Tagged: future

The future is disorder

It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

Ten Dreams of Technology starts with a number of quotes such as “predict the future by inventing it” that remind me somehow of Chuck Palahniuk’s transgressive fiction, particularly Invisible Monsters where the main character invents personas and basically her entire existence based on how she sees fit. In this novel it’s done in a disturbing and enthralling way, but this idea of inventing your own future is interesting in an “everyday” kind of way: what is stopping us from inventing the future, particularly in this era of technology as king where really the possibilities are endless. I only have to look through the plethora of links I’ve posted here during the semester to realise that the way we do things and the way we look at the world has been changed by these inventions, and more importantly, that we all have this power to create change.

I enjoyed this reading for its commentary on technological art, again, a new way to look at the world and the things we can create.

‘Irises-in-Monet’s-Garden.jpg’

This ‘glitch art’ appropriation of Irises in Monet’s Garden is an example of what can be created through new techniques: The role of the network in these projects is essentially to create an open system of input to promote adaptation.

I also enjoyed the take away idea of not criticizing a work too early:

Criticizing a new idea because it is not yet fully realized seems unreasonably impatient. On that basis, the caves at Lascaux would never have been painted because we did not have a full palette and could not animate in three dimensions. Give us a few centuries and then revisit this complaint.

This rings true of ‘process’ type mediums, such as our blogs. Everyone starts as an amateur, so to criticize someone for not yet knowing how to achieve a certain technique… this doesn’t make sense to me. Criticism in general I don’t understand, but that’s another issue altogether.

Also from this reading was the concept of file sharing = life sharing. I think about this a lot with the sharing-centric ideas of social media. We post where we are, photos of what we ate, we tag who we are with. I had a conversation with my best friend a few days ago who was feeling disheartened that her own life wasn’t as interesting as all of her Facebook friends’ who post ‘cheery’ photos doing ‘interesting’ things. I put these words in quote marks because, as I told her, sometimes I feel like if people were having that much fun they wouldn’t be on Facebook ‘bragging’ to the rest of us. It comes down to that idea of enjoying the moment, which I’m starting to believe more and more that social media and sharing our every movement is impacting.

In another sense though: I did watch Miley’s most recent appearance on Ellen, in which she spoke about asking creative people around her, such as designers, musicians, etc, for a list of their favourite and most influential films, artists, musicians, books and so on. These may not be files so to speak, but this is another form of life sharing I think… sharing with someone those things that inspire and have changed you the most.

Some other takeaways from the reading:

  • Every reception of a work of art is both an interpretation and a performance of it, because in every reception the work takes on a fresh perspective
  • One of the most persistent tropes of the intersection of technology and art is that it will lead to a whole new art form, just as moving images eventually created cinema.

 

The question isn’t to be or not to be

The question is HOW to be.

I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake this week with my readings and lecture posts, but they are coming I swear! This subject has caused me to stew endlessly about topics I didn’t realise I was interested in but then ultimately just re-post interesting things I find online as my thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations. (Ie, I spend too much time on Tumblr.)

I’ve been looking back over the first couple of weeks of this course, and I’m struck at how simple but profound it is to make the content relevant. In one of my typical mid-semester uni meltdowns about the future and whyyyyy is life so hard, I was brought some kind of solace in Adrian’s words from week three (possibly not verbatim, please forgive my note-taking skills): We are invited to dance. We don’t know how the dance goes; we don’t even know the first steps. But this is not a reason not to dance.

So with these words and a constructivist perspective in mind, really all that is left to do, is do. We learn by doing, we learn by making. In making we show our thinking, and fwock all I do is think/overthink. The only way to learn to ride a bike is by riding a bike. <Insert more cliches that are actually insightful and helping me with my life here>

How am I supposed to know what I want to do or at least in what direction I want to take my life and career without experimenting and trying out different things? We considered in the first week why we are at university, and I think that might be a big factor: the opportunities for experimenting and playing with different fields are almost endless. RMIT definitely know what they are doing in that regard.

The last few weeks have also seen me ask myself ‘What if’ more times than I care to admit, and outside of a design framework this question is easily applied to life. What if I joined this club, or wrote this article, or posted this clip I’ve been sitting on for months, too embarrassed about what might come of it. Embarrassment is overrated. There’s no time like now to be brave, and what is the worst that could happen? Yes, publishing online is permanent and media professionals success and failure is largely based on reputation, but who is going to fault someone for trying something new, taking a risk. There’s nobody I admire more than those willing to put themselves out there, take the fall, laugh at themselves when it all goes wrong.

I’ve had a few projects on the back-burner for a while and I’ve been inspired to bring them out. I hope you don’t judge me too harshly. What if we all just took the leap? Why shouldn’t we just do it?

Life is a mess. But I don’t think that’s necessarily, or even at all, a negative thing.

Here is a thing I did – from my current scrapbook/ideas/notebook: my original ‘blog’

SYMPOSIUM TAKEOUT

Honestly I was surprised the question of why the concept of design fiction is relevant is still being asked. I actually wrote ‘this is outrageous’ in my notes… All media is, is creativity and imagination, surely.

To think about this week:

  1. Sense of play: not necessarily evidence-based; can make you reassess what counts as evidence
  2. Problems with no answers: any ‘solution’ will create a new problem, eg asylum seeker policy, climate change policy; we need to be able to think through possibilities and imagine futures.
  3. Design as a completely future-oriented subject: design is about changing things for the future.
  4. The traditional model of repeating what we did yesterday is irrelevant: however obviously grounding in current practices is important for doing an speculative thinking.
  5. It’s also important to look BACK: history is a creative wellspring; are we living in a remixed culture?
  6. Context is important for success: eg, 12 second video was three years too early, Vine now a great success; perhaps being ‘before your time’ is not necessarily a good thing.
  7. Everything has agency, everything is an actor, everything can assume change on the environment.