Self-Initiated Project | Research & Exhibition
Agreeable Futures
Participatory futures research through interactive voting.
A futures research tool.
Agreeable Futures is an auditory exhibition /installation that acts as a futures research tool. Based on weak signals and incoming trends I mapped out 4 scenarios that could be possible in the near future.
Visual Designers: Hares Bassil & Claude Nassar
Special Thanks to: Ming Unn, Eeva Lehto, Ghassan Salameh, all the participants
Acknowledgments.
A project kindly supported by the Finnish Embassy in Lebanon.
This project was exhibited at Beirut Design Week’s Design & the City theme.
Three Interventions.
The Curious Extrapolations are three research-by-design driven interactive interventions to engage people in futures thinking.
The interactive voting (By Tatiana Toutikian )
The speculative lunch (by Will Brown )
The Live-Action Role play on future of work (by Ming Unn)
The experience design.
As they navigate between the four categories, Playing, Praying, Sharing and Dying in the City they have to place a Dystopia or Utopia card and cast their vote to whether this technology contributes to building or destroying the world.
In the end, a visual representation of people’s opinions are made visible in real time between the black and white panels. People can also leave a comment on why they think so. This sparks debate between value systems that they share.
Playing in the City
Trends: Rise of community arcades & Human’s desire for empathy
Dying in the city
Trends: Rise of community arcades & Human’s desire for empathy
Sharing in the city
Trends : Autonomous Objects, OOO, Social Networks, Indoor Jungles.
Praying in the city
Trends: ioT, private religions
The scenarios
85% disagree with this future
Dying in the City
The tombstone of the future monitors your death is part of the family of connected products
Displays your most memorable times in this life through audio, video, and text.
Monitors decomposition , real-time information with the state of the soil, the acceleration of new fungi and flora, and soil freshness.
People get delivered monthly small packets of seeds and nutrition for the soil which they then bring to their loved ones to for the digital screen to be updated.
Sharing in the City
As time progressed bots on Twitter became the agents doing most of the posting and this phenomena also extended to plants. The Flora and Fauna network is populated by bio trackers (motion, humidity). Plant selfies, updates, are the common today with plants being equipped with cameras that allow them to document themselves in the sun or under a backdrop of rain. Different plants from all over the world from the dusty deserts to the humble house plant now interchange information & affect one another.
75% agree with this future
Playing in the City
The social media boom has vocalized and visualized the discrepancies between the treatment of different races, religions, social classes. The screens on our phones bore to be ineffective in shifting people’s mental ideology. Simultaneously, gamification became a prime purpose for people’s shifts in activity. The empathy and ethics arcade is the new game center for collectively experiencing marginalized realities. Following the peak of veganism and aid to warn-torn Syria, people willing to experience first hand how to be in someone elses’ shoes without the added effort can experience together with friends. The different NGO’s and Organizations also provide imagery, content, and data and make bank from the games. These arcades are also good school-time field trips alongside the traditional museum experience.
Praying in the City
Wars fueled by religious differences continued to be on the rise which destabilized people in practicing their faith freely, openly, and without fear. As a result people started practicing their religions more frequently in private in the comfort of their own homes. Technology today promises a safe space to for everyone to practice their faith. The E-religion company Strong Christian was added to the family of connected products. The Strong Christian is a device that is connected to the internet, sources all the bible verses and scriptures. It collects the different sermons, quotes, and happenings on miracles, and allows you to access it with ease. We have been granted the blessing by the church, who themselves would like to keep the faith strong in people. The Strong Christian is a median for confession and communion. Equipped with wine and bread that is blessed through the e-prayers people can speak freely to the words of God and receive his pardon and the body of Christ. It has the added feature of sing-along hymns.
Research by Design
The experiment also attracts diverse people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, belief systems, and more making the sample pool broad.
