Next Nature -- a designer's vision of a nature overtaken by corporatism
Bruce Sterling called designer Mieke Gerritzen's presentation at the LIFT conference in Geneva "the freakiest, most-out there" presentation at the event. Gerritzen's talk is on "Next Nature," the way that corporatism and nature will mesh more and more as time goes by -- think of butterflies gengineered with corporate logos. The talk is a heady mix of what-if and have-you-seen, and manages to make my head swim every time I watch it. Link
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I've read better. This presentation was science fiction being presented as something more. Most of these "bold" ideas have been used before in books such as the Diamond Age, Slant, Steel Beach...
A friend of mine blogged about a proposal for greenvertising. Why not?
err... sorry, but that was complete and utter shite.
For inspirational (and factually correct) videos on culture, science and design you should try somewhere like http://www.ted.com/
Not only that but some of them are well presented.
...and Metalosis Maligna? oh please... give me a break... you actually believed that???
Sheesh...
...and manages to make my head swim every time I watch it.
You actually were able to watch this a second time?
I was terribly unimpressed by this presentation.
Oh, the metalosis video was somewhat cool, but her comment "So, science fiction is becoming reality" was the final straw with paying attention to her and her short, trite, superlative statements and assumptions and opinions presented as facts.
For example, the opinion stated as fact that "every scuba diver who comes across an orange and white fish will automatically think, 'hey, that's Nemo,." Every? Really? They will?
What was up with the video of countless logos and then the comment "So nature is wild and unpredictable"?
Or the advertisement picture of a embryo with a cell phone and the comment that "we'll be networking before we're born"? C'mon.
There are much better works on posthumanism out there, and by people who have a foot grounded in reality. Katherine Hayles is one example. Books like "How We Became Posthuman" and "My Mother Was a Computer."
From other authors: "Bodies in Code," "Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age", "Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution", and "More Than Human".
There's a typo. You said "presentation" when you meant to say "stiffly-read book report sullenly calling out a bullet-point list of ways in which people have used "stuff" to build things, or a few cribbed sci-fi mentions".
The presentation was interesting, but ultimately unfulfilling as she attempted to pass off art as reality. It could be summed up with: did you ever look at a real sunrise and say "hey this looks like a video game... weird how technology has replaced nature as a reference for nature... cool."
She seems to pass off bs as fact:
metalosis maligna is not real. http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2006/11/-via-next-natur.php
the skeletons "found in north korea" which look like cartoon characters could be found on boingboing in 2006 (and no they aren't real either): http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/31/artificial-cartoonch.html
Certainly seen better