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future_fabulators:annbonny_s_ark [2014-06-26 16:34] – maja | future_fabulators:annbonny_s_ark [2015-05-20 10:08] (current) – nik | ||
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- | ==== Annbonny' | + | ==== Annbonny' |
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A series of events from the simple start in the technologies and systems we have for the work we do (here and now, Times Up and all that), then visiting friends and family between Europe and Australia gets slower until I end up on one of these slow boats. As issues arise, I change boats to get to different places, but never in time, so I realise that most “urgent issues” are not really that urgent and we wind up on the first big raft, making stuff up as we go along, maintaining a mixture of engineering and entertainment, | A series of events from the simple start in the technologies and systems we have for the work we do (here and now, Times Up and all that), then visiting friends and family between Europe and Australia gets slower until I end up on one of these slow boats. As issues arise, I change boats to get to different places, but never in time, so I realise that most “urgent issues” are not really that urgent and we wind up on the first big raft, making stuff up as we go along, maintaining a mixture of engineering and entertainment, | ||
- | Tina: I learn to cook - even learnt to enjoy doing it, much to my surprise, as well as I occasionally join the film-crew on the ark, either documenting what is happening on the “madeira-seized” ark or re-interpreting and visualizing the fake news from the journalist team. But, mainly I’ll be occupied by strolling through the ark, observing and enjoying what I see and get carried away with my thoughts. | ||
- | Valentina: i was a psychologist by training when i embarked | + | Tina: The context in my earlier days (being with Time's Up) gave me the opportunity to develop |
+ | The moment the first Ark was about to leave I decided to join. Credible rumors said, that the “ark-society”, | ||
+ | Another noteworthy passion I developed shortly after I arrived at the Ark, is - to my own surprise - an interest in food-supply which was/is a big issue at the Ark, due to restricted space and resources. There was a growing group of mixed experts and non-experts, | ||
+ | But - due to the recent glitch we lost a huge amount of both, our knowledge and stock of seeds. Research being documented to manipulate without destroying the natural structure of seeds disappeared. Some of the knowledge-carries of all sorts vanished at all or at least lost memory... | ||
+ | Apart from finding people who help regaining this knowledge I'm also here at this cocktail party to find people helping our chefs to collect ideas for dishes mainly consisting of our momentary staples, being loads of algae and mushrooms, tiny pumpkins and rice-extract which through heat gains its known texture and form. We still have a varied stock of herbal and spice essences left.... | ||
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+ | Valentina: I used to work at Madeira ITI back in 20014. i was assistant professor in interaction design and digital media. I met my boyfriend in Madeira so i stayed in this lovely island, but after some years it started to feel small. i needed a change. My boyfriend, a software engineer by training, | ||
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+ | Mara: Chief editor of the Ark's newspaper (oscillating between fiction and reality) | ||
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+ | As a person coming from a background on informatics shifting towards technologies entertainment, | ||
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+ | Alkan: A schizophrenic gonzo journalist with manic-depressive tendencies, Alkan came to the Ark hoping to regenerate his career through a dramatic scoop on the third culture, which he attempts to investigate through interviews with the Ark's crew and prospective recruits. Due to insider contacts, and with the slimmest demonstration of actual ability, he somehow managed to scrape his way into working for the Ark's newspaper. However, an intrinsic lack of social graces and complete inability to communicate with other humans, coupled with a near-total obliviousness to his surroundings, | ||
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+ | Istvan: role-shifting stowaway with links to the hobo signing network | ||
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+ | Julian: I made the mistake of following my flaky girlfriend onto the Ark, blinded by love. (We broke up soon afterward and she returned to land.) While at first I was skeptical, I made it through my initial period of self-imposed isolation and found my place on the Ark writing press releases and setting up a spontaneous translation system. When I met Ann Bonny I realized that I had met her before - as an undergraduate in the 2030s, when she was a charismatic and iconoclastic visiting professor. We renewed our friendship on the Ark and have been close ever since. During our many recruitment efforts, I help by seeking out those people who seem least suitable and least willing to join - because I see myself in them, and I believe they offer the most potential in the long run. | ||
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+ | Nik: Oscillating fluid dynamics wrangler: from physics and plumbing, to streams of consciousness and inebriety. Sometimes functioning as a barman. | ||
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+ | Maja: I'm the rafters ambassador on the Ark and first-contact person for non-human sentiences, as well as travellers from other times. Currently xCoAx liaison. In 2014 I was facilitating a futures workshop at xCoAx as a member of FoAM, that back then was a network with studios in different countries. When it was time to set-off and live on water, we floated towards each other and actually spent more time together than while living on land (with thanks to our dear anonymous ship magnate @traintoextinctification for providing the boats). We continued our work with prototyping possible futures. One of the early prototypes was in fact a generational starship we called the Ark, another one The Flotilla, that very much resembled our contemporary raftizens. The story started as a scenario in xCoAX 2014, and we developed it into a 10 year pre-enactment in 202Os - way before cold fusion was possible. I loved the idea of a living lab for Third Culture, and I worked with the team on its detailed designs, especially when it came to designing spaces and situations where people from all walks of life would gather, live and work. The pre-enactment was a success, and gave rise to many floating villages. When cold fusion became possible, the Ark was built for space travel and about to embark on its first journey, I became skeptical. I experienced the damage that humans can do to our living environment and each other, so I didn't believe we should leave the planet until our culture evolves beyond conflict and unhealthy competition (we're on our way, but far from there yet) and we develop our vegetal mind to be at least as prominent as our bestial. | ||
