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--- future_fabulators:antipodean_musings [2014-03-07 01:35] – nik
+++ future_fabulators:antipodean_musings [2014-03-10 01:02] – alkan
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-==== Musings from the Antipodean research retreat ====
+==== Musings from an antipodean research retreat ====
 by Maja Kuzmanovic & Nik Gaffney. Glenelg, Australia. 020140210 - 02140305
-During February 2014 we spent a few weeks on research for Future Fabulators. We wanted to gain a  better understanding the techniques, tools and theories of 'futures studies' and if they could be applied in our work with future pre-enactments. After much practice-based research in [[:/resilients/future_preparedness|future preparedness]], we found that a more theoretical underpinning was needed, which meant that our focus was primarily on literature. We spent the retreat in more or less uninterrupted reading, following interesting leads down often fractal rabbit holes. We attempted to answer questions that had arisen from the last few years of experiments in [[prehearsing the future]]. Our starting points were of both methodological and philosophical nature: on the one hand we wanted to know how to improve our practice of scenario building and pre-enacments with new, transdisciplinary techniques, and on the other hand we were wondering what would happen if foresight would become a part of everyday life, where uncertainty is not seen as a threat but an opportunity.
+During February 2014 we spent a few weeks on research for Future Fabulators. We wanted to gain a better understanding of the techniques, tools and theories of 'futures studies' and if they could be applied to our work in future pre-enactments. After much practice-based research in [[:/resilients/future_preparedness|future preparedness]], we found that a more theoretical underpinning was needed, which meant that our focus was primarily on the literature. We spent the retreat in more or less uninterrupted reading, following interesting leads down often fractal rabbit holes. We attempted to answer questions that had arisen from the last few years of experiments in [[prehearsing the future]]. Our starting points were of both methodological and philosophical nature: on the one hand we wanted to know how to improve our practice of scenario building and pre-enacments with new, transdisciplinary techniques, and on the other hand we were wondering what would happen if foresight became a part of everyday life, where uncertainty is not seen as a threat but an opportunity.
-To ease ourselves into the researchers' mindset, we began with seeking answers to our methodological questions, first related to scenario building, later looking at fields that we could draw from to design better prehearsals (improv theatre, role playing games, disaster drills and simulations. We found many promising tools that we’re keen to begin experimenting with. By looking at methods we began to get a grasp of what the shape and size of the field of futures studies, that hovers on the edges between being a (consulting) practice and an academic discipline, with a strong focus on methodology. We read about the history, current developments and future aspirations of the field and came to a happy conclusion that from its origins in systems theory and the culture of prediction 50-60 years ago, it (at least partially) seems to be moving towards our fields of interest: focusing on complexity, experience, awareness, uncertainty, anti-fragility, etc. The last part of our research was focusing on these developments, that helped us find kindred developments, such as the works of Stuart Candy and Jose Ramos, merging futures with design, politics and action research. Their writings helped us contextualise our work with experiential futures, understanding what has been done so far and which questions still remain open. By the end of this short literature research period we feel we stand on much firmer ground, with new potential allies and clearer future directions. The paragraphs below are written to provide an overview of our process and findings, and provide an alternative way to navigate the material collected on the [[background]] page of the Future Fabulators wiki.
+To ease ourselves into the researcher's mindset, we began by seeking answers to a number of methodological questions, first related to scenario building, then to designing better prehearsals (including improv theatre, role playing games, disaster drills and simulations). We discovered many promising tools gleaned from a variety of fields that we’re keen to start experimenting with. Through investigating these methods we began to grasp the full shape and size of futures studies as a field: hovering at the edges of a (consulting) practice and an academic discipline, with a strong focus on methodology. We read about the history, current developments and future aspirations of the field and came to the happy conclusion that, from its origins in systems theory and the culture of prediction some fifty or sixty years ago, it seemed to be converging with our own areas of interest: complexity, experience, awareness, uncertainty, anti-fragility, etc. The last phase of our research focused on these kindred developments, such as the works of Stuart Candy and Jose Ramos, which merge futures with design, politics and action research. Their writings helped us contextualise our work with experiential futures, understanding what has been done so far and which questions still remain open. By the end of this short period of literature research we feel we stand on much firmer ground, with new potential allies and clearer future directions. What follows is an overview of our process and findings, and can serve as an alternative way to navigate the [[background]] material on the Future Fabulators wiki.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/12979291555/}}\\
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/12979291555/}}
+FoAM's garden research centre
-\\
 ==== But why…? ====
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-As we were aproximatly knee-deep in [[http://lib.fo.am/future_fabulators/scenario_methods#futures_research_methods|futures research methods]] many of which were only partially relevant to our practice, Justin Pickard diverted our attention to Stuart Candy’s thesis "[[The Futures of Everyday Life]]". Written in 2010, his work provides a strong theoretical and practical grounding for what he calls "[[experiential futures]]" a term that we’ll happily adopt, as it seems to fit better than say 'design fiction' or 'speculative design' for our future pre-enactments. We had a couple of inspiring conversations with Stuart and uncovered many common threads. He shares our belief in the need for diffusing foresight in daily situations, sharing tools and techniques with people beyond boardrooms and large institutions. We would happily adopt terms like 'ambient foresight' 'immersive situations' and '[[guerrilla futures]]' to describe what we’ve been doing with alternate reality narratives and prehearsals.
