiCesar Harada
More on Cesar Harada's work can be found on the Protei website
See his TEDx talk for a more detailed look at the project specifics
(cc) Cesar Harada
Further materials from Anab and Jon's 'Pirates of the Danube' workshop can be found here: http://superflux.in/work/pirates-danube
Bea Csortan and Dani Pifko
Play4Power = child labour?
Questions about some kind of community social contract
Additional workshop outputs can be found here: http://piratesofthedanube.kibu.hu
The Euthanasia CoasterJulijonas Urbonas
(C) Julijonas Urbanos
More of Julijonas' work can be seen on his website
I recommend checking out this interview, from Dublin's Science Gallery
More on this Superflux project here: http://superflux.in/work/song-machine
The finished film, starring Y.T.
(cc) brookenovak
The Fubar Criterion!
The Fubar Criterion?
Fubar = 'F***d up beyond all recognition'
Also, 'the [fictional] metric unit of contemporary weirdness'
Cognitive estrangement
Future Shock (Alvin Toffler)
The Sublime:
'The Alps fill the mind with an agreeable kind of horror' (Joseph Addison, 1699)
Boundlessness, limitlessness, extreme scale (Kant)
Novelty and revelation
The Hitchcock Zoom
Sensawunda
Juxtaposition
The Gothic (the return of the repressed)
This is the aesthetic sensibility (sensitivity) of speculative culture
Image from a workshop on Heathcare & Enhancement that Anab ran in Qatar.
More details here: http://superflux.in/work/talk-healthcare-qatar
Cultural estrangement?
EEG as a smartphone peripheral, from research being undertaken at the Technical University of Denmark
Making the brain/emotions 'legible'
Emotiv headset + Nokia N900
The technological sublime?
(cc) Russ Garrett
The Dremelfuge, a piece of open-source hardware that transforms a handheld electric drill into a lab-spec centrifuge
Used by the DIYbio community to separate DNA from samples
An elegant example of the opportunities opened by 3D fabrication, that nevertheless leaves me reeling from some kind of scalar futures-vertigo
(cc) jmaclynn
Image from 'The Power of Making', an exhibition at London's V&A Museum
The first time I encounter a 3D printer, it's in a museum
Atemporality? Contextual estrangement?
So what?
Generic images of the future (Jim Dator) treat the future/s as uniform totality the green growth future, the transhuman future, the austerity future, etc.
Legacy futures (Jamais Cascio) are culturally toxic; 'bad memes'; skeumorphism writ large!
The lens of 'speculative culture', OTOH, treats the future as something more fluid
In the media-drenched 2010s, academics now prefer to talk about 'mediacy' and 'mediation', rather than media media is ubiquitous; media is the substrate.
What does it mean to talk about futurity; about futuring?
In addition to more 'mainstream' scenario and horizon-scanning work, 'futuring' can take the form of experiential scenarios (Stuart Candy, Jake Dunagan)
Cascio on legacy futures: http://www.openthefuture.com/2008/12/legacy_futures.html
So what?
Generic images of the future (Jim Dator) treat the future/s as uniform totality the green growth future, the transhuman future, the austerity future, etc.
Legacy futures (Jamais Cascio) are culturally toxic; 'bad memes'; skeumorphism writ large!
The lens of 'speculative culture', OTOH, treats the future as something more fluid
In the media-drenched 2010s, academics now prefer to talk about 'mediacy' and 'mediation', rather than media media is ubiquitous; media is the substrate.
What does it mean to talk about futurity; about futuring?
In addition to more 'mainstream' scenario and horizon-scanning work, 'futuring' can take the form of experiential scenarios (Stuart Candy, Jake Dunagan)
The 'fubar criterion' is a (sub)cultural sensitivity to weak signals
Alongside science fiction, the artifacts & images of speculative design give us a fresh, relevant vocabulary with which to talk about the future combinatorial elements, hieroglyphs (Jim Karkanias)
'Good [science fiction] supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place. A good SF universe has a coherence and internal logic that makes sense to scientists and engineers. Examples include Isaac Asimovs robots, Robert Heinleins rocket ships, and William Gibsons cyberspace ... such icons serve as hieroglyphs simple, recognizable symbols on whose significance everyone agrees.'
Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson's full article, on the failings of innovation: http://bit.ly/nQqicL
A selection of contemporary science fiction, all published post-2000, and stuffed with fresh, provocative and relevant hieroglyphs for the future-present.
'Twenty years from now is 2031. That year is not Utopia or Oblivion, its not made of sci-fi hologrammed tinsel; its just another year among many, and most of its working parts are already scattered around.'
Bruce Sterling
Taken from here: http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/twenty-years-fore-aft/
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