summ( )n

Great news – our concept, of Walking Backward to the Future, was accepted by the Dutch Design Week‘s committee! I presented both Summ()n and the concept yesterday, and it was very well received by both main project manager of DDW and one of their curators. They were ‘slightly’ concerned with the size of the installation – first, because they were afraid we wouldn’t be able to ‘summon’ it in time, but more importantly – because they didn’t have any more space left in the main building of the event (so called Klokgebouw).

But they loved the concept and wanted to have it at the DDW, so they invited us to come today again, and think about a. perhaps a slightly simplified version of the installation, and b. possibility to place it in the exit area of the building. The last options is really worth to explore, in that case the WBF will be the *very last* impression of the visitors, a great chance to place it deep into their memories.

So, today we met and were finally accepted into the show; the exact location and shape of the installation is still to be decided later, but in principle the deal is done!

‘Walking Backward to the Futures’ is an interactive installation where people – literally – walk backward and try navigating their way to the ‘future’ using complex visual cues and audiovisual feedback.

In our culture we tend to see the future laying ‘ahead of us”; we walk ‘toward the future”, leaving the past “behind us”. We try get higher to ‘look far and further’. For many people, however, these time/space relationships are different. What they see in front is, in fact, the past, the already known. The future is what lies “behind their back”; It can not be seen.

We would like to reply this experience and suggest people to walk backward and find their way using the clues they see in front of them (in the ‘past’). We will use a set of abstract visuals (photographs) as such visual cues. When walking in an installation space, a person will be wearing a hood, a helmet of some kind. This hood will be preventing the person from ‘cheating’ and looking behind. But more importantly, the hood will provide a positive, reinforcing feedback if the person correctly follows the pattern of the picture, and a negative feedback (an alarming sound) if the person deviates from the ‘correct’ route. To do that, the helmet will have an in-mounted headset and a device to track person’s location within the installation.

Of course, the futures will not be predefined – otherwise it will be a mere ‘Pavlovian dog’ type of experiment. The ‘future’ in this installation will be constantly changing, depending on the actions (or inactions) of the participants. The experience of the installation will people to revisit – re-walk – their ideas about possible and desirable futures, and explore how their actions change these futurescapes.

Moments of the Future Telling game with played with the team from Design Initiatief to explore possible scenarios of the Netherlands in 15 years from now, in 2024. The game was received very enthusiastically by all 20+ participants (despite an awfully hot afternoon in Utrecht).

Civilization, by Marco Brambilla, is a stunning video installation designed for the elevators of the Standard Hotel in New York.

“The video mural depicts a journey from Hell to Heaven interpreted through modern film language using computer-enhanced found footage,” writes Eric Melin who also compares this art+technology work with the epic visual narratives of the Garden of Earthly Delight by Hieronymus Bosch. “This epic video mural contains over 300 individual channels of looped video blended into a multi-layered seamless tableau of interconnecting images that illustrate a contemporary, satirical take on the concepts of Heaven and Hell.”

I like the idea of re-place-ing and re-playing this old, archetypical story in a hyper-modern context, and also enacting a dramatic Dante-like journey using a banal elevator. The most obvious reading of the journey is from Bottom to the Top (from the Past to the Future?), but in fact the spatial organization is more complex. Both Hell and Heave are the futures, and both are possible.

Wonder if they they heat the cabin when passing the Hell.

Philips Design has published its quarterly ezine, New Value News, with a few materials about ‘serious games’ and their use in design and innovation- see Playful Innovation (small intro and pdf) . This basically a short description of one of such games – Spark, a tiny, cute boardgame that helps in generating so called ‘insights’ during so called ‘ideation workshops’. This is not really a self-standing game, but rather an element of quite a rigid workshop structure, but well, it’s still fun to play.

Another publication, Playing with Futures, is a small piece about serious games as a tool to explore possible futures. There are few relatively well-known examples there, and another game developed by Philips Design (i.e., by Otto and myself), which we titled ‘Building Futures’.

[The] “game developed by Philips Design for Design Initiatief, a new Dutch organization helping businesses collaborate and co-create new future-proof solutions. In this game, different teams construct possible futures in an interactive and competitive way, using ideas as building bricks for their projects. Importantly, people not only ‘imagine’ new futures, but are also ‘live’ and ‘work’ in them – preparing and transforming themselves for new emerging realities.”

Just found information about Hacking at Random, four day festival in the Dutch city Vierhouten, to be held in August 13-16 (allegedly a ‘Woodstock for the hackers’, of all trades).

The program looks interesting, and there is a lot of different formats (workshops, contests, games etc). Should we try to pitch with our own ‘game’, such as the one we discussed, ‘Walking Backward to the Future’? Could just offer to play it spontaneously, at the site.

Atlas Of The Futures Workshop is an annual workshop held for four years with aim at discovering possible futures.

The first Atlas was just a bunch of people who started to talk in online conference over some topics of their own interest, speaking of nearest future and ways to make it “better”. After a weeks of hot discussion they came to conclusion “future is in our kids” and have focused on learning, creativity and, of course, gaming.

They pictured some desired future and some of them, me included, made some effort on realisation of that future. Some impact from their work could be found, for instance, on one of Russian social blogging network.

Atlas next year was started as a future research around adoption of mobile interfaces and positioning — we have looked for possible ways it will change the world and planted some projects on the ground of our thoughts.

Atlas for 2008 was, again, around learning, education and new ecology, the era of humane magica. We have realised our insights in several workshops and started some new spin-offs again.

Atlas of the Futures 2009 is about the futures of the Web.

Last ten years I worked with the Strategic Future Design Team of Philips Design, where I lead or participated in numerous projects for both Philips and external clients. I was trying to support design and innovation teams by sharing both information and inspiration, my knowledge about possible futures, social and cultural developments in different regions. My other role was to help to (hopefully) better understand people and their living in multiple contexts, and eventually involve people and designers in co-research and co-design. In addition to ‘normal’ business projects, I also participated in R&D programs, including Ambient Intelligence, Experience Design, and future-focused Design Probes. Over these ten years I managed to develop quite a few new tools and methods for people research, futures studies, and innovation design.

During last few years I has been increasingly exploring the potential of digital tools (of all sorts) in supporting the design process. This included multiple social web platforms, virtual worlds, multiplayer online games, and hybrid interactive and experiential environments. Centralasian (later truncated to Cea) is my nick-name in many online realms (and also a name of my first blog, which I started already in 2002. In addition to this more or less private blog, I try to maintain my more professional blog, Playing Futures.

I wrote a number research papers and book chapters [at some point I need to compile a list of those]. I also relatively frequently speak at various conferences and workshops. For three years I was teaching a course on ‘People and Societies Change for Design Process’ at the Department of Industrial Design, Technical University Eindhoven, and currently seek another teaching opportunity with a University or Design School.

Before joining Philips Design I worked with a few research institutions and business consultancies, including OMRI, GfK, Burson-Marsteller, and BRiF, the very first private social research agency in Central Asia (which I was also a co-fonder of). I studied Social Sciences (with a focus on transitional economies), Clinical Psychology and earlier in my life, Mathematics.

I am a very enthusiastic photographer and keep my blog of abstract photography and since recently a web-site.