+As we were approximately knee-deep in [[http://lib.fo.am/future_fabulators/scenario_methods#futures_research_methods|futures research methods]], Justin Pickard diverted our attention to Stuart Candy’s thesis [[The Futures of Everyday Life]]. Written in 2010, his work provides a strong theoretical and practical grounding for what he calls "[[experiential futures]]" a term that we’ll happily adopt, as it seems a better fit for our future pre-enactments than say 'design fiction' or 'speculative design'. The thesis begins with outlining ways that can move us away from the usual polarisation of utopian, dystopian futures, with the continuation of the status quo somewhere in between. One of the ways is the [[four generic futures]], that he used to design experiential scenario experiments for [[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/hawaii/FourFuturesHawaii2050-2006.pdf|Hawaii in 20150]]. The second issue that is identified in the thesis is the experiential gulf between thinking or talking about future scenarios and actually experiencing them. He calls for an integration of futures research and experience design, allowing different ways of knowing to penetrate our futures awareness. From reuniting body and mind, Candy goes on to discuss the uniting futures and design with politics, and looks at some principles upon which experiential scenarios could be built. Going beyond controlled exercises in workshops and gallery spaces, he talks about [[guerrilla futures]], or futures in the wild, where unsuspecting public encounters speculative artifacts from a future scenario, embedded in the spaces of daily life. The three examples of guerrilla futures discussed are the [[New York Times Special Edition]] of the Yes Men, [[http://www.bluelineproject.org/|The Blue Line Project]] and [[http://futuryst.blogspot.com.au/2007/10/bird-cage.html|Found Futures Chinatown]]. It was interesting to read the authors' reflection regarding the effectiveness and ethical issues of such interventions (such as potential distress and misleading of audience caught unawares), as well as his conclusion that the alternative - continuing to work on scenarios on purely analytical and intellectual levels - isn't acceptable, The final chapter of the thesis was quite encouraging for us. It talks about different ways of infusing foresight outside expert fields, moving toward what Stuart calls "futures oriented social ecology". One of the tactics he calls "future shock therapy" and the other "ambient foresight". Future Shock is a tactic deployed by guerrilla futurists, and Hakim Bey's [[http://hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html|Poetic Terrorists]]. On the other end of the spectrum, "rather than demanding attention with fireworks, an ‘ambient’ future awareness is gentle, or perhaps almost invisible."  Ambient foresight "nudges" people towards developing the futures skills, as do for example prediction markets and alternate reality games, such as [[http://archive.superstructgame.net/|Superstruct]]. We had a couple of inspiring conversations with Stuart and uncovered many common threads, which we hope will eventually result in some form of collaboration.
 Finding ourselves on more familiar transdisciplinary theory, we continued collecting references to [[design fiction]], a field that has gained traction in recent years, merging design and foresight, to create objects, spaces and experiences as futures prototypes. Alongside (the now usual suspects) Bruce Sterling, Superflux, Dunne & Raby, The Extrapolation Factory are people and works spanning the arts, games, movies and architecture, such as Nelly Ben Hayoun, Natalie Jeremijenko, Atelier van Lieshout, Angelo Vermeulen, Adrian Hon and others. We haven’t spent too much time looking through many new and interesting projects but this is something that could benefit from further studies, conversations, comparisons, pattern-finding, etc.
-Another interesting marriage of disciplines emerged as [[action foresight]] combining action research and futures studies. One of the inspiring proponents of this field is Jose Ramos, who caries out his work at the edges between futures, activism and community development. This work is particularly relevant to our inclination towards creating change in the present, as we’re still gradually formulating ideas around [[possible futures parallel presents]] and [[non predictive strategy]]. We know there are somethings there that needs surfacing, but we can’t point a finger to it yet. It has something to do with finding ways to thrive in turbulence, including [[strategies for antifragility]], [[doing democracy]] and perhaps even a touch of [[rewilding etiquette]]. Further research and/or practice required.
+Another interesting marriage of disciplines emerged as [[action foresight]] combining action research and futures studies into anticipatory action learning. One of the inspiring proponents of this field is Jose Ramos, who caries out his work at the edges between (critical) futures, activism, open democratic processes and community development. This work is particularly relevant to our inclination towards creating change in the present, as we’re still gradually formulating ideas around [[possible futures parallel presents]] and [[non predictive strategy]]. We are interested in finding ways to thrive in turbulence, including [[strategies for antifragility]], [[doing democracy]] and perhaps even a touch of [[rewilding etiquette]]. Further research and/or practice required.
-All of the research related to experiential futures is at the moment geared towards [[prehearsing the future]] and improving our [[prehearsal pocket guide]]. In the three short weeks at our disposal, we haven’t got as far as we would have liked in exploring different [[prehearsal methods]], but we think there are enough pointers that we (or anyone else interested) could pick up "later". Next are various threads around improvisation, including various experiments from "Impro" by Keith Johnstone, and some other pointers discussed with Sarah Neville, during a follow up of her [[residencies|Weather Lore residency]].
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 ==== What next? ====
-As our current research phase comes to an end, we can only conclude that we’re just beginning. We have left many [[background]] threads open, messy and unknotted, which is somewhat frustrating, yet we know that some of our investigations have found fertile ground. We plan to get back to the research between our practical experiments, but we’d also like to encourage all of the Future Fabulators, and anyone else interested in these subjects to keep feeding these pages with interesting, relevant and/or surprising information and insights.
+All of our explorations of experiential futures are at the moment geared towards [[prehearsing the future]] and improving our [[prehearsal pocket guide]]. In the three short weeks we only began touching on different [[prehearsal methods]]. There are several threads around improvisation that we'd like to follow up, including various experiments from "Impro" by Keith Johnstone, and ideas around incremental prehearsals that we discussed with Sarah Neville, during a follow up of her [[residencies|Weather Lore residency]].
+As our current research phase comes to an end, we can conclude that we've found a fertile ground with many [[background]] threads to continue following. We plan to get back it in between and below our practical experiments, but we’d also like to encourage all of the Future Fabulators, and anyone else interested in these subjects to keep feeding these pages with interesting, relevant and/or surprising information and insights.