The future starts here & other things this week

1 minutes estimated reading time

I had an amazing opportunity to see the V&A exhibition The Future Starts Here as a preview. The Future Starts Here is a collection of 100 objects that the V&A think might be indicators of the near future. smart appliances to satellites, artificial intelligence to internet culture, this exhibition brought together more than 100 objects as a landscape of possibilities for the near future.

This includes

  • Smart appliances
  • Autonomous sailing ship
  • Micro-satellites
  • 3D face scanned sculptures
  • Masdar City, the world’s first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city, Foster + Partner

faces

The local Unilever business in Hong Kong did their own version of a Dove advertising campaign. What’s interesting is how it differs in tonality from the usual Dove work.

‘Appreciate don’t adjudicate’ is very local. Cantonese is laden with puns and symbolism. It is a fluid living language (despite the efforts of the Communist Party of China). Or as Campaign Asia put it:

The campaign is “by locals, for locals” and because Cantonese is famously colloquial and fond of wordplay, the use of Cantonese lingo is expected to resonate with the audience.

Over 100 sony aibo robot dogs get their own funeral in japan – so much here on human robot interactions and a meditation on the metaphysics of quality. This contrasts with the horror that greeted demos of Google Duplex.

I am a big fan of Eno’s Oblique Strategies so this was right up my street: The Quietus | News | WATCH: Brian Eno Installations Talk

Interview with JJ Connolly, the Author of Layer Cake and Viva La Madness – YouTube – great interview with JJ Connolly of The Layer Cake. I particularly like his description of his creative process. More related content here.