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+ | It was Ann Bonny who convinced me that I should join the crew as an ambassador of Earth-bound Third Culture, a living example of intertwingularity and an early warning sign in unproductive (or dangerous) conflict situations. Since then I have been training in connecting everything (and everyone) with everything (and everyone) else, often working with [[:/ | ||
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+ | ---- | ||
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+ | ==== Pre-enactment ==== | ||
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+ | The pre-enactment is a closing cocktail party of xCoAx hosted by the crew of Ann Bonny' | ||
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+ | The pre-enactment lasted about an hour. | ||
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+ | ====Rough text of the toast==== | ||
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+ | Tim opened the pre-enactment with a toast, that would tell a bit of a backstory to the visitors: | ||
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+ | Ladies and gentlemen, | ||
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+ | welcome here tonight | ||
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+ | It seems that I have been elected as some form of spokesperson. This is, as you might imagine, an embarrassment to me and possibly to you. I am a doddery old man. I have enjoyed the past three or more weeks in a hermitage, meditating on all sorts of things. Speech is strange. Luckily I have some notes. | ||
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+ | Please excuse me if I mix or miss my religious or metaphysical metaphors. I seem to have forgotten which is which and might just sort of throw them together, I might even mix up welche sprache ich sprechen soll and might end up in some corner from which it is hard to extricate myself. Please forgive me, I am an old man, at least 60 years older than I seem. | ||
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+ | We, a few people, have ended up in your exhibition closing cocktails. We have wanted to talk to you because you, the practitioners of the X factor, seem closest to the place that most of us came from. This meeting is important in our history. What you call the X factor, we call the third culture. Not the third world, but a place beyond this art-science disjunction. Our world seems strange to you because, through an anomaly of sorts, we come from the future. Unfortunately our present, i.e. your future, is every bit as mundane as your everyday life is to your grandparents. Boring, huh? | ||
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+ | We would also like to apologise, because it seems that our arriving here had some strange effects on air traffic in France. Our algorithms were a bit off. We hope your delays were not too severe. | ||
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+ | Just as a form of explanation, | ||
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+ | If you cannot change it, don't worry about it. | ||
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+ | Keep calm and Carry on. We felt like English royalty. On the open ocean. We all began to. As floating villages formed, we all felt special. We applied our skills in technology and the arts to survival and surviving well. We recycled everything, we shared our skills. We had to keep notes and open source everything, to keep our world afloat. One of the most sought after skills was plumbing, so we all became plumbers, managing the fresh and not so fresh water, composting our shit and growing veggies. As the land became too hard to live on, with overpopulation and climate stress, the rafts became humanity' | ||
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+ | No normalization. Not resistant to change. | ||
+ | Unstructured. Hard to search. | ||
+ | Failure prone. A concern with the particular. | ||
+ | From another perspective, | ||
+ | A ragged multiplicity. | ||
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+ | Ah. That was yesterday. Sorry. | ||
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+ | Today is a special day. Anne Bonny, while not our leader, was an inspiration for us all. Four years ago she passed away, or at least passed into cryogenic suspension. The woman who said that a person should be able to write a sonnet and an instruction manual, who made cold fusion reproducable and open source, has given her name to our ark. The ark is the logical extension of the rafts, a spaceship the size of Madeira, slowly getting ready to unfurl her solar sail and depart this planet for the greatest adventure. | ||
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+ | Which is why we are here with you. A number of our crew are possibly amongst you, perhaps you yourself are one of them, forgetting your place on the ship. We seem to have partial amnesia. Please talk to us, perhaps we can draw you back out of your amnesia. If not, mingle with us anyway, see whether you would like to join us in this future, this third culture that is preparing to depart for good. There are no fixed roles on the ark, we ask you to join and to change. | ||
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+ | While we would like to celebrate Anna Bonny, our reluctant and humble hero, we would also like to propose a toast. A toast to the third culture and to you, dear xCoAxers, for watering the seeds of the Third Culture in these strange times that you live in. | ||
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+ | ---- | ||
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+ | One of three Third Culture storyworlds developed at the [[xcoax_workshop]] | ||
+ | * [[Humanalia]] | ||
+ | * [[Springfield]] | ||
+ | * [[AnnBonny' |