For Superflux, 2011 was a busy year: new projects, practices and people. But alongside all of this, it was also a year of self-contemplation, perhaps instigated by work on our new website. Blending the diverse ideas and perspectives of the co-founders, associates, and extended network, we found ourselves mapping a core set of themes and interests; revisiting our past work and personal origin stories to find a more considered, deliberate way to move forward.
From this, we pulled a detailed and structured definition of 'design futurescaping' – something I first talked about at LIFT09, in Geneva, back in 2009:
'As fear and uncertainty grows, I believe that it becomes imperative for us, as designers, to play an important role in building these alternative possibilities. Our thinking, methods and skills can become a formidable force in the think-and-do-tanks of the near future, alongside technologists, scientists, economists and futurists, shaping a future that is habitable and desirable.'
Bruce Sterling responded to my talk with a piece for Make magazine, and, though the design futurescaping of 2011-12 is a noticeably different beast to the open-ended practice I outlined in 2009, his comments are still relevant.
In the here-and-now, one of Superflux's key propositions is the organisation and delivery of design futurescaping workshops, as a springboard leading to work on strategy, invention and design. Usually, we would talk to prospective clients about these offerings directly, but given the uncertainties of the past year, we thought it might be a good idea to lay out some of our tools, best practices, and examples of our work.
WELCOME TO BLACK SWAN COUNTRY
Writing about 'Generation Flux' in Fast Company, Robert Safan hails a new era of uncertainty:
'From the rise of Facebook to the fall of Blockbuster, from the downgrading of U.S. government debt to the resurgence of Brazil, predicting what will happen next has gotten exponentially harder. Uncertainty has taken hold in boardrooms and cubicles, as executives and workers (employed and unemployed) struggle with core questions: Which competitive advantages have staying power? What skills matter most? How can you weigh risk and opportunity when the fundamentals of your business may change overnight?'
Over 2011, these kind of questions became increasingly common. As friend-of-the-studio Scott Smith noted, back in March, our 'sensibilities about the future are becoming pretty warped ... as extreme events and equally extreme hyperbole in between them confuse our ability to model possible futures well.' Anything is possible, with chaos and complexity increasingly accepted as the operating parameters of a 'new normal'. One way or another, we're in Black Swan country.
In this context, Superflux works with clients to explore their 'unknown unknowns', examining the space for new or alternative products, hybrids of products and services, and entirely new modes of business activity. Before taking a closer look at some of the specific details of this proposition, I feel it's important to clarify that when we talk about the future, this isn't something that comes at the expense of the present. Instead, the aim is to widen perspectives – challenging the tacit assumption that the future will necessarily resemble 'business-as-usual' – and not to provide next week's lottery numbers.
When we talk about the future, we are expressing our interest in the processes and dynamics that shape the present moment: in the tools and products we use, the things we experience, the ways we think about ourselves, and the world we inhabit. As Katherine Hayles notes in her essay, 'Computing the Human':
'Nothing is more problematic than predicting the future. If the record of past predictions is any guide, the one thing we can know for sure is that when the future arrives, it will be different from the future we expected. Instructed by the pandemic failure to project accurately very far into the future, my interest is not to engage in this kind of speculation but rather to explore the influence that such predictions have on our present concepts.'
With prediction off the table, how can we create, sustain and – ultimately – scale new products and services? What strategies play well with a wider environment of risk and volatility? How can companies and organisations engineer their ideas, practices, and values to meet the challenges and dilemmas of these uncertain times? Is there a way of doing business that's not fundamentally risk-averse, but risk-open?
One (rare) example of a company adept at long term thinking is Amazon. Jeff Bezos, the company's CEO, describes the organisation as a group of 'cultural pioneers', continually disrupting their own business model to ensure continual innovation. In an article for Forbes, long-form blogger Venkatesh Rao pays homage to Amazon's Machiavellian genius:
'The entire company operates with what you might call a game mind. Not a product-building mind, not a marketing mind, not a sales mind. The key to a great game mind is having a preternatural ability to figure out which game to play, against which opponent ... To have a game-mind is to be detached from the specifics of your business as it exists today. If you can look at your own roaring rivers of cash today with a dispassionate eye, not get attached to the great things you’ve built or achieved, and clinically ask yourself, what’s the next game?, you’ve got a game-mind.'
In his interview with Wired, Bezos expands on this mindset, explaining some of his unyielding focus on the long term:
'If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavours that you could never otherwise pursue. At Amazon we like things to work in five to seven years. We’re willing to plant seeds, let them grow—and we’re very stubborn. We say we’re stubborn on vision and flexible on details.'
STUBBORN ON VISION, FLEXIBLE ON DETAILS:
It could be argued that there are already several foresight and futures organisations producing trend and foresight reports for private clients. What, as a design studio, can we offer in the way of value? Where do our interests lie, and what do those who work with us – as clients or collaborators – take from the experience?
