Tag Archives: Science Fiction

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

Wandering through the future

@chriswoebken spied this one — an art film by Marjolijn Dijkman (NL, if you couldn’t guess) called Wandering Through the Future in which the artist takes 70 science fiction films and uses them to explore how they imagine the future. In … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

Design Fiction Principles: Notes from Design for Screen

A relevant short essay by Piers D. Britton in theThe Routledge Companion to Science Fiction underscores some of the loose principles (loose, because they aren’t quite principles — more a swirl of useful insights) the Laboratory has been gathering around the … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

Design Fiction Chronicles: The Dark Knight's Ubicomp Mobile Phone Sonar

Here’s that scene from The Dark Knight where Batman has secretly installed a surveillance system that traces the legal, moral and ethical contours iconic to ubiquitous computing networked devices of this sort. What’s going on — as explained in the short … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

The Week Ending Long Ago…031210

The week before was mostly reassessing the Trust project communication and making notes on what might need to be redone and what might need to be tossed out. The communication itself has a good rhythm although the last share of … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

He said that science fiction wasn't special..

“…because of its gadgets and its landscapes. It wasn’t special because of its ideas about technology or progress: instead, it was special because of its language, and the assumptions and techniques readers used to interpret that language, and the ways … Continue reading

Design Fiction Chronicles: Brainstorm

Opening credits, which encompasses also the early moments of the first scene of Brainstorm Well, this is one popped into my head the other day, but not for the reasons I’ll mention in this post — I’ll save the initial motivation … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

Once Upon A Place.. Architecture + Fiction Event

Matthew Malpass turned me onto this curious sounding and intriguing event Once Upon A Place (haunted houses & imaginary cities) — the 1st International Conference on Architecture and Fiction, which might count as a “that’s weird” / “plate of shrimp” … Continue reading

© 2009 Julian. All rights reserved.

Avatar On Its Face

Strangely — because I trained to be a cynic-critic — I actually enjoyed Avatar. I don’t know if I expected much more of a nuanced story from James Cameron, so I didn’t go in there looking for insight and reflection … Continue reading

© 2009 Julian. All rights reserved.

Design Fiction Chronicles: Modes of Surveillance in "Eagle Eye" and "The Final Cut"

Design Fiction Chronicles: The Final Cut from Julian Bleecker on Vimeo. Resorting to the clever-smarty-pants-academic titles here, I know. There’s so much you can do if you can say in two phrases what you should really only say with one. … Continue reading

© 2009 Julian. All rights reserved.

Design Fiction Chronicles: Duncan Jones' "Moon"

A short mention of this wonderful film “Moon”, which is presently in the theaters here and there. I quite enjoyed the production design — Tom Carden pointed me to the site of the designer who created the fictional environment, giving … Continue reading

Design Fiction Chronicles: Cylon Hybrids "Tweet" Prophecy or Prattle

BSG Twitter Hybrid from Julian Bleecker on Vimeo. I’ll say it although you probably know the back story here. In the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, “Hybrids” are the result of the early experiments to evolve the fully mechanical cylons into … Continue reading