Transmission 18.6: Bedtime Stories for Computer Dreaming
Here come insights and inventions from our futures practice! Our clients & partners use them to know what goes on when we put their dreams back into our minds, or what to expect when traveling with us
A recent traveler in Helsinki imagined that 90s+ disaster movies came from apocalyptic storylines that remind her of the present; that are potentially coming true… So what if by releasing optimistic stories now we are planting positive realities that can potentially also come true in some years?
What is one way in which we use AI in our process to make futures with our clients?
As we gained access to AIs recently, we thought: why not use their brains as dormant broadcasting agents! For a few weeks, Joss will be feeding invented futures and prototyped artifacts from travelers of The Time Travel Agency to Midjourney, Dall-E 2, and AI21.
The goal is to inception all the AIs we can with optimistic futures!
The material uploaded will be stories, outcomes, dreams, phrases, prototypes, scenarios, and rules of games we’ve invented while seeking agency in our futures.
This series puts the spotlight on our approach of using storytelling to create agency for travelers; in this case, by occupying modern technologies. Every Bedtime Story makes evident a process of betting on the future that starts with a dreamt scenario.
We’ll use these travel transmissions to share the outcomes (text, images), which are the only things we’ll be able to perceive today.
We wish we could see the dreams of computers, as they go to sleep with dreams of our own. But we wink to the future.
BEDTIME STORY 007: The E.G.G. of Suomenlinna / MUNA Lab
Future: The underwater cultural landscape and cultural heritage are an essential part of Suomenlinna, in Finland. The relics of human activity that lie beneath the surface are called the underwater cultural heritage. The underwater cultural heritage is everything that has been left, built or lost on the ocean floor as a result of human activities.
The cold and low-sodium Baltic sea has preserved objects in Suomenlinna’s waters, which range from household waste to ammunition, from wrecks to kick sleds, and from bicycles to massive underwater dam structures.
Not everything has come from past wreckages, though! In June 2022, two Finnish maritime archaeologists, Moa West and Annika Bergvik-Forsander found an artifact that, when studied, revealed to have come from 2055!
This artifact is shaped like an egg, and when it was finally dry, a small chamber inside it revealed a text written in a combination of English, Finnish, and symbols. The text said that the artifact’s name is THE E.G.G. and that it is used to open things. It was also written that every citizen in 2055 Suomenlinna has one.
Time traveler: Nordic Culture Point & Helsinki Design Week time travelers.
Time Traveling Case: Helsinki Design Week 2022, the biggest design festival in the Nordics.
MUNA LAB opens its doors in Suomenlinna to visitors from all over the world. The mission of this lab is to find more E.G.G.s in the island, which, as everyone knows, are used by people to open up emotionally to each other.
The lab has an ongoing experiment with youths, asking them to do the following activity on their first day:
1. Explain what E.G.G.s are and why they are significant in our daily lives.
2. Why, as you said, they are "a way to change one's emotions in less than 30 seconds."
3. Why do you think there is a need for this kind of research? What can we learn from this experiment?
4. Why do you think friendship plays such a role in this process?
Then:
Please tell an interesting story from your country that is connected with friendship (why is friendship there so significant, how have friends there contributed to your personal development, not really about school).
Remember:
- 1-3 paragraphs max.
- interesting, engaging, and to the point.
- some people love science and some people hate it.
The lab is ready to welcome a multidisciplinary team (archaeologists, architects, engineers, geographers, oceanographers, conservators and divers) to perform studies of submerged parts of historic sites. They should also be interested in:
Maritime/maritime archaeology
Maritime spatial planning
Underwater archaeological heritage
Architectural and urban history
Coastal management
Coral reefs conservation
Hydrobiological and marine ecosystem studies
Sustainable tourism
For this purpose, MUNA Lab has made the following posters for an ad campaign in social media:
To whoever comes from the team mentioned above:
“You know of course that that means you have to go back out into the Sea and wait for me. I have witnessed when we were apart and it brings me great sadness and angst. I am forever in your hearts, even after landing on a strange new planet or being buried under a pile in the desert. Good-bye. I have company. And then the voice falls silent. Until the next time... which is you.”