oct _24
▲ highlights: CYENS residency // listen to my radio show on WORM // some references to "future design"
⫷ audio intro
cheers,
ål // ≧◉◡◉≦
🖤 Love this content? Consider becoming a paid subscriber or a patron - check out the options to support me & what stuff you can get on my Patreon here.
// things to share » =================================================================
🖤 <postcard from Cyprus/>
the simulation giving me a sign // Lefkosia, CY
=================================================================
⫷ <on the radio!/>
Did you miss my introduction to “Trains Always Bring You To The Future” on radio WORM last month? Fear not, the show is now available on their Mixcloud and you can hear all about this project and how it came to life. Listen here!
If you hear it, please, text me your thoughts <3 <3 <3 Grazie!
=================================================================
▲ <CYENS x EdMedia x ThinkerMaker Space residency update/>
Already in the 3rd week of my art residency at CYENS in Lefkosia, Cyprus! Here is what to know about it for now:
▲ I was selected to create a project as an artist-in-residence at CYENS’ ThinkerMaker Space (Lefkosia) in collaboration with EdMedia (Lefkosia & Limassol). I am spending my working days at their space in the heart of the old town of the capital and it’s such a great opportunity to meet people involved in art & technology in Cyprus! <3
▲ The residency lasts 3 months. During this period I am doing a project that includes: doing research on future speculations & scenarios while playing with the term “future design”; creating a game in some form that aims to facilitate space for meaningful conversations about our possible futures; an exhibition and a workshop at the end of the residency (probably December).
▲ As usual, the process is already visible in my documentation space on AlWiki. You can have a look if curious - here is a page dedicated to the residency (to track my process) and there is already a reader with the references (which I will update in every other week).
More to come next month :)
=================================================================
★ <speaking of “future design”.. already some references/>
I have lots of fun researching what is out there connected to the different ways to play with future scenarios. While doing so, I came across some interesting resources and inspirations and I can already share some of them with you.
★ the theory of possible worlds, explored by David Lewis back in 1973. His book “Counterfactuals” was reprinted several times since and his work influenced quite a lot of discussions in philosophy, particularly in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. It provided a framework for analysing counterfactuals and understanding how different scenarios can be conceived.
Possible worlds are comprehensive ways things could have been. They are not physical locations or actual places but rather abstract representations of different states of affairs. Each possible world includes a complete set of facts, describing how things are in that world.
★ I am getting back to the remarkable chapter “Queerying Homophily” by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (it’s part of the book “Pattern Discrimination”). This time, it reminded me how theory, science and network science included, reduces real-world phenomena to a series of nodes and edges, which are in turn modelled to expose the patterns governing seemingly disparate behaviours - from friendship to financial crises. This is really a dramatic simplification but for authors like Duncan Watts, it is necessary in order to be able to study it and see things otherwise invisible. It reminded me also to think simple while designing the game experience, at least at the start and complicate it slowly, bit by bit.
★ Did you see “Extrapolations” (miniseries on Apple TV+) which explores various potential future scenarios based on our current data? It was quite interesting for me to see this visualisation of potential everyday life in the near future.
★ I started reading “The Dawn of Everything” by Graeber and Wengrow (there is a translation in Bulgarian - “Зората на всичко”) and if you want to go deep into questioning why things are the way they are now, this is a good start. It reminds us that to be able to foresee the future, you need to know the past and understand it in the temporality of its own time. Sometimes we tend to judge current events without realising the complex path that led to them, so here comes a nice and really thorough research on how societies have been working in the past that questions the axiom that inequality just started at some point. I think this is a must-read take on the topic.
=================================================================
=================================================================
🖤 A lovely soul forwarded this art letter to you? You can join here: