Investing in Futures: The Art of Worlding (Topics in ITP) +
What would it mean to unhinge the present from its current conditions and wildly create a world you want to live in? Through world-building exercises, students in this course will develop detailed alternate worlds, reimagining everything from laws of physics to societal habits and customs.
The term “world-building” originates primarily in science fiction and gaming. World-building and “futuring” models are often based on constraints—design limitations— that spark new imaginaries liberated from business-as- usual predictions. Future studies—also known as futurology—has been used since the 1970s by business and military interests as part of a strategic planning toolkit. This framework of speculating about the future in systemic ways has been adapted by many contemporary artist collectives and mission-driven organizations, in order to challenge present assumptions about future outcomes. In these artistic quests, the notion of the “future” has led to the development of productive utopias, foreboding dystopias, and queer heterotopias.
Similarly, in this course, students will engage in a combination of collaborative and individual creative work and research to imagine their desired future or alternate worlds. Students will complete three variously-scaled worldbuilding projects, in the forms of invented artifacts, writing, and storytelling, whose features will draw from Investing in Futures, a constraint-design platform, co-created by the instructor and Sarah Rothberg, which explores topics such as governance, living conditions, food, climate, and technology, and whose specific conditions range from the possible to the absurd.
The class will also draw on research and readings by neuroscientists, science fiction authors, anthropologists, artists, and worldbuilding experts, and touch upon future scenario design thinking and speculative design. In addition to a series of creative assignments and presentations, the class will culminate in co-producing a document of the worlds created, as well as reflections, backcasting, and commentary.