Z\Topia Community Show
Speculative Futures | December 13, 2020
Before the New Year I had the privilege to speak with Johanna Hoffman and Gabriel Shalom on the Z-Topia Community Show hosted by Phil Balagtas and Ben Lowdon. Cheers to keeping the conversation going in 2021 and shaping sustainable and prosperous futures for all of us!
Z-Topia is a webinar-format talk show where designers and artists are invited to muse, speculate and poke at articles and projects they’ve found on the internet. It’s an hour of asking questions and coming up with serious and silly ideas.
My Pre-Conversation Notes:
Venture Fiction Article: https://specialagency.co/venture-fiction/
VENTURE FICTION IMPRESSIONS
If money is 'one of' the most efficient mediums to conduct transactions between fiction and reality what are the others? Values? Ideas? Ideals? Relationships? Needs like food, shelter, etc.?
So you create this venture fiction and put it out into the world (like a scenario) to communicate an idea and it's considered successful if others engage in discourse / spend time thinking about it, talking about it, disagreeing and agreeing with parts? Basically, if it spurs creative abrasion / discourse, it's successful.
If it’s “successful already at the moment of its very inception” how would you ensure quality / sort productive venture fiction from the noise?
Can you choose the way of polysingularity? Isn't that everyone's reality? I would posit that we are all part of a dynamic network of global systems that constantly reconfigure themselves.
"Polysingularity is being fully committed to a certain context while being able to shift it at any moment of time." That seems like all intelligent yet non-strategic minded people.
VENTURE FICTION IMPLICATIONS
I wonder then, if it's vulnerable to sensationalism in the same way the media (who rely on ratings) have succumbed?
How might you keep it authentic / beholden to ideological discourse rather than sensational triggers aimed at debate rather than discourse?
Apocalypse Whatever Article: https://reallifemag.com/apocalypse-whatever/
APOCALYPSE WHATEVER IMPRESSIONS
Religion as Narrative.
19th-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard describes both the current president and my ex when he describes the "ironist." I wonder if all ironists have some level of narcissistic personality disorder?
Ironists and Shitposters both live in times of economic uncertainty and spiritual apathy, filling the void with the façade of renegade individualism on an ironically communal platform. In other words, actions speak louder than words, but words are all these so called renegades are offering.
Passive supporters of the alt-right shit-poster may be nothing more than overworked and overwhelmed consumers of free (and therefore biased) information. Eating their spoonfed rhetoric because they’re tired and it’s easy and readily available.
APOCALYPSE WHATEVER IMPLICATIONS
the centrality of identity as a human need, to feel like we matter even in turbulent times of economic uncertainty and spiritual apathy -- maybe the best counteraction to shit-posting is acknowledgement? Meeting their chants of “we’re number one” with “you’re still valuable” rather than “make room at the top for the rest of us.”
Then, again, if they’re narcissists, there’s no better approach than indifference and disregard.
ASCE Project Article: https://www.enr.com/articles/49440-before-covid-19-asce-project-envisioned-post-pandemic-future
ASCE PROJECT QUOTE
An interesting thing that we teased out in our analysis was that it was actually harder to predict the behavior of society in the 10 years following a crisis like a pandemic. It typically doesn't stay the same, but it could go one way or the other. It's really very unpredictable.
Amanda Chantal Bacon Food Diary: https://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/a28600/amanda-chantal-bacon-moon-juice-food-diary/
FOOD DIARY OVERVIEW
Under the guise of "you can do it too" Amanda Chantal Bacon is selling the notion that fantastical-sounding superfoods and time-intensive meditation and yoga practices are accessible rather than by-products of wealth and privilege. It is an interesting insight into the world of "virtuous consumption."
Hyperfoods Article: https://towardsdatascience.com/hyperfoods-9582e5d9a8e4
HYPERFOODS OVERVIEW
AI-designed “hyperfoods” is harnessing new technology to finally take a “systems thinking approach” to nutrition, looking at the interrelations of molecules rather than isolating and elevating “star superfood” molecules.
