Future_Forecast: Live Simulation + Collective World Building

AAAinA is thrilled to host Future_Forecast, an online simulation and collective world building project created by artists Mark Ramos and Ziyang Wu. Future_Forecast reimagines the Philippines as a speculative and dystopic location of research to simulate a future that exists between the virtual and the real. Through live collaboration, participants explore the impact of network infrastructure construction on developing countries through the context of neo-colonialism to imagine alternative and sustainable models for the field.

Modeled after LAN (Local Area Network) gaming parties organized by multiplayer gamers, Future_Forecast invites participants to gather in-person and collectively play on a local network (a network of computers linked together but separate from the wider internet). Along with activating the online world, the project creates a purposeful way for people to come together around technological platforms, share an in-person experience, and encourage an active dialogue around the role of technology in our lives.

Future_Forecast is heavily inspired by theorist Benjamin Bratton’s The Stack – On Software and Sovereignty, which is an interdisciplinary design brief for a new geopolitics that works with and for planetary-scale computation. Based on Bratton’s Stack theory, the project builds a 6-layer structure (earth, cloud, city, address, interface, user) as an interactive platformer on the Metaverse.

This workshop will be of particular interest to researchers, creators, and students engaged in critiques of technology, narrative studies, interactive art, the humanities, or the social sciences, as well as individuals interested in AI, algorithmic culture, and ritual practices. No prior expertise is required.

Requirements:

RSVP’s are required. Participants must bring their own laptop.

Participant bios:

Mark Ramos is a Brooklyn-based new media artist. Mark makes fragile post-colonial technology using web/software programming, physical computing (using computers to sense and react to the physical world), and digital sculpture/fabrication to create interactive work that facilitate encounters with our own uncertain digital futures. Mark is deeply committed to the ethos of open source: the free sharing of information and data + creative uses of technology.

Mark has exhibited his work and lectured widely both online and AFK including as part of Rhizome's First Look: New Art Online with the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Long March Space in Beijing, M+ Museum in Hong Kong, HEK-Basel, Switzerland (Haus der Elektronischen Künste), Arebyte Gallery in London, and at the Peter Weibel Institute for Digital Culture in Vienna.

Mark is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Courant Institute for Mathematical and Computational Sciences at NYU.

You can also find him playing drums for various bands in Brooklyn.

Ziyang Wu (b.1990) is an artist and curator based in Hangzhou. His recent practices examine how current technologies, in a cross-cultural context, affect politics, society, and the explicit and implicit relationships between things at both macro and micro levels. His video, AR, AI simulation and interactive video installation have exhibited internationally, including Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Philadelphia, Rhizome at the New Museum, Walker Art Center, Rochester Art Center, PinchukArtCentre, Hek Basel, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Konschthal (organized by Elektron) Luxembourg, Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH Asia, SXSW, Mesh Festival, Civa Festival, ifa Berlin, Medici Palace, Art Dubai, Annka Kultys Gallery, M+ Museum, K11, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Long March Space, Today Art Museum.

His recent fellowships and residencies include the shortlist of “Future Generation Art Prize” (2023-2024); “The Randall Chair” award at Alfred University (2022-2023); “Kai Wu” Interdisciplinary Studio residency, Media Art Lab, Times Museum (2021); AACYF Top 30 under 30 (2021). He is the vice department head of Open Media Department at School of Intermedia Art at China Academy of Art, adjunct professor at the BFA Fine Art Department at School of Visual Arts, and is a former member of NEW INC at the New Museum.

(Image credit: Ziyang Wu and Mark Ramos, screenshot of the “Stack” structure in Future Forecast, live simulation and collective world-building online environment, 2022 - ongoing Game development: Zhao Jiahui; Commissioned by Guangdong Times Museum, Media Lab)

Light refreshments will be provided.

AAAinA’s general programming and operations are funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Vilcek Foundation, and other foundations and individuals.