A while ago, we highlighted Tom Klinkowstein and Irene Pereyra‘s fascinating project depicting a day in the life of a networked designer’s smart things or a day in a designer’s networked smart things, 2030. The future, design, technology, a fascinating approach … more than enough good ingredients for an even better interview with both designers.

Enjoy!

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Few experiences awaken a dialogue with possible futures ahead of us, or renders them tangible via a change of perspective as well as describing ‘a day in the life of’ a person x years ahead in time.

At Pantopicon, we often challenge our clients (as well as students) to shed today’s skin and crawl into that of somebody else in a tomorrow’s world: a client, a citizen, a farmer, a dentist, etc. As they engage in describing as meticulously – and poetically – as possible, the events, actions and sensations throughout a day in the life of that someone in some distant future, their minds are stretched beyond the barriers of current-day assumptions, inspired by future possibilities, threats and challenges. While, as an exercise  already being a revealing and rewarding experience in itself, the results as such can be made tangible in various ways (e.g. illustrated maps, timelines, storyboards, videos, …), sharing, communicating with and feeding further reflection and dialogue.

Irene Pereyra & Tom Klinkowstein recently presented their “day in the life of a networked designer’s smart things or a day in a designer’s networked smart things, 2030″ at the Pratt Institute. The project was made for the Singapore Design Festival and deals with an imagined designer’s day, anno 2030. Irene & Tom created a diary like wall-sized map taking the viewer on a day’s journey through the life of a designer as if sitting on her shoulder and reading the world through her mind’s eye. A smart-tech-infused future comes to life through the experience of the designer via a fascinating, diverse yet integrated storyline.

The full map can be viewed as a pdf here.

The city of Atlanta wishes to tap into the creative and visionary potential of its citizens and involve them actively in thinking about (planning for) the future goals and needs of their city and the wider region. They are looking

“to explore possible future scenarios for metro Atlanta and forge an action plan to ensure future livability, prosperity and sustainability.”

In order to facilitate this open process, they have set up Fifty Forward: Metro Atlanta’s Futures Forum. The first forum challenges people to think about sustainability and needs-balancing between current and future generations of people. Other forums may focus on challenges in terms of energy, healthcare, population and employment shifts, technological innovations etc. Check out the blog.

Among others, 4th and 5th graders were invited to design postcards from the future (looking 50 years ahead). Postcards are wonderful future artifacts for foresight & visioning projects in city or regional, spatial contexts etc., especially in terms of stimulating people to think about possible/wishful changes in the physical environment. After all, postcards feature pictures that highlight certain features, areas, icons that a city considers attractive, beautiful, important, etc. (cf. positive inclination). Furthermore, they can be often easily contrasted with ‘images of the current situation’ as to link past, present & future.

Via FringeHog

Smashing Magazine brings together some user interface design trends which are likely to become more mainstream in the short to midterm future. Examples (mostly not at all that new) include 3D projection and interaction systems such as Vizoo’s Cheoptics360, interactice tabletop interfaces such as reactable or Microsoft’s Surface, perceptivepixel‘s multi-touch screens, photobased 3D space reconstruction Microsoft’s Photosynth, 3D desktop interface BumpTop.

Via Slashdot

Retro-futurism is fun. Whether most of today’s images of the future appear all too ‘realistic’, offer merely more of the same, offer not enough future or display so much less ‘grandeur’ than those of the old days, something about the old days makes their imagery ever more inspiring today. Part propaganda, part boundless imagination, part science&tech visions rendered tangible, the material breathes ‘boundlessness’, an inspiring lack of fear to tread uncharted territory, to think beyond obstacles and boundaries (real or imaginary because unknown).

Check out DarkRoastedBlend for some old Soviet space-race imagery, but also German, Italian, British images of yesterday’s future. Even though similar themes are covered as in American popular science posters of the same periods, cultural differences in envisioning the future and depicting it are noticeable, which makes retro-futuristic imagery – linked to the societal context in which they took shape – ever more interesting.

Image courtesy of retro-futurismus.de

The ever-inspiring design firm IDEO put together a nice concept video of a UMPC (UltraMobilePC) future for Intel. Focus is clearly on the possibilities and enabling factors of the technology and a tiny bit on its impact on some aspects of social life (e.g. headphone parties). It shows much less how ‘the future’ (or futures) as a new context influences the design, features or usage of the technology. Yet the video does show once more how strong the impact is of making the future (products and services) tangible. As such the video is definitely a springboard for discussion.

Via NoiseBetweenStations

Bryant Rousseau of Architectural Record interviews William Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at MIT and director of MIT’s Design Laboratory, author of fascinating books such as e-topia: Urban Life, Jim—But Not As We Know It and ME++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked city. Mitchell speaks about future challenges for our cities, for the architectural profession, etc. Check out the video and/or read onwards.

