science fiction meets design: film

This is a post that by my negligence is posted too late. It should have been here long before the films published recently and even before any report from the workshop front. What I forgot to include is the script.

The script for the film I produced became the canvas for building objects, drawing diagrams, shooting the film and everything in general. So here it is:

We redesign the “Present” before it becomes the “Future”.

The Design for the Future Institute is an independent London-based think tank. We use design thinking and employ scientific expertise to foresee and evade the pitfalls, and dead ends of civilisational development. The DFI's role is to predict and redesign future changes from today. We do this by means of product design, changing human behaviour, as well as by inspiring scientific developments.

Today, the DFI launches a new investigation into what came alongside the technical progress by default. Noise pollution changed our soundscapes and new listening habits brought about new risks. In reaction to this, the DFI designers identified three critical areas for their informed intervention: mass hearing impairment, sound conditioning technology and augmented hearing implants. Each area has been explored in a scenario envisioning potential consequences of today's fiction becoming future reality.

At the Design for the Future Institute, we identify and analyse the pitfalls of civilisational progress. Our recent survey shows that most of us recognise an increasing need for more silence in our lives. If we continue to absorb more and more noise every day, very soon our soundscapes will become intolerable or even damaging to our hearing. At the DFI, we have been thinking about this problem.

This is the Otomixer—the hearing regulation tool of the future. It temporarily impairs human hearing in order to adjust its sensitivity to noise pollution. The straightforward “what you hear is what you get” interface translates equaliser settings into a customised drug compound, which can be used as a daily wellness pill or a life-long vaccination against noise. Adapting to the environment in this way is easier than rethinking our civilisation or changing the world around us.
At the Design for the Future Institute, we research and support new spin-offs from emerging technologies. Sound conditioning is a revolutionary method intended as a protection from noise-induced hearing loss. But unexpectedly, it is also a source of an adrenalin rush, and of great pleasure. We see it as an exciting and lucrative opportunity for the experience industry. At the DFI, we provisionally called it the “blasting sport”.

The Acoustic Amusements Centre is our proposal for creating an arena for blasting sports near the third runway at the Heathrow airport. It is designed to give a second life to an area degraded by noise pollution, as well as an opportunity to redefine the boundaries of what we will know as entertainment in the future. Although already raising a lot of controversy, the blasting sport is a fact.
At the Design for the Future Institute, we design and advocate the augmentation of human senses. Our evolving symbiosis with technology calls for even better ways of interfacing and communicating. It is also an opportunity to extend our natural capabilities. At the DFI, we motivate scientific research leading to reinventing our hearing.

AIR—the Augmenting Implant Radio—is a new, radical way of augmenting human aural faculty. It is a miniature radio receiver that connects to the human central nervous system via the cochlear nerve, providing an audible perception of everything happening in the ether. After implanting, the AIR capsule dissolves, enabling the neurons to grow around the implant. In the future, the AIR can help mitigate noise-depravation-based sleeplessness with adults, and given to newborns it can become a fully comprehensible sixth sense. Today, in the age of the information flow, quantitative perception of information is paramount.

Today, what we do at the DFI is science fiction. But in twenty years time this fiction may become the reality for us all.

This is why the DFI's strategy is to challenge the public with the visions of the future. This is in line with our mission: to educate people about current issues and to advise the authorities on prospective changes.

We want to confront you with potential changes happening in the future. We also want to include you in our design process. Every volunteering viewer, who wishes to take a leap into the future or respond to the presented scenarios, is advised to take our “Hearing Trade-off” test. In recognition of your help, you will be rewarded with an AIR implant.

We want you to redesign the future with us.

We ask for your feedback!

After two weeks of restless filming, cutting, recording, animating, tweeking and so much more, I finally created "The End of Hearing" publicity films.

The whole thing is 7:00 minutes long and divided into 5 chapters:
1] Design for the Future Institute intro;
2] DFI scenario #1: The Otomixer;
3] DFI scenario #2: Blasting!;
4] DFI scenario #3: Augmenting Implant Radio;
5] call for participation in the DFI's "Hearing Trade-off" test.

I uploaded all of them on Vimeo, so please feel free to watch it.
Thanks a lot to my sister, Dot, for letting her voice and face for the film, as well as my girlfriend, Mela, for letting her hand in one of the chapters.

These are the consecutive chapters #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5:

The End of Hearing #1 (intro) from mrklts on Vimeo.