Scott Fisher

Annenberg Research Park Colloquium Series: Multimedia Literacy Track
Join students and faculty for a presentation by Peter Lunenfeld on December
2nd @ 11am.

Title: "Bespoke Futures: Addressing the Vision Deficit"

As we hurl into the 21st century, we suffer from a vision deficit. One
reason we have so little faith in the future is that what¹s to come has
never been so inadequately imagined. Knock modernism, if you choose, but at
least the art, design, and architecture generated in that heady period put
forth a panoply of futures seductive enough to inspire others to bring them
into being.
Corporate culture certainly hasn¹t ignored the future. Over the last 25
years, far-sighted multi-nationals have institutionalized long-term scenario
planning to ponder upcoming conditions and their effects on long-term
investment and profits. What about the rest of us? The advent of visual
computing and massively-scaled networks has made it possible for groups of
individuals to come together and envision futures they might actually want
to inhabit.
We will talk about the creative mis-use of scenario planning as a means to
guide us towards crafting visualizations -- often interactive, immersive,
or augmented ­ which can inspire us to go back out into our own communities
or dig deeper into our own creative practices to make these visions real.

Time: The talk will be on Tuesday, December 2nd from 11-12, followed by an
interactive discussion between 12:30 and 1:30 over lunch for those who wish
to stay on for a small group discussion. It will be held at Kerckhoff Hall,
734 W. Adams Boulevard, LA 90089.

Bio:
Peter Lunenfeld is a professor in the Design Media Art department. His books
include The Digital Dialectic (MIT, 1999), Snap to Grid (MIT, 2000) USER
(MIT, 2005), and The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: How the
Computer Became Our Culture Machine (forthcoming). As creator and editorial
director of the Mediawork project, he produced a pamphlet series for the MIT
Press that redefined the relationship between serious academic discourse and
graphic design, and between book publishing and the World Wide Web. One area
he is exploring is the relationship between design theory and the digital
humanities.