Anab Jain | www.superflux.in | Twitter: @Superflux

Thanks to Michelle and Futureverything for inviting me to talk at such an exciting panel. I am a designer, and the founder of a studio called Superflux in London.

We do commercial interaction projects through our consultancy. But we also like to play. And so, through our lab, we do more speculative work... And today I’d like to talk you about one experiment we did last year - which hopefully fits well within the context of this panel - and also in context of collaborative futures, participation, and so on.

© http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanwindow/3730432704/

London acquires Crunchy, the Credit Crunch Monster

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36719186@N02/3387426290/

© Ronzo

Sometime late 2008 London acquired Crunchy - a fat, greedy, money-eating beast let loose on society, and scaring us all half to death. Crunchy was the symbol not only of an economic crisis, but in a sense represents this rather foreboding, yet real potential for a collapse. Tension around climate change and a war on terror only added to this sense of gloom. Fears normally associated with science fiction now seemed to be quite real.

Yes, the future seemed bleak. There were few options...

GO JOIN A PROTEST

I could go join a protest

OR USE MY CREDIT CARD AND GO GO ON A BEACH HOLIDAY

or use my credit card and go on a crunchy beach holiday...

http://www.vimeo.com/4337513

Instead I made this video...which was an open call to anyone interested in collaborating on a multidisciplinary experiment, to imagine and build ‘optimistic’ visions of the future. Watch the video here: http://www.vimeo.com/4337513

A DIY approach to future-making. Now.

The idea was to try a collaborative ‘Do-It-Yourself’ approach to ‘future making’. Now.

Encourage debate on alternate futures.

Which in turn would hopefully encourage debate on alternate futures, futures we are not always presented with in current politics.

And much to my surprise people actually responded to the call! after discussions we finally assembled our heist-like cast: a social researcher, a retired civil servant, an educator, a permaculturist, a scientis, an urbanist, an architect, and a technologist.

“I'm depressed that in 50 years time people will look back at the year when the world had its last chance to make binding international agreements on climate change...

and they'll find a load of stories about MPs expenses and a supposed global pandemic that killed a handful of people.”

But why would people want to spend their time doing such an experiment- outside of their day jobs and commitments? Charlie, one of the collaborators wanted to join because...

We started off like some sort of guerilla-styled design summer school, working in our bedrooms, cafes, and pubs, outside of our day jobs. Through intensive workshops we experimented with ways to give each of our individual aspirations a space to grow....more importantly build trust.

“What would you like on your street in the future?”

Finally we got more specific by asking a simple question: what would you like on your street in the future?”

Here are just some of the ideas.

“BUT THATS YOUR FUTURE, NOT MINE!”

“but thats your future not mine...” As we stuck our ideas up, this statement kept coming up again and again...which raised a few key questions...

How do we design collaborative futures?

How can we use conflict for creative ends?

How do we move towards a unified vision?

While these questions brewed at the back of our heads, we decided to open the dialogue up - so we took our ideas and placed them on a wall in the gallery at Brentford, where we were to show our final work in few weeks later.

which grew over the course of two months, populated with ideas from visitors to the gallery.

a house we can afford

TVs that hover next to you

an end to global warming

little field on our street

community gardens everywhere

just to give you an sense of what people wanted:

map of brentford

Building on these responses, we were eager to get our hands dirty, and so decided to try a more concentrated public engagement activity as part of the London 2012 Open Weekend initiative. We took a huge table into the gallery, stuck a map of Brentford on it, and invited participants to build ‘rapid prototypes’ of their fantastical futures using lego and foam.

The Table as a Platform for Aspirations

Over the course of two days, as visitors joined in, the table transformed into a platform for aspirations...

wind mills

Here are just some examples:

solar powered airships

one more key thingsnow simulators

At the end of the weeked, we had a rather lovely lego version of a future Brentford...which was very inspiring for the team.

We went back to our wall of ideas rather inspired, and decided to chart our own individual paths through the ideas that were presented... We stuck a tracing paper on the wall and drew a path through it...

Post Psycho-geography

And soon we had a crisscrossed map of future paths. A sort of post-psychogeography where the derive is reverse-engineered. Instead of drifting aimlessly through unknown cityscapes, we plotted a route through a psychogeographic territory of our own making… with yet unexpected consequences.”

• Dying Bees• Depleting natural resources• Increasing food shortage

Key Concerns

This proved to be a powerful tool - helping us reconcile our aspirations into a collective one, with the following key concerns emerging:

Welcome to Acres Green: A proposal for a sustainable ecosystem

Which led to the idea for ‘Acres Green’ - a fictional town in the future, which addressed some of the dilemmas we faced about desire for ‘green’ futures, but also a hope that technological innovations could and will save us from any such crisis.

