17th March bring a thing - group exercise

During the studio time on the 17th we were encouraged to bring a 'thing' to participate in a group exercise.

I honestly just improvised the night before on this, I've owned Syd Mead's Sentury 2 for a few years, I quickly found this image and created some commentary quickly -- I mainly picked this because it looks great!

Syd Mead Artwork

The idea: Apart from Syd Mead being one of the most influential SciFi illustrators and designers in the 20th century he had some interesting underlying ideas and cues regarding society and how we work. A lot of his illustrations and costume designs more specifically have experimental ideas of sexuality which was and still is something that challenges many conservative societies today.

What I want to suggest is that by showing issues that are very real to us in contexts which are very different to ours; alternate realities if you will, you are able to successfully communicate the problems so often ignored in our society. (while none the less being exciting to explore a new world and it’s workings).

Examples of societal issues being tackled from a more accessible perspective are:

Zootopia (2016)

Zootopia is a animated movie by Disney Pixar which details the story of a female rabbit who wants to be on the police force. The police appears to be reserved for the big and intimidating animals so no one believes the rabbit. This is directly taking on discrimination against females and people who are different shapes and sizes. Ultimately it sends a positive message to kids to help influence them in a positive way potentially changing there way of thinking. Because the film is suitable for adults too it reaches wider audience with it’s message.

- add more…

Keywords from collaborative exercise on Syd Mead image

Technology

Perspective

Science Fiction

Interaction

Alternate reality

preconceptions

non critical

digestable

passive

underlying

stubborn

semiotics

new

explore

story/narrative

parallel universe

accessible

safe critique

The six keywords:

Interaction

Science Fiction

Explore

Society

Technology

Perspective

With other topics added in - 

Class

Science Fiction

Explore

Society

Climate change

Perspective

Reflection

What started out as something that I purely admired for aesthetic reasons became an image with a lot of great ideas for research. Although I did kinda of improvised my way through the first group exercise it slowly developed in to a strong and interesting idea. The idea of making societal and global issues approachable through science fiction.

Next Steps

It is critical that I look at and analyze other movies that tackle societal issues head on in a safe science fiction context

The original plan was to consider climate change and social class as the two issues that science fiction could tackle. There are plenty of movies that consider these two topics. 

For example, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Mad Max, — all present worlds that were ravaged by mankind

Elysium, Django, Oblivion — all present people who are at the bottom of the class structure

It seems to me that climate change is already affecting the lower class the most and the upper class are often the ones causing the most of it, so there is a very strong link between society and climate change. I will first explore them separately and then consider them as a one idea. I may find through research that one, the other or both are best to incorporate into a final project.

Summary - 

Do a massive brainstorm for next week

Input keywords on stream

Research and analyze SciFi films with issue driven narratives or worlds

Research climate change basics and sea level rise

Research the effects of sea level rise

Research the class structure in NZ

Observe interactions with homeless people in Wellington

The final project

Obviously it is not necessary to be thinking about this until late semester one. But my initial idea is to consider the sea level rise in Wellington and how the future would look. The upper class would build elaborate structures to survive and continue living well while the lower class would be left living in the left overs of the previous CBD. (setting it Wellington might undermine the approachability of the topic to locals, it might be too ‘real’)