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Joerg Blumtritt edited this page Nov 19, 2019 · 18 revisions

Future Punk

NYU Abu Dhabi, Interactive Media

Spring 2020, IM-UH 2513

Joerg Blumtritt

Speculative fiction, strategy planning, future studies: We work our way through the field of futurism and use its methods as our creative tool

The Future (Patched together from two decades of Wired Magazine cover pages)

The future: let’s patch it together from scraps. Future studies and strategic foresight are methods of guiding businesses and politics. Punk means to take the master’s tools apart, repurpose them to serve our own goals.

The compound of the words future and punk, just like in cyberpunk or steampunk, indicates that in the case of futurepunk, future itself would be setting the stage for the narrative, provide the condition against which the human beings in the world of the story have to struggle. Science fiction readership is skyrocketing. Strategic foresight and speculative design have become standard features in business events. While the former pulp genre has turned into a commodity, a new generation of creatives re-appropriates futurism into emerging subcultures of non-western identity-focused speculative fiction and art.

Futurism can be a key skill for a fast-changing humanity that has become aware of global media exposure and global threats: To dream up, conceptualize, and prototype outside the strict factual norms. The Emirates, with the strong dedication to a long-term future strategy, are the most fascinating place to study the applications of futurist thinking.

The class introduces speculative fiction and the more scientific forms of speculation. Students envision, draft and draw their own images and imaginations of alternative worlds, discuss, critique and apply the futurist methods in the good old punk tradition, taking futurism and use it for their own creations.

Draft Schedule

Subject to minor modification and clarification of language. Readings/videos refer to the complete text/video except when indicated otherwise.

Week 1: What is future (if anything at all)

*Introduction: What is the future? How can we think about the future?

Readings

Videos

Assignments

Envision the scaffolding for a short story about a Thing from the future (can be drawn sketches, powerpoint slides, or a short teaser)

Week 2: There is no future

Utopia, uchronia, science fiction, speculation, exotism, escapism, Techno-determinism, Future punk

Utopia is the no-place, uchronia is the no-time: Where (or when) things can be different, can be ideal.

Readings

Videos

Assignments

Write a critical essay (3000 to 5000 characters) about an invention (of your choice) that is regarded as having changed humanity. Fictionalize another invention that will change humanity.

Week 3: Futurisms

Manifestos, creating the future, declaring the future, understanding what might come, Ethno- and other identity-futurisms

What is futurism? What is critical futurism?

Readings

Videos

Assignments

Write a manifesto for an utopian world (which might be silly or really stupid, too, as long as it is a good read)

Week 4: Speculative strategies and big business

Paul Saffo, scenario planning, “the dark spot of the next five to ten years”, Hype cycles, Possible vs. preferable, Speculative design, Planning your startup

The corporate side: Hype cycles, scenarios, business strategies, venture capital and startups.

Readings

Videos

Assignments

Your Startup: Create a pitch deck or a mock-up, animation or video. Take your market into consideration and focus on the specific culture of your target audience.

Midterm project

Draft and prototype “A thing from the future”, based on both, utopian thinking and startup ideology. The project can make use of creative writing, corporate “business planning”, visual techniques, maker tools, etc. The proposals will be presented and discussed in class before the work on the actual projects start.

Week 5: Pace layers, history and other forms of velocity

Con- and a-temporality

The long now: Understanding concepts of time and movement, of contemporality and atemporality. Also: discussion of proposals for midterm project.

Readings

  • Brand, Stewart. “Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning,” December 20, 2017. https://doi.org/10.21428/7f2e5f08.
  • Stross, Charles. Accelerando. Penguin Publishing Group, 2005.
  • Srnicek, Nick, and Alex Williams. Speed Trials: A Conversation about Accelerationist Politics (Mohammad Salemy, Nick Srnicek, and Alex Williams). Interview by Mohammad Salemy. Accessed November 3, 2019. https://fillip.ca/content/speed-trials.
  • Blumtritt, Joerg, Sabria David, and Benedikt Koehler. “The Slow Media Manifesto – Slow Media.” Accessed November 1, 2019. http://en.slow-media.net/manifesto.

Videos

Assignments

Create something that reflects on time passing in different speeds from the past through the future, maybe cyclical (can be a device, a drawing or writing).

