SPECULATIVE REALITIES

MICHELLE KASPRZAK

― Speaker

Michelle Kasprzak is a curator, writer, and scholar. Currently she is a PhD candidate at the University of Porto (Faculty of Engineering) and Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute under the supervision of Chris Csikszentmihalyi. http://michelle.kasprzak.ca

SCOTT SMITH

― Speaker

Scott Smith is the founder and vision behind futures group Changeist, where he leads strategy, research and design activities. His work combines grounded research with narrative design to illuminate the unanticipated. Scott leads partnerships with a range of institutions on public projects which explore facets of innovation, foresight, design and culture, including leading the new Future Design programme at the Dubai Future Academy. He is a contributor to Quartz, The Atlantic, How We Get to Next, WIRED UK and HOLO.

EDWIN GARDNER

― Speaker

Edwin Gardner is a writer, architect, web-designer/editor and researcher and co-founder of Monnik, a laboratory for investigation, imagination and storytelling. Monnik is specialised in long term thinking, meta-trends analysis science fiction world building. They think in centuries and generations, they research society from the urban to the planetary scale, and they develop inspirational worlds beyond the status quo. They help storytellers, innovators and strategists to understand the forces that are at play in today’s society and how they may be extrapolated to various possible and probable futures. Besides their consultancy activities they self-initiate cultural and experimental projects that are aimed at generating inspiring imaginaries and stories.

NICHOLAS NOVA

― Moderator

Nicolas Nova is co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory, a research agency based in Europe and California, and Associate Professor at the Geneva School of Arts and Design (HEAD – Genève). His work lies at the intersection of ethnography, interaction design and futures research, with a particular interest in ubiquitous and mobile technologies and the cultural practices surrounding new media.

SOPHIA AL-MARIA

― Artist

Sophia Al Maria is an artist, writer and filmmaker. She studied comparative literature at the American University in Cairo, and aural and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. For the past few years, she has been carrying out research around the concept of Gulf Futurism. Her primary interests are around the isolation of individuals via technology and reactionary Islam, the corrosive elements of consumerism and industry, and the erasure of history and the blinding approach of a future no one is ready for. She explores these ideas with certain guidebooks and ideas including, but not limited to, Zizek’s The Desert of the Unreal, As-Sufi’s Islamic Book of the Dead, as well as imagery from Islamic eschatology, post humanism and the global mythos of Science Fiction.

Archive

Festival 2017