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While some worry about protecting their houses against alien-invasions (cf. Cruise’s bunker plans), climate change makes many governments worry about rising sea levels and protecting their citizens from water. ‘Fight or embrace’ seem to be the two main categories of choice in how to deal with it.

We already featured waterbound living solutions designed by visionaries such as Jacque Fresco and many will have heard about Joachim Hauser’s Hydropolis underwater hotel being constructed in Dubai.

The Giancarlo Zema Design Group, an ‘innovative semisubmerged architecture studio’ as they label themselves, developed inspiring waterbound habitats such as the Jellyfish 45, Trilobis 65, the Neptus 60 cliff house, the semi-submerged Frond Village 30 in Tahiti or the Amphibious 1000 luxury resort … etc.

While such developments might seem far-off to some, the development and production of such solutions is (or is becoming) a current business niche. The what if question becomes interesting when certain drivers have the potential to push such developments from niche in the direction of common awareness or mainstream use.

For a long time, Japan has been aware of a tremendous challenge it faces, which is the rapid ageing of its population. Instead of focusing unilaterally on medicine, medical care, labor and social security system innovations, as many countries do, Japan has been investing heavily in robotics and cybernetics in order to amplify and expand its shrinking ‘human’ workforce as well as help to cater for the needs of elderly.

“What would it be like to live in a world in which robotic assistants are ubiquitous?”, was a question burning in the back of Martin Postler‘s mind. Starting at the Kyoto University of Arts and finishing it at the Royal College of Arts Design Products Department, he ran a project titled “Life/Machines”.

“Life Machines engages with the question of how an ageing population’s needs can be met through technology. It investigates a possible future society in which humans and robots coexist in domestic spaces and asks what issues arise in a symbiotic relationship between humans and technology. Questions about what kind of compromises and adjustments will have to be made are explored through scenarios of everyday routines in the relationship of an ageing individual and a robot. The design of domestic objects that reflect the needs of both machines and humans becomes a tool for exploring the human condition and our fascination with using technology to recreate ourselves.”

In a fascinating, very tangible and confronting way, the project gives a what if look into a possible future, questioning both the human and robotic condition. Several contextual themes shaped by human needs such as nutrition, hygiene and leisure are addressed.

Note: Do check out also PostlerFerguson’s other fascinating work on their website. As a matter of fact they also exhibited new work on futures of food during London’s Design Week in an exhibition titled “The future on your plate” at Designersblock07.

Via WeMakeMoneyNotArt, image courtesy of Martin Postler

Most of you over here in Europe will know South-African director and filmmaker Neill Blomkamp as the man behind the Citroën Transformer ad. More interestingly Neill developed a unique personal style in blending live action with computer graphics. In a powerful and very convincing, believable documentary kind of way he brings robotic futures to life.

Alive in Joburg shows a future in which robots and aliens live amongst people in the South-African townships. Make sure to check out Tetra Vaal as well, or Tempbot, in which a company has a robot as an intern …

Documentaries provide a tapestry, a weaving of information from different perspectives in a sober ‘observatory’, report-like style that enhances believability. As such, the format is particularly powerful to ‘report’ on yet inexistent situations, to bring possible futures to life as if they were today.

Note: Neill has been filming on our doorstep, in front of our offices here in Antwerp this June. Next time you are around, Neill, make sure to give us a ring …

Another amazing robot-related commercial was done by Dante Ariola and Christopher Glass for Johnnie Walker. Dubbed ‘Human‘, the ad – done in cooperation with The Mill (see making-of) – reflects in a smart way upon the manner in which robots and humans look at each other’s reality, each other’s ‘being’.

We all know that statistics can reveal interesting things. While their data might be revealing in itself, it is the information in terms of correlations and comparisons that best illustrate statistics added value. But the way in which we ‘communicate’ and ‘experience’ statistics makes all the difference.

Many books have been written on the topic of the visualization and communication of statistics, such as the marvellous works of Edward Tufte (e.g. the visual display of quantitative information, visual explanations: images and quantities, evidence and narrative). Statistics can tell stories and stories – because they contextualize, they bring closer and render abstractions tangible, experiencable – can influence actions, decisions.

In his second talk at TED, Professor of International Health at the renowned Swedish Karolinska Institutet, and co-founder of GapMinder (now part of Google Tools), Hans Rosling shows how statistics can tell their stories in a better way, touching heart and senses as much as mind and calculators.

