© 1977 Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan

3D

I would have bet a lot of money that 3D projections, which had been around as the future of cinema for decades would never, ever make it to be mainstream. We’re just so conditioned by watching tens of thousands of two-dimensional representations that we create the missing dimension in our heads. But well, here we are, sitting in the cinema with glasses on (which funnily in our case must have had the polarizing filter lenses in the wrong way). I still think it may be just a phase and stem from cinemas trying to keep up with P2P networks, but in the case of Avatar it really did add to the immersiveness of the experience and mostly it was used somewhat unobtrusively in terms of cinematography.

Biotech SciFi

Avatar appears to occupy an interesting slot in the range of science fiction’s visions of the future. While there are many other similar approaches, especially from David Cronenberg (such as The Fly and eXistenZ), Avatar may be the first very high-profile movie that pushes the public imagination from a future dominated by electronics to a future where highly advanced biotechnology is depicted as what radically separates it from the present. Actually and more precisely, it sits at the very edge of two visions of futures where electronic equipment is needed to connect to the genetically engineered body but the wish to transcend this separation and become purely biological is one of the core motifs of the narrative. Also note that the notion of transcendence makes it radically different from the electronic transhumanism of a Hans Moravec for example.

Similarly, Pandora’s biosphere is populated by amazing creatures and part of the appeal of the movie is clearly to indulge in the obviously artificially created animals and plants of the planet, with many reviewers pointing out the aesthetic pleasure of seeing something that looks real and natural but clearly cannot be. Which brings me to the next point:

The Uncanny Valley

With Avatar we may have reached the point in pre-rendered computer generated imagery where (with the exception of the Na’Vi maybe, who miss the suspension of disbelief maybe by one generation of technology) the artificial has become practically real. Most of the flora and fauna looks perfectly natural yet unnatural and–is not revulsive or such at all, which would be the prediction of the Uncanny valley hypothesis.

We’re very finely tuned to human features, so that might explain why humanoids will definitely be the last to seem real. But it may be time to put the hypothesis to rest and accept that the valley was not very uncanny after all and is as good as crossed.

In Avatar, there almost was an inverse effect when after two hours or so of predominantly artificial creatures the first humans are being composited into the images and they do look flat and artificial in direct comparison.

Ecotopia

When I was in San Francisco this September, Alexis Madrigal borrowed me a wonderful book which I always meant to write about (elsewhere). It’s called Ecotopia and thematizes an alternate history scenario where northern California, Oregon and Washington segregate from the United States to become Ecotopia, a wholly sustainable nation with emphasis on co-habitation with everything natural. The plot revolves around a journalist called Will Weston being send to report and learn about Ecotopia’s ways (there had been no contact between Ecotopia and the US for twenty years), but of course he falls in love with a wild local lady and ends up converting to an Ecotopian after realizing (seeing) how much he prefers Ecotopian life. Having recently read this, Avatar almost seems like the movie adaptation of that book. From the way that the Na’Vi co-exist with nature to the scenes where an assault of helicopters is defeated, I am almost sure that this has been an inspiration.

Games

Maybe it’s just the aesthetics, but never before has a movie given me such a similar feeling to playing a game. The film obviously heavily borrows from games like World of Warcraft (especially in terms of riding flying creatures), but I’m wondering whether it might be due to the added feeling of immersion through 3D which in games comes from the interaction?

More: also read Fabagit’s take on it, as a representative went with me and has such a different way of  processing it.

More…

The Golden Institute (What if Jimmy Carter had been re-elected, would the world be greener?) and Growth Assembly (What if we could grow products, instead of manufacturing them?) are currently on show at the Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland.

The exhibition What If…, curated by Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby and Michael Gorman probes “the space between reality and the impossible and where designers meet scientists to explore the future”. Running until December 13th.

Just talked about the Golden Institute at Lift Asia in Jeju, South Korea. Program refers to me as Alternate History Designer, I like that v much. Merci, Nicolas & Laurent.

Stuart Candy is a multimedia futurist at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies in Honolulu and the first Research Fellow of the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco. A pioneer in so-called “guerrilla futures”, both his widely read blog the sceptical futuryst and his PhD research at the University of Hawaii at Manoa are about the communication of foresight through the design of future-evoking situations and artifacts. In 02006, with colleague Jake Dunagan (now at the Institute for the Future), he started FoundFutures, a public art initiative devoted to making future scenarios experientially available in everyday life. Late last year, Stuart served as Game Master for the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game, “Superstruct”, and he is currently leading development of a public alternate reality game about pandemic influenza hitting Hawaii.

March 16th at Demos, 19h. Free but limited capacity, please RSVP on Meetup