summ( )n

Last year we submitted one of our interactive, ‘exploring the futures’ concepts to the Dutch Design Ween’09 festival (you could see some sketches and a short explanation of the concept here and here). Unfortunately, due to the withdrawal of our sponsors in the last moment, we didn’t completed the project, a big regret for the team.

But we didn’t abandon the idea, and in fact currently in the talks with two possible locations where we can re-install it and play in these ‘walking futures’, together with people.

Imagine our pleasant surprise when Otto found a very interesting article published recently in the Psychological Science, about the experiments Lynden Miles, Louise Nind and Neil Macrae from the University of Aberdeen who studied the experiences of ‘moving through time’. A very short description of the paper available so far tells, that:

“Although we can’t technically travel through time (yet), when we think of the past or the future we engage in a sort of mental time travel. This uniquely human ability to psychologically travel through time arguably sets us apart from other species.

“These findings suggest that chronesthesia may be grounded in processes that link spatial and temporal metaphors (e.g., future= forward, past= backward) to our systems of perception and action. “The embodiment of time and space yields an overt behavioral marker of an otherwise invisible mental operation,” explains Miles and colleagues.

For me the study is an excellent conformation – but of course not of ‘interlinkage of spatial and temporal metaphors’, but rather of the fact that ‘culture works’ (and did someone doubt?). This strikingly resembles the famous Alice’s “if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds”. If your culture trains people to see the future ‘ahead’ and ‘forward’, and the past – ‘behind’ and ‘backward’, then – oh, what a surprise for ‘British Scientists’ that – at the end people tend to experience the world this way.

That’s exactly the reason why our installation will work as a challenge, a provocation to that cultural nor, and that’s why it will be creating a powerful ‘transfer’ for the participants.

PS: I am curious if the team from Aberdeen would apply their methods to the native folks from Pandora. How quickly would they discover that the future is ‘up’ and above’, and the past is ‘down and ‘below’ in the minds of the navi?

Jan 2010 issue of the UK Wired publishes a piece on Anab Jain, an interaction designer/story-teller/TED fellow and also a founder of Superflux, “a small think-and-do tank’ based in London. Why is it interesting in the context of Summ()n? Well, according to the article, “Superflux fuses design, electronic media ad storytelling to involve audiences in shaping the future’. Almost exactly the magical recipe of us

The most famous project done by Anab & Co so far The Power of 8, performed/presented last year at the London Design Festival. The project “brought together eight people, most of who had never met each other, to imagine ‘optimistic futures’” who at the end created “an alternate ecosystem of the future called ‘Acres Green’, where people balance a pragmatic requirement to live closer to nature with their natural human impulses to subvert and control it.”

As Anab put it herself, “It’s easy to get caught up in putting products on shelves, but I think we should also dream a bit’. (We would call it ‘play a bit’)

A couple of stills from the video-installation by Sophie Clements, UK-based video-artist, who also presented some of her earlier works during the opening talk at the Plaza Plus festival in Eindhoven. Static images do not convey the whole magic of the video flow, and of course they also miss the sounds, so it is advised to look at least at the video of this project, at her web-site. I liked this feeling of a ‘digital layering’ on top of the existing ‘analogue reality’; it existed as if it followed own complex rules, and yet was gently interacting with the tangible, ‘think’ manifestation of the current world. As such, the work was missing an interactive element, but it was nevertheless very beautiful.

There was also a whole room at the Plaza Futura (nicely called ‘Sophie’s room’) presenting a sort of ‘making-of’ of the project, but which also a piece of art itself. I liked the way how the videos have been were displayed, projected at the pieces of glass hanging in a space. It was creating almost a ghost-like feeling, with something 3D-ish moving alive in the air.

Tomorrow is an opening of Plaza Plus, a new art festival in Eindhoven (‘new’ here has a double meaning, both as in ‘new art’ and as a new beginning for Plaza Futura cinema that hosts the event). Judging by the program, these should be very interesting evening, and I am looking forward to enjoying those shows and performances we will manages to attend.

Those who are at least remotely familiar with the Spiral Dynamics theory could not stop their smiles when learning about the Color of The Year according to Pantone , one of the kings of colors. Every year they proclaim a certain color as a champion, and in 2010 the prize goes to…. Turquoise!

