1. Futurism

Category Archives: Futurism

Suspended animation is about to make death political

Posted on by

Can death be useful? Thats the central question of the quickly expanding field of suspended animation, the process of slowing the bodys major processes as much as possible to induce a state thats very muchlike death without actually causingthe patient to die.

What precisely wemean when wesay actually die is a bit of an open question these days; in aworld where we can often be resuscitated after long periods of brain death, the noun Deathis probably best definedas, Any state ofzerobrain activityfrom whicha person will never berevived. Thats not particularly helpful, though; if a person is brain-dead next to a machine that could revive them, are they truly dead if the machine is broken and truly alive if it is not? Is death an absence of life, or an absence of any future potentialfor life?

Such questions used to be nothing but navel-gazing, but today represent concrete issues that could affect our lives in the every-day. With the recent onset of a trial for suspended animation technology, we have taken our first steps downa path with no end in sight. The trial will catch otherwise hopeless patients at the point of death (or potentiallyafter), and swap out a large portion of their blood for a chilled, oxygenated saline solution. This quickly lowers the body to a chilly 10 degrees Celsius, which almost immediately induces a hypothermic state and lowers the metabolic rate to near zero. If cells arent doing anything then they also arent producing any of themetabolic products that normally build up to toxic levels without breathing and circulation. At this point, the question is not whether suspended animation is real but whether its medically useful.

Medical evacuation helicopters see a lot of death en-route to hospitals, but that could be about to change.

The field of suspended animation facedwidespread skepticism for manyyears, but recent studies in pigs and a generally pro-futurism trend within science have led toa rather abrupt wave of professionalacceptance. It mostly comes down to drastically reduced claims for the technology; rather than alienating everyday physicians and scientists with speculation abouteternal life, suspended animation is now mostly about keeping terminal patients in a revivable statelong enough to getthem to machinery that can do the reviving. Many, many people die in ambulances, or military medevac helicopters, and these new attempts at induced hibernation could help those patients to get them the help they need.

Yet, there is simply no way well stop there. The trend will begin at NASA, DARPA, Calico, and other moonshot research organizations: how do we put healthy people into a hibernative state? Getting astronauts to Mars is probably possible without suspended animation, but a trip toEuropa or Enceladus will be much harder; theres a reason that space-ships full of stasis pods aresuch a trope of science fiction, and not least of them is a crews demands on power and consumables. Butspace isnt the only out-there application for suspended animation; not every prisoner at Guantanamo is an intelligence asset, so why keep useless prisoners conscious and complaining? And if you take the time to have an enemy combatant declared dead after combat, does that corpse still have rights if you revive it later?

Waking from suspended animation could be automated for long-term space missions with no conscious crew members.

Right now the research only really implies that suspended animation can be safe on the order of hours, but theres every reason to believe that a stasis nap could safely last weeks or months, and years arent such a crazy idea either. We are about to start allowing people topay to feel out the borders of death. Peoplewill freeze themselves even in absence of any plausible future cure for their fatal problem; if you can affordto do so, why wouldnt you?

This technologywill force us to ask tough questions about society: Does the word death mean something different forrich people than forthe poor? Do we declare a patient as dead depending on whether they can afford to stay in stasis until some projected cure date? In this dystopia, a market crash could wipe out savings accounts andswitch thousands of suspended patients from Long Term Pre-Mortal Stasis to Med School Cadaver In Waiting.

Minority Report had stasis prisons, albeit based on a different technology.

Read more here:

Suspended animation is about to make death political

Everything new is old

Posted on by

It was easy to become depressed after the lecture by Professor Leonardo Sonnoli at a conference marking the centenary of Futurism at Bezalel.

The first reason was what Sonnoli had to say about the need to be familiar with the history of your field, in order to become a better designer - an issue that frequently seems no interest at all to the local design audience.

The second reason was the examples Sonnoli presented when he spoke about the influence of Futurism on current typography and graphics. Nearly every aspect of today's typography, which seems so original and contemporary, has its source in a 100-year-old movement: double spreads in newspapers; typography that stretches the limits of readability and mixes top, bottom, left and right; the use of white space in order to break up text; different sizes, colors and types of letters on a single page, and so on.

This was done not only for aesthetic reasons, but rather in the name of the ideological message of Futurism and its founder, the poet Fillipo Marinetti. Marinetti wished to exalt aggression, violence and danger; considered speed fundamental to modernity; and was opposed to the past, its institutions and its art. Traditional typography did not suit his vision.