Not only does he make use of his by now famous animated graphs (cf. Trendalyzer) showing the evolution of data and correlations over time, he also brings in a personal dimension by linking the data over time to for example family events, thereby enhancing the meaningfulness of the stats to its audience (cf. ‘grandma verified statistics’). Rosling also showed Dollarstreet, a project in which the annual income of families across time and the impact thereof on their life situation is brought to life. What does living on 1$ a day mean? How does it compare to 5$ or 10$? What does it mean? Look at the house, the sanitary conditions, the kitchen, the sofa … in the families’ houses and experience the meaning of sheer numbers.

From data and mind to sense and heart …
Image courtesy of gapminder.org

The city-tour foundation Antwerpen Averechts recently launched a new initiative called the cityLabo. CityLabo wishes to question people’s relationship with their city, to interact with and dialogue with them through various means. How do inhabitants and visitors of the city experience their city of the 21st century? Will it be a safe haven or a grim environment? What does the ideal city look like for a common urban dweller or an urban expert, planner, architect? What could these parties mean to each other?

CityLabo currently organizes an exhibition at the Permeke city library in Antwerp (Belgium), featuring the work of eight young graphic illustrators who draw their future city as they hope, fear, expect it to be.

The ever-eloquent Marshall McLuhan once said: “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”

It is a quote we often refer to as we try to raise people’s awareness of our human tendency to explain today’s developments and trends in terms of the past or look at what might be tomorrow in terms of today or even yesterday. Past, present and future often appear as a tapestry woven out of assumptions based upon past experience.

At the same time, we make frequent use of techniques to bring possible futures closer to people and render them ‘experiencable’ by describing or visualizing them in a way that it seems as if they were our present context today. Diaries set in 2027 describing events of 2016 as past events, news-bulletins anno 2043, artifacts dug up from the year 2056, etc. … they instantiate, make ‘present’, that which is not there yet.

Brain imaging research at the University of Washington in St-Louis now sheds light on the regions of the brain we use to imagine future events. It turns out they strongly overlap with the regions we use to recollect the past.

“Postexperiment questionnaires indicate that while envisioning the future, subjects tended to place those images in the context of familiar places (e.g., home, school) and familiar people (e.g., friends).” In other words, to imagine the future, we remember the past and put our projection in that context.

When we use persona-like techniques to help people envision and get a grip on ‘characters’ in an altered future context, this is in a sense what happens. Part of the current persona context is taken along and reshaped based upon the effects of future influences, providing people with a grip to explore the unknown future context using present and past experiences.

Thanks to Mark for pointing out the link to me.

The Swiss city of Yverdon-les-Bains – where Diller+Scofidio set up their famous blur building during the 2002 Swiss Expo – features a unique museum, called La Maison d’Ailleurs (the House of Elsewhere), dedicated to science fiction, utopia and extraordinary journeys. The museum will soon also feature a Jules Verne Exhibition Space.

Recent exhibitions include the work of our visionary belgian Luc Schuiten (indeed, brother of), photographer Mario del Curto’s, the Blue Man etc.

The current exhibition ‘Entropia‘ features the work of Christian Lorenz-Scheurer (Swiss-born, attended art-school in Brussels), the illustrator/matte-painter/concept designer for movies such as Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, the Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix and Peter Chung’s The Animatrix, Vincent Ward’s What Dreams May Come and Alex Proyas’ Dark City.

Currently, (until October 28th 2007) there’s also a fascinating exhibition (incl. lecture series MundAgoras) on the topic of utopias going on at the Mundaneum in Mons (Belgium), titled Utopia, de l’Atlantide aux cités du futur.

Also in Belgium, at the Museum of Fine Arts (BOZAR) in Brussels (until September 16th 2007), sixteen architects and urban designers enrolled at the renowned Berlage Institute in Rotterdam (Netherlands) share with the world their visions of Brussels as a European capital in an exhibition titled A Vision for Brussels: Imagining the Captial of Europe.

Asking architects to dream about future/futuristic dwellings and cities for the movie industry is nothing new. Asking sci-fi matte painters and concept designers from the movie industry to lecture to and inspire architects is perhaps more so.

This is exactly what architecture futurist Geoff Manaugh did: on May 8th, at the Art Center College of Design, he invited the amazing Ryan Church, James Clyne, Mark Goerner and Ben Procter (see also here) to give their take on future architecture. In addition, three films were shown: Giant Robot, K.I.L.L., 2x4x96.

It is interesting to see how matte painters in a sense also work in a scenario-based way, by designing e.g. a cityscape by seeing it as connected to and co-shaped by the society of which it is part. We already highlighted the work of Syd Mead in this respect.
As a matter of fact, we got a nice email from Joaquin Montalvan the other day, who was so kind to let us know that his movie ‘Visual Futurist: the art and life of Syd Mead’ is finally out and available to the public.