Week 6: Futurist dialectics and future ecology

McLuhan’s Tetrad etc.

Application of McLuhan’s media ecology and the four questions of the tetrad to futurism. Understanding the role of ideology.

Readings

Videos

Assignments

Write a short essay (c. 2000 to 5000 characters) on the para-nodes and thinking outside the Net metaphors. Work on midterm project.

Week 7: The singularity is near: Messianism and eschatology (and mid term project due)

Fuller, Teilhard, Kurzweil, Singularity

The concept of salvation through future technology or other eschatological events

Readings

  • Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. 1st edition. Penguin Books, 2005.
  • Flemming, Billy. “Building Utopia in Space.” Public Books (blog), July 22, 2019. https://www.publicbooks.org/building-utopia-in-space/.
  • Stephenson, Neal. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (2-Jun-2011) Paperback. Re-Issue edition. Penguin, 2011.

Videos

Assignments

Write a short essay (c. 2000 to 5000 characters) of critique on Kurzweil think of possible reconciliation of futurism with you own believes.

Week 8: Systematic dystopianism

Future punk in strategy and warfare

Understand military planning and strategic foresight: The necessity to turn futurists’ dreams into a nightmare of war, terrorism, and universal suspicion.

Readings

Videos

Assignments

You only need to skim through the Warefare 2030 - 2050 reader and read the one or the other story, however read the other assigned readings completely. Design or draft a strategy game for a fictional conflict (format powerpoint slides, short essay of 3000 to 5000 characters, sketches, etc.).

Week 9: What ever happens to musicians

Soft signals and good narratives

The fine line between detecting weak (or soft) signals and anecdotal evidence: Make sense of single events and package it into a good story.

Readings

  • Philipp K. Dick, How to build a universe that doesn’t fall apart three days later. In: Dick, Philip K. The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings. Edited by Lawrence Sutin. Vintage Books ed edition. New York: Vintage, 1996.
  • Holopainen, Mari, and Marja Toivonen. “Weak Signals: Ansoff Today.” Futures, Special Issue: Weak Signals, 44, no. 3 (April 1, 2012): 198–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2011.10.002.
  • Cunha, Miguel Pina e, Stewart R. Clegg, and Ken Kamoche. “Improvisation as ‘Real Time Foresight.’” Futures, Special Issue: Weak Signals, 44, no. 3 (April 1, 2012): 265–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2011.10.009.

Videos

Assignments

Make a survey or other qualitative research on what might be already there and what we overlook.

Week 10: Now Punk

The weirdness of the present

Blame it on dystopias: Why is the future no longer fun? “Kitchen sink punk” gives you the answer: It is already here and it is much more evenly distributed than you might think.

Readings

Videos

Assignments

Write, draw, or design a kitchen sink punk episode, where things go wrong at home (can be a short novel of 3000 to 5000 characters, a series of Tweets or Facebook posts, images or sketches etc.).  

Week 11: The desert of the unreal

Going really far to talk about important things

When the certain predictions are dire and everything else is in flux, escape to fantasy is a good option not to get stuck.

Readings

Videos

N.N.

Assignments

Draft the proposal of your final project.

Week 12: Punk

Patching it together

The final project: Do punk stuff. Collage together what we have done so far. Now we have it all together. Let’s use the scraps we salvaged from our deconstruction of futurism.

This week kicks off the final projects. The final project should introduce “the general public” (e.g. the audience of a media channel or visitors to a gallery show) to the universe of the course’s topic. It should be aesthetically as well as visually compelling incorporating critical thoughts and speculative creativity. In particular, the project should make use of the multicultural and polyglot environment on campus and in the Emirates, ideally shining light on a real task that might lie ahead of the Gulf region or a place with specific meaning and relation to the maker(s) of the project.

The project proposals will be presented and discussed in class.

Readings

Assignments

Working on the final project. Discussion and studio-class

Week 13: Final project work and discussions

Studio class

Working on the final project. Discussion and studio-class

Readings
  • Negarestani, Reza. Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials. First Edition edition. Mansfield, TX: re.press, 2008.

Assignments

Final project

Week 14: Final project presentations and discussion

Studio class

Presentation of the final project.

NYU Abu Dhabi Future Punk by Joerg Blumtritt @jbenno - Other classes I teach: github.com/jbenno

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