summ( )n

Before the postings like that one has to add a disclaimer, something like ‘I don’t work for James Cameron’ or ‘I am not an employee of the XX Fox”, otherwise it may seem as a blunt promotion and flattery.

We’ve seen the Avatar the other day, and it’s simply astonishingly beautiful movie. A world making full-scale. I am sure the 3D effect and a special camera specially invented by Cameron for the movie are all important, but they still fade compared to the epic narrative describing the Pandora world.

I am not that happy with the plot itself, it’s too banal and linear, a classical Hollywood crap; yet the beauty and complexity of the ‘bacdrop’ forces one to forgive nearly every flaw in the script or actor play (which in fact quite good, with a couple of exceptions). The very lighting effects and interaction patterns with various luminescent sources the movie make it a must-see for every designer.

Wired publishes a short piece about this world-making exercise (Inventing Effects to Create the Avatar Universe ), but it only hints to the multiple stream of demiurgic activities: creation of fantastic geology allowing flying mountains, flora and fauna, together with a complete systematic descriptions of all the creatures, culture and the language of the aboriginal Na’vi folks.

The world is so rich that it would be a real pity if all this treasures are spent on the very movie only. There is of course a game already available, but from what I can judge, it doesn’t bring much merit to this world. It has to live its own life, perhaps in a form of a complex multi-player virtual reality, something resembling Blue Mars, but better, with an opportunity to make your own things, and plots, and rules; a wiki-universum of Pandora.

Today I wrote and ‘sent to all’ in Philips Design my last goodbye-mail, officially demarcating a new life phase from January. This new life will be very much with Summ()n, and I hope this project will really take off next year, when my lengthy divorce with the company will be over. Of course, it was also a hello-letter, signaling a new type of relationships with people, and with this very organization (we plan to do some projects for Philips Design, but already as the external vendors).

Due to the seasonal situation, it was inevitable a ‘Merry X-mas/Happy New Year’ mail too, and I sent the image above as a greeting card. Not a simple nice card, but a magical one too: specially from Summ()n, I embedded in it a portal to the future. If you gaze at the center of the card long enough (and with a right enough attitude) you can see you future there. Or a few, if you are lucky.

Yesterday I went to a meeting of a Pancake Society called by Josephine Green, who for many years was a head of the future research practice in Philips Design. Of course, ‘pancake’ here refers not to a “a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle”, but rather to an emerging framework of the future societal organization. The framework has been developed and propagated by Josephine over the years, and her Pyramids to Pancakes story inspired and mobilized numerous followers, both inside Philips and in other companies and organizations.

As a matter of fact, it’s not quite easy to explain what the ‘pancakes future’ means. There is still no website or a portal of some sort where one can be referred to to learn about this framework. There are a few texts available (most notably, a short paper called Democratizing the Future [pdf]. But still, most of the knowledge exists in a form of her presentations and talks; she is a (hyper)active speaker and presenter, and as a quick google search shows, is seemingly everywhere, and often in a few different places at the same time. Her passionate and performative speeches ignite a growing number of the disciples, who are eager to seek and enable changes.

This meeting was a gathering of such enthusiastic followers, from various (more or less pancakish) companies and organizations who came to share their thoughts, ideas, experiences – but also feelings – about the changes in the world around, and in ourselves. But they came to not only share thoughts and opinions: the subtitle of meeting was “from inspiration to action’, and one of the goals was to start a new Thing-Do-Tank, to further promote and develop (to ‘cook’) new pancakes.

It was a very intensive intellectual debate, but also a warm and almost homey gathering. I enjoyed it very much and felt privileged to be with these people. But one of the consequences of this very special involving atmosphere was that I didn’t want to get my camera out and take ‘proper’ pictures. I feel that it would disconnect me from the flow, and managed to only snap a couple of shots with my iPhone. No usual image flow this time.

The hostess of the meeting, Josephine, has of course a very special meaning to me. In some sense, it was her who dragged me into a whole ‘future’ business, by inviting to join her newly shaped team at Philips Design more than ten years ago. We run many, many interesting projects during these last ten years when we worked together. She has been also incredibly supportive to my last adventures, into blending experience design, gaming, and co-creation with future studies, and as such can be called a blessing goddess of Summ()n. This doesn’t mean that she always ‘buys’ what I am trying to ‘sell’ (and vice versa), and our conversation often evolve into fierce arguings and heated debates; but this only makes them ever more inspiring and memorable. Lots of memories, indeed, and lots of learnings, too.

And a lot of stories had been told again this time again, about Frogs, and Princesses, about Paradigms and Transformations (and about Pancakes too, of course). But it wasn’t all about nostalgic reminiscences, it’s was about the futures too (more about the futures, in fact!) Perhaps, it is not a coincidence that we leave Philips Design at the same time, and I feel that’s only a beginning of something new, and foresee many interesting stories, and interesting projects ahead.

But it was the Intimacy, a new joint project by Daan Roosegaarde and V2 that became a true hit of the evening. Presented in a cat-walk form, the new electronic dress developed by Daan and designed by Maartje Dijkstra attracted all the eyes in the audience and all the lenses of the photographers.

The technology used in the dress was not, perhaps, the most simple one, but from the interface and interaction point of view it was performing a relatively simple task: the ‘fabric’ was stayed semi-transparent, almost see-through while the viewers were at certain distance, but became opaque if they were getting closer. The dress was apparently reacting to the physical presence of the people around, but could also be triggered by a special ‘interactive ball’, an option which many men in the audience were very eager to try (by the way, the model was stunning).

The debates around the concept were quite hot (partly because by then the show lasted almost two hours, in a close room with a hundred of people in). Is this technology is to reveal or to conceal? Is it aimed to free and empower women or to further subordinate them to the men with the interactive balls?