The interesting thing about Marinetti's manifestos is that they are about typography. In this respect, the Futurists were the first to understand the importance of typography in transmitting a message, something that is now studied by first-year design students.

They addressed how a page's size, color and weight contributes to the experience of reading, as well as book formats. As an example, Sonnoli brought books too large to fit onto a standard bookshelf, with folded pages of different sizes and shapes that related to space and limits in an innovative way for their time.

Sonnoli, 47 and a graduate of the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts, is a graphic designer who specializes in work for cultural institutions, exhibitions and publishing houses. He has won many prizes, and has exhibited in shows around the world. He lives in Rimini, northeastern Italy, and teaches typography and experimental book design in Venice and Urbino.

He says his interest in Futurism stems from a desire to seek out his roots.

"I always teach my students that our future is found in the past; maybe we don't know what will happen in the future, but we know what happened in the past. There are new topics to deal with and new technologies that make new things possible. The trick is to give your own interpretation.

"I know many designers who have read the same books and use the same sources, but their products are different, because we are different. I want to understand the history of where I live and to know what happened before me.

See the original post:

Everything new is old

Collecting Art, Without Knowing What Kind of Art You're Collecting

Posted on by

The biggest holding of concrete poetry in the world sits in a Miami duplex,gathered by a couple who initially didn't know what "concrete poetry" was.

All images courtesy of Perez Art Museum Miami, taken by Oriol Tarrides

In 1974, Marvin and Ruth Sackner began gathering works of concrete poetry," poems whose words and typography are arranged to convey meaning graphically. But they didnt know the genre was called concrete poetry until 1979. Coming across Emmett Williamss Anthology of Concrete Poetry in a book storewas a Eureka moment, says Marvin, a neurologist by trade. I exclaimed to Ruth, What weve been collecting has a name!

In the years since, they would help give a once-languishing art movement a home at the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry in Miami, an enormous and unparalleled collection of 250,000 workshoused not in a museum, but in a massive duplex overlooking the bay. Now, 300 choice pieces of theirs sit on display at the brand-new Prez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), whose concrete-poetry exhibit, A Human Document, was set to come down in May but has been extended and remains on view until August 2014.

The Sackners have built two other major art collections in the past 30 years. The first was of contemporary constructivist works. The second was of Russian avant garde and early 20th century avant garde movements (books, drawings, and paintings informed by dada, futurism, surrealism and the like). But it was the concrete and visual poetry collectionwhich includes artist books, assemblings, artist magazines, experimental calligraphy, typewriter art and poetry, and word-image worksthat would become the Sackners signature achievement.

That fact is due as much to circumstance as anything. As collectors, the Sackners could never afford to establish the early 20th-century avant garde art and book collection. But focusing on concrete poetry and letter arts was a different matter. The prices were within our means, and we related to the facile immediacy of the visual and linguistic communicability of concrete poetry, Marvin says. We gradually came to realize that it was possible to build the collection of concrete and visual poetry.

They certainly accomplished their mission, with hundreds of rarities, one-of-a-kinds, and limited-edition documentation. The earliest book in the Sackner collection is Rabanus Mauruss 1503 Liber de Laudibus Sanctae Crucis,produced in 1,000 copies and including 28 shaped poems. The collection continues to the present with the most recent book of experimental calligraphy by Francoise Mery dated April 2014.

The Sackners database encompasses more than 58,000 records with approximately 17,000 partially or not catalogued. The number of individual pieces is about 250,000. This is because artist books, print portfolios, and assemblings are recorded as one entry in the database although they may contain multiple prints and drawings.

A Human Document at the Perez Art Museum begins with Mallarmes first publication of Un Coup de Des in Cosmopolis (1897) and then provides examples of Dada, Russian avant garde, De Stijl, surrealism, futurism, lettrisme until World War II. Artist books and magazines, manuscripts, concrete and visual poems, correspondence art, typewriter poems and art are displayed in vitrines. Post-WWII word-image wall works are displayed from artists and poets worldwide.

Of all the materials, typewriter art and poetry is the most fascinating. The genre began about 20 years after the commercial introduction of the typewriter and reached its flowering with the advent of concrete poetry in the 1950s and early 1960s, Marvin explained, adding that this method allowed an inexpensive but often very labor-intensive solution for widespread distribution of a new poetic form. Moreover, the ease of overstriking letters and text for new visual and kinetic effects would have been costly and difficult if the poems were typeset during that time.