Team Superflux is a network of designers, strategists, makers, futurists, and technologists. We work with uncertainty, deploying a set of tools and methods that allow us to provide the maximum value for clients with a minimum investment of time and resources. For us, the 'game mind' of long term thinking is not radical, but a necessary part of doing business in the twenty-first century. It is a way of approaching the world, an ethical responsibility, and a capacity that lends your activities a competitive edge. Cast-iron predictions are impossible but, led by signals, forecasts and drivers, iterative prototyping can provide a unique springboard for invention and design.
Enter design futurescaping – the short tail of long term thinking. Embracing risk and volatility, we lever our existing expertise in foresight, design, and technology, to help prototype new ideas. Working with clients to produce a shared inventory of possibilities, we filter the relevant variables into a set of scenarios, prototypes, and experiences; allowing stakeholders to appreciate the full impact and workings of their proposals.
DESIGN FUTURESCAPING WORKSHOPS
We prefer to get involved early in the project cycle, working with the client to draft an initial brief. Previously, we've worked in areas as diverse as neural retinal prostheses (scenarios, invention and design), platforms for informal services in 'smart cities' within India, strategic scenarios for the future of Emirati families, and the invention of domestic product systems for the internet-of-things.
Within the frameworks of design futurescaping, we focus in on:
1. The uncertainties within the field
Identifying key uncertainties and drivers of change, we work with workshop participants to unpick interconnections and map the systemic properties of the field.
2. Existing business models and alternative opportunities
Without understanding the client's existing activities, it can be difficult to instigate a sense of 'risk-openness'. Behavioural change needs to be cultivated, with support from the upper echelons of the organisation. By comparing our map of key uncertainties and weak signals with current business models, we can start to plot a way forward – building a strategy that works with the client's existing structures, culture and values, focusing on manageable change in the service of long-term goals.
3. The range of stakeholders (broadly defined)
Who are the people who will be on the front-line of these new business models and strategies? Ideally, we like early involvement from 'end-users', and aim to include insights from a range of stakeholders: business leads, technologists, product/service managers, researchers, and even manufacturers.
STRUCTURE, TOOLS, PARTICIPANTS
Usually, we kick off with a two-day intensive workshop, lead by two members of the Superflux team; one of the co-founders (Jon or Anab), and an associate with domain-specific expertise (designer, technologist, futurist). From the client's side, we try to involve the key stakeholders and decision-makers, alongside anyone with relevant interests, or prior experience in the area under consideration.
We work closely with the client to prepare initial materials for the workshop – including maps, quotes, pictures, videos, case studies of existing projects, lego, and physical artifacts. These items provide an anchor for participation, allowing all the participants to get involved, regardless of their level of pre-existing knowledge. Though the precise combination of tools and initial materials depends on the nature of the client and project, we find this default structure works well.
Armed with workshop materials, we begin with a round of annotation as an icebreaker, getting all the participants talking, reflecting, and contributing to the 'flow' of ideas. As we reflect and cluster the materials and concepts, we begin to derive a set of questions, which – taken together – structure the scope and outermost boundaries of the project. At this stage, these questions are extremely important, creating the space for fresh ideas. By the end of the first day, we will have identified 2-6 key areas of inquiry.
By day two, participants have started to narrow down on the themes they want to explore in greater detail. Breaking into smaller groups, we draw on our design methods toolkits, turning these emergent themes and ideas into stories, sketches, prototypes and diagrams. We believe it's particularly important to involve the key stakeholders in the making and prototyping – processes that, by their nature, tend to highlight things that might otherwise be missed, surfacing hidden assumptions and legacy futures.
These rough, iterative prototypes can be seen as a way of turning 'uncertain / risky / invisible / speculative' ideas into something more concrete and tactile. Participants will use the outputs of their making to depict a set of possible near-future situations and narrative fragments. Where do these products and services fit into the larger business ecosystem, and the user's daily life? Is there anything we're missing?
By the end of the afternoon, a set of new proposals will have started to take shape, allowing the participants to grapple with the full range of factors and drivers influencing both their project and the environment within which they are operating. By the end of the workshop process, they are primed to begin thinking about immediate challenges, use case scenarios, potential sites of conflict, and longer term opportunities and threats.
DELIVERABLES:
Once we've finished delivering the workshop, we spend 2-3 days turning the final proposals into a set of documents for circulation – which could be a compilation of workshop insights, a set of micro-briefs and future project trajectories. The clients will often use these documents to develop further internal strategy and product development, conduct exploratory user or market research, or communicate the key concepts to other sectors of their organisation, external partners, and investors. While we are often involved in further design development activities, it is entirely possible that the clients will have taken from the workshop process whatever insights they needed to move forward.
If you are interested in finding out more, drop us a line, and we'll organise a chai and a chat!
