Futurology Kiosks
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
Welcome to Futurology Kiosk. Here, we offer you possible scenarios and alternative futures. Our products go far away from the life that has been known. Our goal is to force you into a critical state of mind and alienate you from any simple enjoyment of our products, as merely entertaining. The past, present, and future are observed from an indefinite position while using the archaeology of hearing and speculation. Do not be scared, dear customer, the future can be friendly.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
Future Nostalgia - Kiosks & Radio
The possibility of other ways of being, as well as alternative models for society somehow collapsed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Cold War. Market-led neoliberalism had won and reality became one-dimensional. There were no longer other social or political possibilities beyond capitalism for design to align itself with.
Behind the Bauhaus idea of comprehensive work (Gesamtkunstwerk), stands the unification of arts, mostly future-oriented. Therefore, Future Nostalgia kiosks army have a narrative that waves between imagination, aspirations, and human interactions while combining speculative design and fine arts. It offers an alternative version of reality while expanding one's imagination, which our society needs after the time pandemics brought.
Welcome to Future Nostalgia, our «time capsule». This is the place of futurology and home to one million tiny utopias. We offer you possible scenarios and alternative futures. Our products go far away from the life that has been known. Their fictional nature allows one’s imagination to simply float. Being our customer is forgetting how things are, but thinking about how they should be. Before you try the radio starts, I will remind you to never stop speculating your future.
The Future Nostalgia Kiosk is an installation that unsettles the present and speculates on the future through its conceptual products. The inventory consists of imaginatively designed, abstract 3D-printed, eco-friendly objects, lavishly displayed in a small store in order to be rented and explored by customers/visitors. Additionally, there is the Future Nostalgia radio, raising different global issues all around the world, while questioning its future. Here, the owner of the small futurology store, examines possibilities of a community, while provoking speculative thought.
Key objectives for sustainability
Speculative design solutions
Coming from the field of arts & design, I deal with different topics and questions while consuming reality. My question here is the material of the future. Around the globe, we are inextricably linked together through our shared, limited possibility to find a connection with the world around us - both people and land. In terms of sustainability, the project brings the idea that dives into the future of both an individual and our planet. It questions it and offers a space for dialogue about the times that are coming for all of us. As an example, it uses speculative design and 3D printing in its approach. While studying and working on the topic of speculative design, I realized that people are scared of possible future and design solutions that they are not familiar with, seeing them as an enemy. With the kiosks I aim to open all around Europe, I want to reduce the fear and combine technology with sustainability. Dear customers, the future can be eco-friendly.
Eco-friendly future - nostalgia and fear
3D printing and speculative design as future.
The 3D filament is a new alternative to the classic plastic filament. 3D printing requires a lot of energy and often uses non-biodegradable materials. Moreover, it is possible to create ecological filament at home by recycling plastic waste. There are machines turning the waste into a 3D filament that a 3D printer can use. PLA is the most commonly used 3D printing material, and it is biodegradable cornstarch-based material. The kiosk 3D printing process uses just materials that do not harm and present the idea of our future through different perspectives. Combining fine arts, design, and technologies, the project aims to open the space for dialogue, teach and learn at the same time.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Aesthetics coming from the concept
The aesthetics of speculation, awareness, and dialog.
Futurology kiosk objects fill the air with their innovative, futuristic look. Having in mind the examples of speculative design, objects go into the complete imagination, abstraction, and fiction. Looking like household objects, they amuse and intrigue the observer. Most of them are hollow as if their purpose is eavesdropping on the hidden messages. Highly mystical, they are activating playfulness through their unusual shape, color, and purpose, leaving the space for different interpretations. Created in an open-ended manner with acoustic potentiality, futuristic objects are meant to raise auditory awareness of the time that is coming. These artifacts are looking like excavations from the future. Future Nostalgia FM is the experimental, imaginary radio, combining speculative storytelling, poems, sounds, and audios that overlap eras - from the distant past to the possible future. It's nostalgic, but futuristic content will be available online. Besides the Future Nostalgia team, the audience will take part in the radio's program.
Offline & online places
The kiosk changes its locations being, in the beginning, in Weimar (Bauhaus), one of the European metropolises, Berlin, and then travel around Europe, spreading the idea. The installed shop provides the customers a chance to imagine potential, alternative scenarios while digging into the future through sound. Besides the futuristic look of the 3D printed objects, the radio has its own online platform - a 3D rotating object looking like our planet from different perspectives, the transmitter of the audios. Depending on the click, the parts of the object will be activated, sending the message to the listener. The radio gives some of the ideas of what the future should and can be. Are we nostalgic about the future?
Key objectives for inclusion
Inclusion
Today, being inclusive during the economic, racial, class, and gender issues is not a trend, it’s an ongoing ever-changing frontier to push the boundaries of our society as a whole including how we make progress in the fight against climate change. Therefore, we all need inclusion. And inclusion is here the possibility given to everybody - any age, status, or gender, each extreme user. The objects are interpreted in the eye of a visitor, and the sound brings different thoughts from different community individuals - which leads to the results and change.
Collective work - collective future
The project's objective is to activate youth, elderly, middle age, disabled and extreme users of the products and spaces, and individuals that work in the domain of art, design, visual communication, electro acoustics, and experimental radio (e.g. bauhaus.fm as the collaboration) through the collective speculation on our future and work. Through playing with the object's function, audios, written and visual pieces, the audience contributes to the project.
Talks & Lectures & radio
Inclusivity comes also from the people being part of the project as many guests and speakers. Topics like design, futurology, aging, and observations will be offered in the shop, as well as on the radio platform, as part of the nostalgic content.
Having in mind inclusive design, the concept understands user diversity and thus includes as many people as possible into the process. It does not give solutions that are already materialized, but a chance to make one. User diversity covers variation in capabilities, needs, and aspirations and all of them are possible.
Innovative character
Innovation & Goals
Dear customers, our goal is to force you into a critical state of mind and alienate you from any simple enjoyment of the objects as merely entertaining. In the Futurology kiosk, the past, present, and future are observed from a time-wise, indefinite position, while using the archaeology of hearing and learning about the possibilities. Most importantly, we are improving the future, together.
Speculation through playfulness
To imagine a future or, better said futures, does not mean to predict or decide on, but to speculate. These objects are tools to better understand the present and open the space for discussion through playfulness, as the stimulants for a collective redefinition of reality. Moreover, the design of everyday objects is usually focused on aesthetic and functional possibilities rather than visions for how life could be. The Kiosk, as an art installation offers this possibility and the objects of non or multiple functionalities while creating an unusual, futuristic setting in public space.
The biggest innovation of the project is meeting the fields and gathering the people from different professions that can bring the change. Fine art is the one detecting the problem and screaming while pointing it. The design tries to apply, distort, change and solve the problem while using our vision as the most powerful medium. And technologies and science along are bringing the solutions.
