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future_fabulators:experiential_futures [2014-02-20 05:50] – nik | future_fabulators:experiential_futures [2014-03-04 00:28] – maja | ||
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==== Experiential Futures ==== | ==== Experiential Futures ==== | ||
- | " | + | (the term Experiential Futures was coined by [[http:// |
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+ | The general purpose of futures studies could be regarded as the provision of tools for the invention and pursuit of preferred futures; that is, the reconciliation of hopes and expectations. But it begins and ends, finally, with what any individual does in relation to those things. (...) [It is] the most potent political tool, to enable people to systematically redistribute the sensible at will and on their own behalf. (...) development and spread of futures tools rather than the outcomes of their application [is our concern]. (...) | ||
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+ | (...) we pluralised ‘future’, | ||
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+ | Neuroscience and psychology pointed us to the promising, so far little explored country of ‘experiential scenarios’ which include the register of experience (affect, emotion, intuition) alongside analysis (logic, reason, judgment) in the human processing system. (...) as the experiential gulf becomes narrower, futures conversation can become more vibrant, by providing a shared vocabulary and reference point in memory for those involved. (...) | ||
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+ | To design, futures brings a holistic and systematic view of the range of longer-term impacts of today’s decisions; and design brings a concrete, communicatively potent form of exploration and an ethos of pragmatic efficacy to futures. (...) | ||
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+ | (...) my vision of what a futurist can and should be does not primarily entail telling people what the future can or should be, but consists in encouraging and enabling as many as possible to make such discoveries for themselves. (...) | ||
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+ | The conundrum of the Unthinkable and the Unimaginable is everyone’s issue -- certainly not just ‘futurists’, | ||
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+ | Three principles for designing experiential scenarios | ||
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+ | 1. Don’t break the universe\\ | ||
+ | This phrase, offered by our frequent design partner Matthew Jensen, became something of a master principle for developing experiential scenarios. It means that a scenario or artifact should ideally be presented on its own terms, as if transplanted from a fully realised, coherent, concretely existing alternate (or rather, future) universe. | ||
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+ | 2. The tip of the iceberg\\ | ||
+ | It is both physically and metaphysically impossible to render a complete experience to-scale of a whole future. Such an ambition would be, to use a Borgesian figure, like trying to create a map the size of the territory | ||
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+ | 3. The art of the double take\\ | ||
+ | The third principle for designing and staging experiential scenarios is what we have called ‘the art of the double take’. The basic idea springs from an playful, exploratory, | ||
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+ | The design of any experiential scenario in any setting requires one to take account of the same generic factors: Who are the audience members, and what kind of experience would you like them to have; what is the future narrative in question, and to what extent will it be a ‘static’ scenario (providing a snapshot of some future world) versus ‘dynamic’ (setting out the whole backstory from the actual-present to the future-present of the scenario); what are the spaces and media at one’s disposal; if it is a live experience, as opposed to a film or gallery artifact, whether it will be ‘immersive’ in the sense of incorporating the audience’s presence in the scene, or whether it will instead rely on the traditional ‘fourth wall’ of the theatre, and pretend that no one is watching. | ||
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+ | From [[http:// | ||
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http:// | http:// | ||
- | "[The] question of how to create possible futures is strongly connected to negotiations and politics in existing situations. Finding appropriate methods to face controversial contexts and challenges – climate change, financial crises and embodied technologies – is one of the core challenges of our world today, involving all of us, here and now" | + | < |
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http:// | http:// | ||
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- | see also [[prehearsal methods]] | + | see also [[possible futures parallel presents]] and [[prehearsal methods]] |