Original post:

Collecting Art, Without Knowing What Kind of Art You're Collecting

Free futurism from Deltron 3030 at the jazz fest

Posted on by

MONTREAL Deltron 3030, a hip-hop supergroup of sorts, will close out the 35th edition of the Montreal International Jazz Festival, organizers announced Wednesday.

The trio, made up of Montreal turntablist and producer Kid Koala, rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and producer Dan the Automator, will perform a free outdoor show at Place des Festivals July 6 at 9:30 p.m.

The group, which specializes in futuristic alt-rap sounds and concepts, released its self-titled debut album in 2000, then didnt release another until last years Event II. The group last played the jazz festival indoors, at Metropolis in 2012.

The festivals complete outdoor lineup will be announced June 3.

Earlier this week, organizers announced that veteran rapper Snoop Dogg will also perform during this summers edition of the festival. The 42-year-old MC from Long Beach, Calif. born Calvin Broadus Jr. will play Metropolis July 4 at 11 p.m.

Snoop Dogg burst onto the gangsta-rap scene in 1992 when he was featured on mentor Dr. Dres multiplatinum album The Chronic. Snoops own debut album, Doggystyle, was released the following year and has sold more than 4 million copies since.

His most recent release, 2013s reggae album Reincarnated, was released under the moniker Snoop Lion, which he has since dropped. He last performed in Montreal at the Osheaga Music & Arts Festival in 2012.

Tickets for Snoop Doggs Metropolis show cost $82 to $95.30 and go on sale Friday, May 9at noon via ticketmaster.ca.

For more information on the 35th edition of the Montreal International Jazz Festival, which runs from June 26 to July 6, visit montrealjazzfest.com.

More:

Free futurism from Deltron 3030 at the jazz fest

Innovation advice from Google X head: Ask how your solution can disappear into peoples lives

Posted on by

NEW YORK With a name like Astro Teller, youd better be ready to speak at length about the future.

As the captain of moonshots at Google X, the search giants secretive lab for ambitious technology solutions, Teller is someone who lives and breathes futurism. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference today, he gave the audience a primer on what makes Google X tick and faced criticisms of Google Glass head-on.

With the verve of a Baptist preacher, Teller kicked things off by professing his love for anti-lock breaks a far cry the moonshot concepts hes normally associated with.

[ABS] is a wonderful technology moment, he said. We dont have to mess with it. We just say at a very high level this is what we want, and its taken care of.

When technology is invisible and vanishes into our lives, thats actually its ultimate goal, Teller added.

Thats ultimately what Google is aiming for with X. Its self-driving cars could save countless lives by making driving on-demand and computer controlled rather than something which requires us to spend hours learning and then spending the rest of our lives being constantly vigilant. For people with diabetes, the recently announced glucose-sensing contact lenses are a far better user experience than pricking themselves every day to test their blood sugar. And while Google Glass is far from mature, its a stab at making us less addicted to whipping out our phones at every buzz and beep.

Teller suggested that people working on new technology ask themselves: How could the thing Im working on take away a feature? How can the thing Im working on take away a user interface? How can the thing Im working on disappear into peoples lives?

He was also quick to dismiss some of the privacy concerns around Google Glass. This is the worlds worst spy camera, Teller said, while wearing a bright blue Glass unit on stage at Disrupt. He pointed out that there are far better spy cameras on the market, and that Glass owners often ask people for permission before taking pictures and video (something smartphone owners dont typically do).

For the foreseeable future, Glass will continue to be the worlds worst spy camera, he said.

Read the rest here:

Innovation advice from Google X head: Ask how your solution can disappear into peoples lives

Aluminum NES costs as much as the Xbox One, probably has better games

Posted on by

Can you really put a price on nostalgia? What if its really, really pretty nostalgia?

A company called Analogue Interactive is looking to make the original Nintendo Entertainment System cool again with a modern aluminum chassis makeover. Its called the Analogue Nt, and this lovely piece of retro futurism can be yours for just $499. Sure, you couldget an Xbox One for that price, but how are you supposed to play Duck Hunt on that?

The casing looks nothing like the boxy NES or the original Famicom unit, but the inside is all Nintendo. Unlike some other solutions that rely on software emulation or hardware tricks to play NES games, The Analgoue Nt packs the exact same Ricoh 20A3 and 2C02 microprocessors. The company didnt somehow make more of these 30 year-old 8-bit microprocessors it harvested them from old Famicom systems that were collecting dust.

This hardware swap likely has something to do with the high cost, but it also ensures compatibility with all the games and peripherals ever produced for the NES. It even works with the bizarre Famicom Computer Disk System, and even more rare Famicom 3D System. Yet, somehow Nintendo still went on to make the Virtual Boy.

