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/