The according to Pantone:

“In many cultures, Turquoise occupies a very special position in the world of color ” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “It is believed to be a protective talisman, a color of deep compassion and healing, and a color of faith and truth, inspired by water and sky. Through years of color word-association studies, we also find that Turquoise represents an escape to many – taking them to a tropical paradise that is pleasant and inviting, even if only a fantasy.”

Dr. Graves is remarkable close, yet of course in his own way:

“The basic theme of Turquoise holistic vMeme is to experience the wholeness of existence through mind and spirit.
The world is a single, dynamic organism with its own collective mind.
Self is both distinct and a blended part of a larger, compassionate whole.
Everything connects to everything else in ecological alignment.
Energy and information permeate the Earth’s total environment.
Holistic, intuitive thinking and cooperative actions are to be expected.”

I wonder how many more millions this color selection will place into the bank of this movie’s creator?

This is a print screen of yet another new company, called MetaClue (the clue – it means “ambition to deliver lasting value, beyond ‘solutions’).

The company was opened by Dolf Wittkamper, a colleague of mine for many years, and a close collaborator in the projects related to the Second Life and metaverse/serious games in general.

We are already doing one project together, and many more in the brewing barrels, so – good luck, and deep waters for the big sheep!

Today was an important day for Summ()n – after almost half a year of its existence in a ‘stealth form’ – active, but invisible, the agency was actually registered in a local Chamber of Commerce. So, Summ()n from now on is not only a ‘team of professionals’, but a legal entity too. Hurray!

The very first working day of the new year was, in fact, a very working one! The gentlemen on the above picture (and I believe one lady among them) are actively plotting a complex collaborative project. The first step is to submit a proposal for a subsidy from a Dutch agency supporting innovation and regional development carried by SMEs. Because of such a large number of potential participants, the common denominator is rather vague at the moment, and goes as ‘development of RFiD/web infrastructure and applications to support regional and personal development’. Despite this foggy language, each team has its own specific and tangible goals to achieve (at least so Summ()n), and we are happy to join forces with the rest.

It was quite symbolic that the meeting was held right opposite to the office of Philips Design; it look at the right spot and the picture below, one case see my old desk

The holidays is also a time for reading – or at least browsing the booked you bought with the dreams to read one day. Just before New Year I bought this book with the story of Alice in Wonderland (this is not exactly the text by Carroll, but rather a version told by Harriet Castor, and with beautiful illustrations by Zdenko Basic. The book was Dutch, but it was ok with me, because I mostly bought because of the pictures (although an official version was ‘to study Dutch’).

I was surprised, however, when I found that the English language version is not for sale till March 2010 (at least at the Amazon). I was also surprised when I found there a large amount items (books, movies, gifts of all sort) related to Alice which I never seen before; almost without exception they for sale only from March.

I soon realized this magical star/hole which both created this rush of (re)publications and at the same time halted them from materialization.

This new movie, with charming Johny Depp starring as the Mad Hatter is due in March 2010, and an amazing magic of market forces bend all these other items to this date, in the attempt to benefit from the cross-sales. A funny case of self-fulfilling prophecies, when someone anchor a very powerful attractor at some point in the ‘future’, and the myriads of forces and agencies start swarming and self-organizing around this ‘anchor’, thus making this prophecy happen.

Winter holidays are a sleepy and tranquil time by the very nature, especially when the nature is freezingly cold (as it should, in fact, in winter). To somehow wake up, we went to one of the nearest forest, to make a short walk. It was all quite and still, no movement, no speed, time stopped. It was getting dark too, so when I tried to take some pictures of the beautiful thickets, the exposure was too long, and the images start getting blurry.

At some point I decided not to fight with force, but go along with, namely, I started to deliberately take the pictures with very long exposures, and move camera during the shots. All of a suddenly, previously frozen environment exploded and burst in ‘flames’. There were hidden energy hidden between every branch, behind every tree, and even earlier indifferent skies became agile and playful.

So is the futures; they seem to be ‘laying there’, as if ‘waiting’ for us somewhere ahead. In reality (or in hyper-reality?) they are already here, and around us, what is needed is ‘just’ another way to look at this surroundings.