That was says Daan himself:

A lot is happening in the wearable world, but often it’s very D.I.Y. I would really like to make something that’s quite “slick,” in a good way. I think wearables have enormous potential, but we have to take it to a higher level – for example, by showing that you can use technology to compel intimacy. I really want to add value to electronic culture by bringing it inside other cultural circuits.

I also personally believe that wearables, due to the huge symbolic meaning of clothes, can become one of the most powerful tools for Summ()n’ projects.

Another very interesting project presented at V2 was Bare Conductive, by a young UK-based same-name collective. As everything really beautiful, the idea behind it is simple and seemingly non-sophisticated. Using electroconductive properties of ink, the team developed a safe, non-toxic and easily washable version of it, and start experimenting with the ‘embedded circuitry’.

To illustrate both technological and artistic capacities, two dancers performed a wonderful multimedia dance, producing different sounds by touching each other by different parts of their bodies (thus dynamically creating various circuits). This was a very expressive show, nice. but also ‘usefully nice’. I spoke with Isabel and Stan, from Bare Conductive, and would love to further explore possibilities of using this fantastic ink in one of the future projects of Summ()n.

When I finally got into the V2, Lucy was already in the middle of her slideshow; in way, I didn’t miss much, because I know Lucy McRae and enjoy her works for years already. But of course, to listen to the ‘makig of’ story is always a revelation, and a lesson. I was also glad to see few of her latest works presented, like the ‘pin-skin’, especially impressive in the movie with a breathing chest.

I also like the ‘Tube Skin’ project, I recently noticed an array of the projects in this direction, from the works by Julius Popp to a few latest projects presented this year at Ars Electronica.

The same day I also went to Rotterdam, to attend the V2′s Test_Lab ; the event was fully packed, to the extent that they even didn’t want to let me in, and only my story that I am from ‘far away land’, and that I spent two and half hour driving somehow softened their hard hearts. The ‘two and a half hour’ was not, actually, an exaggeration (the average driving time to Rotterdam from us is ±1.5 hours); there was a huge traffic accident on the way, near Tilburg, with four or five cars involved.

I write it here not only because it adds some sort of ‘drama’ and ‘authenticity’ to the story, but also because of the thoughts I had during an hour-long waiting in this traffic jam. Some of them were of an all too familiar kind, such as “why do we keep developing all those fancy intimate interfaces yet are not able to develop safe cars? or a traffic system in general?” Of course, there were also the usual thoughts on ‘Black Swans’ of unpredictable events which we keep ignoring when planning our possible futures.

While some other thoughts were of almost polar direction, that we did, in fact, develop very elaborate and sophisticated systems, and interfaces, and that these complex and multilayered socio-technological systems allow us coping with ever turbulent realities. The work of the police and fire brigades, ambulances and, I assume, media teams resembled a complex dance, very organized and beautiful.

Last Thursday I went to the last public gathering of (and at) the Baltan Lab this year, where they presented the work by Bas van Koolwijk and Gert-Jan Prins. The two Dutch artist developed their own device called Sunchronator that allows bridging the sound and video worlds (“enabling cross-media dialogue”, as it was somewhat poetically described by someone from audience).

As I soon understood, I’ve already seen their work during the earlier Future of the Lab gathering, but back then I didn’t know that those beautiful visual patterns were by them. This time we experienced a more polymodal performance, with a conversion of the audio flow into weird, yet mesmerizing imagery dancing on the TV screens.

A few more images from the event can be found here.

PS: I wonder whether this whole IoT shouldn’t be dealing more with such ‘bridges’, helping people to connect apparently disconnected realms into a more synchronized, synthetic reality.

Metropolis, an influential Dutch bi-monthly magazine on art and cultural developments, dedicates its latest, Oct-Nov issues to “games”. Those may be not exactly the games we would like played in, and by museums and galleries, but still quite a significant step.

I write about it not only because I bought this issue today, but also because we had a very good meeting with Hadas Zemer, who is currently in charge of of experience design in Vanabbe museum. This was a very enriching and inspirational conversation, and I hope we will continue this dialogue in the future. I wrote about Play Vanabbe program already (and must write more about few excellent projects I’ve seen in the museum during the Design Week). I would be most happy to get involved in one of its next stages of Play Vanabbe; to develop a ‘serious game’ for this museum would be a ‘dream come true’. (I only very recently realized that Vanabbe was the very first museum I managed to visit in Holland, more than ten years ago).

Today I met Dave Snowden in Amsterdam, from Cognitive Edge. Although our conversation was necessarily short, we agreed that I would join one of their accreditation courses, most likely the one on London, in Feb 2010, thus joining their network.

Cognitive Edge is one of the (still very few) consultancies that actively applies the principles of complexity, non-linear dynamics and system theory in their work. They have their own proprietary software toolkit (SenseMaker), based on narratological analysis of multi-modal and multi-format input, and yet their consulting methods can be described as open source ones. But the most valuable resource of the team (besides their bright and thought-provoking ‘chief scientist’ Dave) is the 400+ network of practitioners, distributed over the glove and over the industries, academia and governments.

I am obviously interested in applying both their tools and the general framework to the future studies (‘futures as a dynamic fuzzy set’ is my hobby-horse for quite some time already). Apparently, CE has done a few projects on micro-scenario developments, and I am looking forward to learning more on that, and other areas of applications. Although it is not the very first priority, we also discussed the possibilities of co-development of the software tools in the future.

PS: Funny enough, one of their tool is called The Future, Backwards. In essence, this seems to be a (relatively) simple method of backcasting, but the name resonates with our own installation, Walking Backward to the Future. Serendipity rulez.