The Analogue Interactive store is accepting pre-orders right now for the Analogue Nt, but the $499 price tag is only the beginning. You can have different color aluminum cases for an additional $49. Then theres the RGB to HDMI upscaling adapter (another $49). Need some controllers? Analogue Interactive will sell you new, unused NES controllers for $49, or a refurbished NES/Famicom controller for $29. At the end of the day, you could spend quite a hefty sum on this slice of nostalgia. Its expected to ship this summer.

Read more:

Aluminum NES costs as much as the Xbox One, probably has better games

How Iran Became One of the World's Most Futuristic Countries

Posted on by

S

When we think about futurism, often we imagine cutting-edge technologies like bionic arms or weather machines for colonizing Mars. But if we really want to make it for another few centuries, we're going to need something that Iran has already got.

To understand Iran's breakthrough, we need to go back in time to 1993, when President Obama's science adviser John Holdren was trying to figure out how big the world's population could get before there was a major energy crisis. A respected environmental scientist, Holdren offered up a famous scenario based on the world's population at that time.

At that time, Earth held 5.5 billion people (compared to today's 7 billion), who consumed 13 terawatts of energy annually. Of course, they were not consumed equally: people in the developing world consumed on average 1 kilowatt per person, while people in the developed world consumed 7.5. Holdren suggested that given current population growth rates, the world would need 8 times more energy to fuel its 14 billion people by the end of the twenty-first century. Which would mean total collapse of the ecosystem, peak oil, and likely both.

That sounded crazily horrific, so Holdren asked what would happen if the population only boomed to 10 billion, and everybody had equal access to energy. Even if everybody only used on average 3 kilowatts, the world would still require 30 terawatts of energy annually by the end of the twenty-first century.

S

Following up on Holdren's research, population biologists Paul Ehrlich, Ann Ehrlich and environmental scientist Gretchen Daily decided to reverse engineer the scenario. They wanted to figure out what the ideal population size would be, if we wanted people to have access to 3 kilowatts, without destroying the environment. In their calculations, they assumed a twenty-first century where people would adopt more carbon-neutral sources of energy, like solar. They also assumed that some animals would go extinct, but that enough would be brought back from the edge of extinction that our ecosystems would remain stable.

The result? The Ehrlichs and Daily found that the most the planet could bear at that level of energy use would be 2 billion people, roughly the world's population in the 1930s.

Confronted with numbers like that, it's tempting to throw up your hands and give up on humanity's future. How could we ever get the world's population back down to 2 billion from its current 7 billion? Actually, it can be done and it's been done before, on a smaller scale.

A few years before Holdren described his population scenario, there was already one country in the world whose leaders were deeply worried about the economic and environmental costs of rising population. In Iran, during the 1980s conflict with Iraq, the Ayatollah Khomeini instituted new government regulations that encouraged women to have as many children as they could to build a "Twenty Million Man Army." As a result, Iran's population grew from 37 million people in 1979, to 50 million in 1986. This was, according to journalist Alan Weisman, "the highest rate of population increase the world had ever seen."

Follow this link:

How Iran Became One of the World's Most Futuristic Countries

The History Of Graphic Design, In Icons

Posted on by

We know two things for sure about the guys over at Brooklyn's Pop Chart Lab: they love drinking, and they love good graphic design.

Their latest poster is a tribute to the entire history of the latter: The gridded, black-and-white poster is a cheat sheet to the history of graphic design, beginning with the Victorian era.

Start at the top, left-hand corner, of A Stylistic Survey of Graphic Design, and read from left to right. Each era (say, Arts & Crafts or Art Nouveau) is represented by a rectangular box that includes several squares that graphically represent the style described. The Modern movement, one of the largest movements depicted here, includes Bauhaus, Vorticism, De Stijl, New Typography and Istotope, Constructivism, Suprematicsm, and Futurism. Pop Chart creates, within each stamp-sized box, a visual representation of that particular style, with the design elements that prevailed at the time. So the Constructivism box echoes the intense Soviet Party posters from the 1920s, the Futurism box has a bold, attention-grabbing arrow on it, and so on.

It's telling that certain eras--eras that were niche or short-lived, or which are still emerging--get just one box. (This includes Dada, Digital, and Street Art/Guerrilla.)

Scan down to the bottom for a sampling of todays reigning design philosophies. Are they right? Theres data visualization, theres the twee, chalkboard-loving school of handcrafted, and theres flat design. But where's skeuomorphism? Each box is efficiently packed, providing an at-a-glance answer to any designer who might ask: What, again, were the defining elements of the Late Modern Polish School era? For the rest of us, it's just nice to look at.

