Workshop 6: Futures: May 8th-9th

WALTER PICHLER. Small Room (Prototype 4), 1967 Photography: Werner Kaligofsky.
Generali Foundation, Vienna. © Generali Foundation

WALTER PICHLER TV-Helmet (Portable living room), 1967
This workshop explored ways in which the contemporary obsession with insecurity is generating new forms of technical promise, offering control and protection in the wars against terror and environmental apocalypse. Discussions ranged from Double Agents [...]

‘Design and Futures Thinking’ by James King

The MRI Steak: The Meat of Tomorrow

Nanofilter: Fossil from a Nanotech future
‘Design and Futures Thinking’ by James King (designer)

Check out his presentation here

Dressing The Meat of Tomorrow
There is a real technology that allows us to take a small sample of animal tissue and encourage it to grow, separate from the original animal’s [...]

Workshop 4: Protocols, Procedures & Institutions

Read more about the Protocols, Procedures and Institutions workshop here>

The Tower Hamlets Unregulated Zone

A CONFIDENTIAL MEMO discussing the IF-POLITICS membership and duties of the Lancaster University Expert Assessors of Tower Hamlets Unregulated Zone from the UK Government Regulation Office, Division 3496723. Source: ANON

Dawkins + Venter discuss “Life: A Gene-Centric View” UPDATE!

WATCH the FULL LENGTH INTERVIEW!!!!
Richard Dawkins and J Craig Venter meet to discuss the future of evolution and synthetic biology entitled LIFE: A GENE-CENTRIC VIEW at the DLD (Digital Life Design), a high-level Munich conference for the digital elite.
Read the [...]

Visions of the Future BBC4 series- Dr. Michio Kaku

Last November BBC 4 ran a three part series called “Visions of the Future” presented by Dr. Michio Kaku. Here he discusses a range of emerging future related topics from robots & brain pacemakers to in-vitro grown organs and meat to the theories and practices of Neil Gerschenfeld’s self fabrication bits & atoms [...]

Buried But Not Forgotten?: The Secret of Yucca Mountain

Brian P. Bloomfield & Theo Vurdubakis – Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University
ABSTRACT: Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nevada (USA), is the site of a very ambitious project to construct an underground repository for high-level nuclear waste. The object of [...]

C’elle: Stem Cells in Menstrual Blood

A company called Cryo-cell International Inc. has launched its proprietary cryopreservation service, C’elle, which offers women the opportunity to bank stem cells from their menstrual blood. Using a menstrual cup to collect their blood is at the same time offering some vague belief that in the future you might be able to be [...]

Film series: CRASH

CRASH by David Cronenberg
On 26th November, Bruce Bennett from Lancaster University introduced the screening of Crash (Cronenberg, 1996) at Dukes Cinema as part of the NSOP:DSL film series.

Crash is the 1996 film adaptation of a 1973 novel by British writer JG Ballard. It was directed and adapted for the screen by Canadian director [...]

Design – Introductory workshop – 4-5 Oct 2007 – Day 2

Design session
Cindy Weber introduced the design speakers from RCA, LICA &Imagination@Lancaster, Lancaster University, Department of Computing, and Department of Organisation, Work and Technology.
Fiona Raby on critical design
Fiona Raby of Dunne + Raby discussed feral nature of critical design, and the accidental political nature of what it does. It works with the mismatch between official [...]