“Nobody knows what is coming. Nobody wants to look.”
- Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto

Dougald Hine came to the third AF meetup to talk about The Dark Mountain Project that he is running with the writer Paul Kingsnorth. They have recently published a manifesto and have plans to start something of a movement. Should we be so ready to assume continued technological progress and functioning societies in the futures we propose? Dougald initiated a discussion on Uncivilised futures – a counterpoint to the technological futures that have been our bread and butter so far – which has recently caused a storm online via a recent debate in an article in The Guardian entitled: “Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse?”

Another perspective on the potential impacts of a post crash society came from Jon Ardern and his Ark project. A graduate from the RCA Design Interactions course, ARK-INC offers “products and services as investments in the creation of a ‘post-crash’ portfolio that will hold or gain value as the world of traditional economics crumbles. To supplement these investments, ARK-INC helps promote and facilitate (though its ark trust initiative) an ad-hoc self-sustaining social network known as the Ark Collective. This body of work is at present being translated into a functional website that will in its first incarnation act as a ‘superfiction’ and visible container of its conceptual framework. The idea is to then progressively move elements of this framework into real world application.”

Our second Meetup brought together three projects at very different stages, providing plenty of AlterFutures fat to chew.

Asking a question rather than providing a finished answer seems to be very fruitful, the two -way discussion becomes much more invigorating than a traditional presentation.

Tobie Kerridge introduced Material Beliefs and his PhD progress at Goldsmiths, discussing methodology and how to deal with the split personality required to write a social science thesis evaluating one’s own design work. Perhaps the anthropologist living with tribes in the jungle could be a role model for the speculative designer? How do you evaluate public engagement?

I presented my Design Interactions MA graduation project, The Synthetic Kingdom and shared the dilemmas around my upcoming residency at SymbioticA. What should the designer do in the lab? How can this design approach be translated into real biological material and what ideas should I be trying to explore?

Mikael Metthey asked for suggestions on how to make translate design fiction into a real installation. He has been invited to exhibit his project, The Minutine Space in a show this autumn. How can you simulate the experience of the future?

AlterFutures seems to be a great forum to ask questions, share ideas and get excellent critical feedback. Next time, Dougald Hine on the Dark Mountain Project and others…

Plymouth miners panning for gold in 1830s

My question is how can we make this kind of approach to design thinking, doing and speculating about alternative futures (or alternative present) a sustainable way of working or living?

Can we actually show our progress of working to open up the discussion earlier in the process? Would this encourage others to engage in our thinking before the concept is ‘published’ and out in the world complete and finished? Would this foster advocacay and promote this appoach and in doing so keep it sustainable?

We each want to pursue this way of working and each one of us has our own strategy and workarounds; each one of us finds ways to earn money whilst pursuing really interesting projects,whether it is in academia, commercial work, arts funding, science/public engagement funding or all of the above or none of the above.

Or should we just find ways to make our own gold like they did in Ethiopia?

If you guys have any thoughts or want to share your insights or opinions then please reply to this post.

- Michael Burton’s website
- Jess Charlesworth’s The Future of Self Knowledge
- James King’s website
- The book James mentioned was Sum by David Eagleman, a nice review here.

Photo by Anab Jain.

About 12 people managed to attend, which turned out to be a perfect size for the sort of informal and open discussion that followed each presentation. This meant that the event had a very different feel to something like This Happened – more like a discussion than a series of talks.

The length of each presentation was quite short, but the discussion after each much longer than expected. Perhaps in future we’ll need to keep a closer eye on the clock, without loosing the the informality.

So there will definitely be another AlterFutures meetup, most likely next month. Get in touch if you would like to join the group or present your work. We already have a few people willing to show work at the next event which we’ll schedule soon. See you then!

Our first meet up will be on June 15th at The Sense Loft on Wardour Street, Soho.