Pre-order A Stylistic Survey of Graphic Design for an early bird price of $23, here.

[Image: Courtesy of Pop Chart Labs]

See the rest here:

The History Of Graphic Design, In Icons

6 Of The Boldest Concept Cars Ever Built

Posted on by

Atlanta's High Museum of Art is opening an exhibition of some of the rarest and boldest concept cars ever built. At a time when cars are getting plainer and plainer, and teens and twenty-somethings can barely be bothered to get a driver's license, it's a reminder why generations of Americans handed over 52 weeks of salary for a dream on four wheels.

Take the Lancia (Bertone) Stratos HF Zero. This metallic wedge is pure 1980s futurism, but it was actually built in 1970--thats the year after this seasons Mad Men takes place, for those keeping count. The Zero was designed by Marcello Gandini. If you think the Zero looks a bit like a Lamborghini, thats not so crazy. He also designed the Lamborghini Miura and Countach, the latter of which shares the Zero's aggressive, spear-like posture. But Gandini was no one-trick pony. He also design the remarkably groomed original BMW 5 series, the cooler-in-retrospect Citron BX, and a tiny, cubby bear of a car, the Innocenti Mini. Additionally, he invented those absurd and eye-catching scissor doors we associate with supercars to this day.

Only one Zero was made. The same is true for another car in the exhibit, the General Motors Firebird I XP-21. This thing is literally a jet on wheels. Its turbine engine spewed jet exhaust at 1,250 F. It was so sketchy that the driver was never supposed to push the throttle beyond 100mph. And you know what GM did with the Firebird I XP-21's co-creator Harley J. Earl after it came out? They didnt fire him. As the first top-level executive designer in American history, they basically gave him carte blanche, allowing him to introduce the world to both tailfins and the Corvette, too; later, he retired. (Its worth noting, Earl is credited with creating the original concept car as a way to build hype around design, the Buick Y-Job.)

These are incredible cars. And theyre on display at the museum May 21 to September 7, 2014.

Learn more here.

[Hat tip: Core77]

[Images: Courtesy of Atlanta's High Museum of Art]

Read more from the original source:

6 Of The Boldest Concept Cars Ever Built

by Flavien Dachet

Posted on by

Presented at the 1986 Paris Motor Show, the Proxima concept was the ultimate vision of '80s futurism, both in terms of its design and engineering. To assert its blue-sky vision, Peugeot named its creation after Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the sun.

The exterior design was directed by Grard Welter, and featured a long wheelbase, mid-mounted engine and very small overhangs, putting the accent on power and performance.

While the front looked like a 405 on steroids, the rear was a very dramatic piece of design. The body was made of stratified Kevlar, and included a rear dorsal fin that sat on top of the engine compartment, between two solar panels. These provided the power to regulate the temperature inside the cabin.

A thin horizontal LED strip stretched over the full width of the truncated tail to create a strong Peugeot signature. The body only covered some vital elements, leaving the fat rear tires and parts of its engine unprotected.

Looking below the car, you could see the two large turbos hanging from its exposed guts. These were coupled with two air-to-liquid intercoolers to bring the power of the 2.8-liter V6 to 600bhp. The engine also made use of ceramic-coated mechanical components to reduce power losses due to friction.

To get in, the passengers had to open the polycarbonate canopy, which is split in half. The front half rotated forward at its base while the rear half slid rearwards.

The bright red cockpit was designed by Paul Bracq, and capable of accommodating up to four passengers. It contrasted traditional handcrafted leather and quilting with high technology. Satellite navigation, an electronic key card, rear-view cameras, anti-collision radar and a visualization system that combined the input from five external cameras into a unique image of the vehicle's surroundings all featured.

The Proxima also included electronic assistance technologies that aimed to provide comfort, speed and safety. The transmission was a non permanent four-wheel drive, which transferred power to the front axle if a skid was detected, while the gearbox and clutch were electronically controlled. The future is now.

First seen Paris Motor Show 1986 Length 4,420mm Width 2,110mm Height 1,150mm Wheelbase 2,750mm Engine 2.8-liter V6, twin-turbocharged, mid mounted Power 441.6kW/600bhp Weight 1,080kg

Your author, Flavien Dachet, is a UK-based, French-born car designer. You may know him as the purveyor ofKarzNshit, a photo blog that if it isn't already in your bookmarks, it certainly should be.

Link:

by Flavien Dachet


  1. Futurism