Continued experiments in prototyping futures to understand our present
Sampling of submissions by From the Futures collaborators
The following post was written in collaboration with Romy Nehme of Beautiful Seams.
When we step back and look at what is surfacing within the From the Futures project, we’re struck by the shared ethnography of a unique moment in history. This was especially evident as we entered our “Food From the Futures” session on April 23rd. Like many things in the world at the moment the subject of food is ripe with memories, longings and a great deal of uncertainty about what the future holds.
Prior to the event we asked over 800 collaborators from more than 40 countries to share their relationship to food during COVID19. We received stories, photographs and recipes from around the world.
A submission by a From the Futures collaborator
A submission by a From the Futures collaborator
A submission by a From the Futures collaborator
A submission by a From the Futures collaborator
Simultaneously, other collaborators swarmed into Miro to drop research signals.
The stories, photographs and recipes submitted by collaborators became “signals” for the “Food from the Futures” session. In speculative design signals are like breadcrumbs to the future. Once you can identify them you realize they are all around us. For instance, signals might be found within a headline/news story or maybe discovered through an emerging trend or even an internet meme.
A recent example of a “signal” can be found within an article from Bloomberg about the rise of rice ATMs in Vietnam.
“You are all oracles able to peer into the future, and more than that, agents of change that have the power to spark a disruption in the present in order to alter the course of the future.”
Signals are often broken into two categories
ETHNOGRAPHIC “SIGNALS” — these are based on people’s firsthand experiences, feelings and intuitions as a result of being sensing humans in the world.
RESEARCH “SIGNALS”: environmental, social, technological, political, art and economic “signals” (based on the STEEP framework). They can be one of two things Challenges or Accelerants — and both are catalysts for imagining different futures if wedged open wider.:
a) Tensions are frictions in a system
b) Accelerants are signs of the future hiding in the present
Each From the Futures sessions contains an ignite style talk that is intended to inspire and provoke. Allie Wist presented a talk on “Food Futures and Climate.” Wist is an artist whose work is anchored in food culture, climate change and global landscapes. She creates narratives through visual and experiential expressions which reexamine our collective consumption identities and histories.
During the talk participants were encouraged to take notes of what surprised and challenged them based on what Allie was presenting.
Combined surprises and challenges from Food From the Future collaborators created in captured in real-time via a Miro board
Later these surprises and challenges were transferred to virtual post-it’s within a Miro board. Each post-it was then classified as either a surprise or challenge. Together the surprises and challenges became another source of insight for the prototyping session that would follow.
Teams work within miro boards
From the Futures sessions include the co-creation of future artifacts. These artifacts can take the form of a piece of art, news story, a future product or service, a PSA, an advertisement, a game, a song and/or a performance etc. The artifact itself is not a solution to a problem; instead, its purpose is to present a window into a future world and provide a jumping off point for conversation, collaboration and learning.
As the teams began to prototype Food Futures artifacts they were given cards to help spark their ideation. The cards featured signals and departure points as the biggest challenge in imagining is usually gaining enough distance from the present . The generativity of the exercise is key.
The signals as mentioned above were both ethnographic and research based. Collected prior to and during the session, each of the signals represented a breadcrumb to the future.
The departure point was crafted as a “What if…” question that was informed by a number of curated signals. Its purpose is to bifurcate from The Way Things Are.
The “What if…” provided a jumping off point and acted as a framing device for the Food Futures artifact that each team would co-create.
Every team’s artifact lives within a future scenario. A scenario is a future setting where certain conditions are altered. Because these conditions are altered, the rules and logic of the world are different, people’s assumptions are different than ours today, the humans within this world think and behave differently, and the world responds differently to their actions.
A scenario sets the stage for strange and unexpected things to happen. In the process the scenario provides an interesting way for teams to co-create artifacts. It helps to transport teams into a realm of the unknown and encourages them to embrace “yes and thinking” because traditional rules don’t apply.
In subsequent posts we’ll dive into the prototyping process of artifacts and what teams have produced thus far.
From the Futures is a living breathing experiment that is emergent. The project strives to capture a unique moment in time from a diversity of perspectives. The bi-weekly sessions provide an opportunity for virtual connection in a time of physical distancing. At the same time the project strives to establish an open virtual space for learning, doing and sharing. Our hope is that together we can uncover signals that help us to find our way towards better futures.
Public Spaces From the Futures
Thursday, May 7th @ 12:30PM ET
As we continue to indefinitely shelter in place, space is contracting, time is distending, social relations feel like a foreign and forbidden concept and the vibrancy of our public spaces an endangered species.What do we lose when we step away from being with others? How can we rebuild our notion of place once those spaces are once again ours to reclaim? Join us to reimagine public space with a community of strangers from all over the world.
From the Futures is a collaboration between Columbia DSL, Fake Artists, Minkowski and Beautiful Seams. The project is released under a creative commons 4.0 license — open to all to remix and share. Those who enter the sessions will become part of an open learning and art-making project. What is gathered during the sessions will become part of an open global art project and learning resource that will be shared virtually and IRL.
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