summ( )n

Last October and good part of November the blog was not very active – but Summ()n was! We’ve done a large project for Philips Design (for their ‘external’ clients, as they call them, and I can’t tell the name as yet). The scope was only Dutch, but the spread was quite wide, we worked with a wide variety of people all over the country, and from different groups (social, occupational, different gender-and age-wise). Yet we hardly move from the office – the study was done mostly online, using Revelation online tool.

Lots of rich data, lots of insights – the great side of online research is that one don’t have to wait till the end of the ‘fieldwork’ to start processing and ‘digesting’ it, but instead they become actionable immediately during the study, feeding the creative process.

I was lucky enough to get into a very interesting gathering event last week, so called Future Sketching held by the Foundation biELAt (an agency facilitating the development of the cross-border ‘triangle’ region, with Eindhoven, Aachen and Luik (or Liège) in the corners. There is a very good website providing the details about the background and the process of this event, but however nice, the process pictures do not convey the real atmosphere of the event.

For me it started in a misty morning near Genk, at the former mine now converted into business and art center C-Mine; I was somewhat puzzled with the scope of the event, and also with the list of the participants (from more than 30 different regional businesses). The event was called ‘Open Innovation’. I’ve been to quite a few of those ‘open’ things in the past, and the majority of them were quickly turning into distrustful and mutually suspicious (thus, resultless) business gatherings, so I had a few pinches of salt in my pockets.

This one, however, was very different, and from the very beginning. I guess, the ambience played a big role too: all these heavy industrial machines didn’t support the usual blah-blah, but stimulated a rather practical, working attitude.

Plus, the whole moderation was also down-to-earth, sleeves-up and no-nonsense. But I think the most important was the presence of the so called ‘owners’ of the problem, the companies who did need to come up with something innovative, yet also who also understood very well that they can’t make it alone, especially in the current, pretty gloomy context. This all created a very energizing and stimulating atmosphere.

I know that ‘energizing’, ‘stimulating’ etc may sound as those obligatory buzz-words, and it’s difficult to express what was different this time. Perhaps, I can refer to my own feelings: I do like to take ‘creative’ pictures, but very rarely do it during the ‘business meetings’ of all sort. Here I managed to take dozens of them, and the whole atmosphere was on par with the best design workshops I’ve been in.

Also interesting was the ending of event: of course, there were project presentations, and well-deserved applause

but then there was also a very intense session, a true psychodramatic enactment of the ‘open innovation’ process with one of the (very brave, I should add) participant.

All in all, it was a great day, pleasant and memorable but also seeding a lot of future thoughts and actions.

“I find that when someone’s taking tome to do something right in the present, they’re a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, the’re a master artisan of great foresight”. – 974

Too many meetings and event, and too little time to write about them here! Besides, we are working on the new website for Summ()n, so my energy goes more to the ‘future’, rather than to the maintaining the current flow of information. But some of impressions are too vivid to skip, so I will try to post at least the visual impressions from the last two weeks or so.

Glow is an annual festival of light and art in Eindhoven, and it tends to be always good. This year’s edition has definitely exceeded the expectations, and presented a large number of magnificent works. The one above was not really a new work, it is a remake of the now famous installation ‘Burning Van Abbe Museum’, by Xavier de Richemont. It worth to watch a video to imagine how it all looked in reality.

Multimedia installations Lichtschilderij (‘lightpaiting’) on the Stadhuis building by Artslide & Spectaculaires (above) and Charm on Speed on the Catharinakerk by
Projectil (below) were both new and not so new. The exact compositions were novel, but the overall experience is somewhat similar to the previous years.

But the entire area of TUe campus was a masterpiece – from the Glowing Carpets’ at the Nabij Kennispoort to the lighting poems on the main building, and to the smaller installations all over the places, all was one great inspirational feast.

My favorite installation of this year is Prometheus, that combined – not even light, but lightening – with music and video. People were silent in awe and admiration when listening these mini-performances and then bursted with applause – to both the might of nature, and the might of culture. Again, the video can give a better feeling.

I wonder if they will bring aurora borealis next time?

Two bullets don’t hit one hole, they say. Apparently, it’s not the case with ‘future conferences’ – in addition to the one on the Future of the Future I just wrote about, there will be another interesting event in Amsterdam this Saturday, the so called ‘Power Show‘ of the Next Nature collective, where they are going to showcase about 20 different ‘visions of the future’, some more provocative than others.

I can only add that this also coincides with the annual Museum Night (MN8) in the city, and a lot of other interesting things will be happening around. Worth popping up, if you can.

There will be an interesting event at the Club of Amsterdam tomorrow, an evening conference called The Future of the Future; the very title is already quite provocative, and I look forward to interesting presentations – including by Andrea Wiegman from Second Sight, Arjen Kamphuis from Gendo, and Anders Sandberg from the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University – as well as for the open debates.