In Acres Green people balance a pragmatic requirement to live closer to nature with their natural human impulses to subvert and control it. Through this process of developing the ideas, we attempt to question the roles and responsibilities of technology in the support of our ecosystems.

new pollinators new economiesnew weather

THE HACKED & RE-ENGINEERED WORLD OF ACRES GREEN

Inside this re-engineered and hacked world of acres green, we propose three scenarios in answer to our three concerns : new pollinators, new weather and new economies

new pollinators new economiesnew weather

THE HACKED & RE-ENGINEERED WORLD OF ACRES GREEN

First up - ‘New Pollinators’

“Bee die-off a sign of the apocalypse”Boing Boing

Colony Collapse Disorder: Pesticides, Monocrops, Industrialised Bee Farming, Varroa Mite, Electromagnetic Radiation

http://www.flickr.co

m/photos/dragedorn/

2669708144/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/piramo/2270534266/

“Bee die-off a sign of the apocalypse”Boing Boing

This was a headline on a Boing Boing post a while back...most of you are aware of the Colony Collapse Disorder and the rapid decline of the honey bees. Yes we need to save the bees...

But in Acres green, bees are almost a thing of the past. Also the demands of food pollination in urban areas are high. Hence a community of biologists and hired bio-hackers create the ‘Beamer Bee’ or the ‘Beamer Signum Apis Melifera’.

This diagram shows how plasmids of various different creatures were put together inside a bee embryo, including that of the bat’s - which can sense radiowaves. So unlike the current bees that are supposed to be ‘disoriented by electromagnetic smog’, the beamer bees live in harmony with them.

http://www.vimeo.com/7231401

This is a video showing the ‘bee-making’ process by the Acres Green biotechnologist Sanjiv Sharma. Watch the video here: http://www.vimeo.com/7231401

Beamer Signum Apis Melifera or Beamer Bees

Here you see the Beamer bee, which is at the heart of the Acres Green ecosystem.

http://www.vimeo.com/7285751

Here’s the bugle or the radio device with a bee channel, that is used to call the beamer Beamer Bees to areas where they are needed for pollination. Here is the installation in the show space. Watch the video here: http://www.vimeo.com/7285751

Garden Routers to attract Beamer Bees

How do people in Acres Green start living with these new creatures? Those were not lucky enough to get licenses, use wifi Garden routers to attract beamer bees who pollinate their food gardens.

Children keep glowing bees as pets

Beamer Honey syrup = high medicinal value

new pollinators new economiesnew weather

THE HACKED & RE-ENGINEERED WORLD OF ACRES GREEN

And in keeping with such technological hacks, they also attempted to innovate new weather systems.

Designed Microclimates: Robotic Flocking Clouds

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One idea was to be able to bring rain to local food gardens and not depend on the increased fluctuations in the climate. for this they designed robotic flocking clouds, where a cloud would expand and become a water reservoir. Its ultrasonic antenna would guide to other clouds and also signals from residents who wanted to use them.

soon these clouds began to form a strange relationship with the locals. People began to compete for the clouds attention using home-made ultrasonic emitters.

We also imagined what an unanticipated outcome of such a machine-creature might be: A scenario where the swarming clouds get attracted to bats and their ultrasonic waves, and this in turn becomes a spectacle to watch out for...as bats flock around self-illuminating clouds.

new pollinators new economiesnew weather

THE HACKED & RE-ENGINEERED WORLD OF ACRES GREEN

And finally... new weather systems and new pollinators allow the locals to grow all sorts of local food and vegetation - and new micro-economies emerge

Local food sharing:

Here’s a poster showing how one entrepreneur started the ‘Apple Trading Initiative’ in their neighbourhood - to collected unused local food and began to sell apple juice. (btw: this was a “real” experiment, and Charlie made loads of cider too.)

Inner City Feral Cider

Another offshoot is Murgatroyd cider - an inner city feral cider made from community apples found in parks, public gardens and streets.

Finally these speculations were presented in an exhibition - and it was a good opportunity to once again engage with the locals at Brentford and show them what we got upto.

What impact can such a design experiment have?

Ofcourse the big question is always about ‘impact’ of such a design experiment, and how one might measure it. It is early days, and there have been some definite steps forward, which will hopefully multiply. Here I’ll present just four:

“I couldn't really say I wanted fake bees and fake weather.

But this helped me feel optimistic that we could actually take action to protect it...”

Tessy Britton

1. Forming new points of view

2. Encouraging DIY Futures

“Figure out what “do-it-yourself” might mean in an age when new production technologies,

and networks give the amateur producer unprecedented power to reach out and make things happen.”

Adam Greenfield, Do Projects

• Designing Microclimates, Gujarat Desert• New Pollinators project • Local food initiatives

3. Project Spin-offs, New Partners

4. Learning new design processes

• Embracing the organic and messy• Rising through conflicts and tensions• Thriving on collaboration

Liam Young Chris Hand Darryl Chen Tessy Britton

Thank YouSanjiv SharmaChris CollettGraham BurnettCharlie Tims

Jon ArdernRussell DaviesIlze BlackSteve Ounanian

http://powerof8.org.uk

Many thanks to the fantastic collaborators of the project: Liam Young, Chris Hand, Darryl Chen, Sanjiv Sharma, Tessy Britton, Charlie Tims, Graham Burnett and Chris Collett.