Near Future Laboratory Blog
Near Future Laboratory Blog
Thoughts, Reflections, Updates & Week Notes
Aug 25, 2024 – Oct 4, 2024
w35/w36/w38/w39/w40/
Animated gif flipping through images taken by Carlos Gonzalez aka @the1point8 at the Eno screening event at Brain Dead Studios Fairfax
Oct 04, 2024
What happens when futures work intersects the grounded circuits of meaning and material culture and not just other futures workers or foresight ‘experts’? Gary, his generative documentary ‘Eno’, and Brian (Eno) are a kind of futurist of the best sort — they make the worlds they imagine and do so materially — and shape culture far more than the futurists who think getting a certificate in Foresight is good enough to call yourself one.
filmart+technologyeventscreeningcollaborationfuturesvisual storytelling
SuperSeminar Season 03 Episode 01 Presenters Jake Dunagan and Kevin Bethune
Oct 02, 2024
SuperSeminar S03/E01 features two leading figures in the fields of innovation and futures design: Kevin Bethune and Dr. Jake Dunagan. These two are seasoned practitioners with decades of experience to share with you. Each will bring to Seminar their unique, forward-thinking perspectives with presentations with plenty of time for engaging discussion.
eventsuperseminardesigninnovation
Poster for Brain Dead x Near Future Laboratory x Gary Hustwit Collaboration
Oct 02, 2024
A collaboration screening Hustwit's groundbreaking generative documentary and industry summit on possible futures of visual storytelling, generative content, and generative art at Brain Dead Studios, Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles.
filmgenerativegenerative artart+technology
Near Future Laboratory Global HQ
Sep 26, 2024
Episode 092 of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast anticipates our 2024 Imagine Harder Summit & Workshop on The Future of Work.
future of workpodcastdesign fictionAI
Cover image of distant early warning signs
Sep 25, 2024
The Distant Early Warning deck allows players to embark on a "cool trip into exotic regions," blending conventional games with media elements that are both verbal and pictorial. It's a conversational card game where the importance lies not just in the identity of the cards, but in the varied relationships and juxtapositions between them.
cardscreative consciousness
NFL x Tech Concept Lab Collab
Sep 20, 2024
Another productive collab with Tech Concept Lab — A Two-Day Workshop & Summit. These times are kinetic, chaotic, and full of dynamics that indicate change, if nothing more precise. It’s more than important — indeed it is existentially vital — that we constantly prototype and investigate possible futures as a matter of course. Think of these kinds of ‘workshops’ or ‘summits’ as training exercises, preparing ourselves for tomorrow, with no hard-and-fast expectation about tomorrow. This isn’t training for war, although some may prefer the metaphor.
design fictionaiworkshopsummit
Hyper Island Vision Week 2024 Animated GIF of Student Podcast Covers
Sep 04, 2024
91 Podcasts in 24 Hours! Hyper Island Vision Week is when students chart their future paths while envisioning societal impact. Jörg Teichgraeber invited me to contribute to Vision Week 2024 by facilitating a Design Fiction workshop for students. A 'podcast from the future' was the brief. A Design Fiction conceit in which students imagine into a future world and represent the contours of that world through a humble podcast that has come back from the future.
workshopcollabdesign fictionpodcastdesign sprint
Imagination Unlocks Greatness An Image of a Tesla Cybertruck hitched to a 1960s style retro camper
Aug 28, 2024
The Cybertruck and the camper together are like a visual narrative in which the present is constantly overshadowed by the futures we were promised but that can never arrive. ‘Utopia’ and ‘Dystopia’ are tropes, not action plans.
hauntologyfuturescybertruckmark fisher
Tom Sachs McDonald's Sound System a sculpture of a small McDonald's with a boom box
Aug 25, 2024
What's Tom Sachs' worldbuilding got to do with Design Fiction? What can be learned as regards the intersection of speculation, art, design to create playful non-confrontational spaces for entering into alternative, other, adjacent possible worlds?
artdesign fictionessaybricolagemetamodernism