Experiential Partecipatory Futures
(@ Vinnova Sweadish Governamental Innovation Agency)
“From Micro Narratives to Macro Visions”
In 2022 the Sweadish governamental Innovation Agency Vinnova opened a call for proposals extended to Sweadish citizens willing to explore future scenarios and engage with the challage to create tangible experiences of those hypothetical futures. For this project I was one of speculative design experts invited by Vinnova and hired as mentor to guide an interdisciplary group of people lead by the artist Mariella Ottosson with some of the personnel from the Malmo-based innovation hub Mediaevolution. The project was presented during The Conference event in Malmö and the partecipants had the opportunity to live and learn about a future in which the interspieces relation between algea and humans served as a window into a future of the city of Malmö where the water rising is a present threat.
There is a sort of directionality in future thinking. Traditional futuring techniques and the craft of future scenarios are usually built on the axis that goes from macro to micro. The study of global socio-economic trends, the analysis of technological shifts, the growth of the world’s population or the planetarian stock of resources all represent some of the primary steps towards the unwrapping of the new realities we should expect ourselves to be living in. However, while the bird’s-eye view is vital and effective in capturing macro-evolutions and systemic changes, little is often left to the individual, the narrow personal perspectives of who will live those new life paradigms. This is the conceptual framework behind the story of Martha, a factory worker who's in charge to bring visitors inside her life and narrate them what it looks like living in an era of post-climate disruption.
The projects outcomes include, an installation, a workshop and a publication.
You can read the text HERE
The experiencial project, made of a series of diagetic prototypes and immersive interactive installations, gave the opportunity to visitors and partecipantrs to engage in first-person with the future scenario immagined by the Malmö team.
The Speculation, based on the finctional idea of an algae factory which discovered a way to communicate with the underwater vegetation, invited partecipants to listen to the story of Martha. As one of the algae factory workers, her voice was broadcasted telling the story of her everyday life and what if feels like living that potential future reality. The Installation was divided into three experiences. The first one was verbal, an engaging story told by the fictional character Martha. The second one was phisical, a walking journey through a simulation of the algae lingual lab. The third was intellectual, an archive on materials and book to inform and educate people on climate change and global sea level rising.