Ensemble

The fourth alternative future focuses on the powerfully transforming power of technology – especially robotics and artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, teleportation, space settlement and the emergence of a ‘dream society’ as the successor to the ‘information society’. This fourth future is called ‘Transformation’ or the ‘Transformational Society’ […] (Jim Dator, Alternative Futures at the Manoa School, 2009)

It is befitting that most people’s ‘favourite’ among the four futures should signify the perhaps most diverse part of this exhibition. Transformation is a dynamic process, with a hopeful ring to it, but its results are singularly unpredictable, especially if we consider the transformative interaction between men and machines that has been going on for at least 250 years. This segment accommodates both ‘high-tech’ and ‘low-tech’ approaches to such themes: our increasingly absurd symbiosis with information systems (Stuart Candy, Guan Xiao) or the nearly forgotten arts of pen-and-paper calculation or schematic drawing as a technique of the self (Jean Katambayi Mukendi).