As 2011 approaches an end, we were suprised to find that our project 'The 5th Dimensional Camera' had been included in a piece in Physics World – a universe away from Superflux's usual stomping ground! In 'Critical Point: Other-worldly Tales', Robert Crease investigates whether the appearance of parallel universes in art and pop culture have accurately portrayed the science behind the theory.
Writing about the 5th Dimension Camera, Crease comments:
'The 5th Dimensional Camera is more cerebral than the vicarious pleasures of “Store of the worlds”, the dazzling complexities of Anathem or the slapstick comedy of Family Guy’s multiverse episode. It is aimed more at the intellectual pleasure of puzzling out what it would be like to have technology to let us see evolving worlds not our own. But all applications of parallel worlds in artistic and popular culture have one thing in common: they have nothing to do with science, but with human life.'
Meanwhile, in Postscapes' Internet of Things Awards 2011, the video from 'Song of the Machine' won a People's Choice Award for the best individual work of design fiction. 'Electronic Countermeasures', a drone project produced in partnership with Liam Young and Eleanor Saitta, won the People's Choice Award as the most popular networked art project.
For us at Superflux, Postscapes' Awards provided a wide-ranging compilation of recent projects from a field that it's often hard to pin down – a useful tool to help us orient ourselves, and an opportunity to expose our work to a more general audience.
Through October and November, Superflux has been humming along in a contented, cheerful kind of mood – with the occasional glimpse of that much-sought-after state of 'flow'. Though some of our projects must remain hidden behind the studio cloaking device, we thought it was about time for another round-up of our activities.
Anab and Jon are recently returned from Belgium, having been at MAD in Genk, running a cross-disciplinary student workshop on Design for Human Enhancement.
Attempting to unpick the consensus visions and 'shiny corporate future' of genetic modificiation and human prostheses, Anab and Jon used the work of several artists and designers to locate these emerging technologies in a wider social and cultural context.
Back in London, we discovered that our work on Song of the Machine had landed Anab a profile in Kyoorius, a high-end Indian design magazine with a satisfying heft.
Elsewhere, we were invited by Cynthia Smith, curator of the Design for the Other 90%: CITIES exhibition to shared some of our thoughts, resulting in a guest post on 'India's Elastic Cities' on the Cooper-Hewitt Design Blog.
Our collaboration with Dr. Patrick Degenaar progressed into its next stage, as we worked on a series of design proposals for the retinal optogenetic headset. Working with the talented (and extremely versatile) designer Patrick Stevenson-Keating to produce a 3D prototype, we were impressed with the finish and quality of the final printed object, which Dr. Degenaar and his team are using in their presentation to prospective investors. Its exciting to see how a project moved from the Lab to the Consultancy, providing an excellent opportunity to flex our making muscles, and get our hands on a tangible, material output.
And in terms of making and prototyping, Tim, Mark, Jon and Anab continue to make good progress with Project SAM on the Lab front, we made a significant breakthrough during our recent hackday. Hopefully, we'll have something tied up by early next year, so more on this as soon as we can.
For much of the last couple of months, I've been out of the studio, representing the company at a couple of events in London, and, more generally, swotting up on design and foresight.
Back in the summer, we were invited by Dr. Wendy Schultz to present some of our design fiction and futures work at the Association of Professional Futurists' V-Gathering, an 18-hour web conference unfolding (virtually) across three continents. With the rest of the Team Superflux out of the country, I stepped in to fill the gap, pitching a talk with the title, 'My Radio Prefers Bacon: Adventures in Speculative Culture.'
Catching a train up to the APF's pop-up media centre at the The Futures Company's London HQ, it was a great opportunity to hang out with Wendy, Andrew Curry and Victoria Ward – experts in their respective fields. A recording of the talk is now online, bookended by Andrew's introduction and a round-table discussion on design, foresight and notions of 'plausibility'.
The following week, I headed up to the Architectural Association for the London half of Thrilling Wonder Stories 3, where I was shown an Italian magazine by Bruce Sterling, caught up with an iPad-wielding Carolina, and watched live amateur taxidermy. Like you do.
A few days later, I dropped in on the AA for an afternoon crit with the crew from Unknown Fields, many of whom will be hitting the wilds of Alaska for the winter solstice. Though still early days, it was really satisfying to see the students starting to engage with contexts, technologies and ideas. I left unit convenor (and Thrilling Wonder Stories co-organiser) Liam Young about to commence a marathon car journey from London to Eindhoven, where he would be playing drone-wrangler.
Yes, drone-wrangler. Specifically, wrangling the drones of 'Electronic Countermeasures' – an interactive installation for GLOW, Eindhoven's annual festival of light art. Superflux collaborated with Liam (TTT), Eleanor Saitta and Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu to bring the project to fruition. Here's the blurb:
'Today we are much closer to our virtual community than we are to our real neighbours. This death of distance has created new forms of city based around ephemeral digital connections rather than physical geography. In this context the Electronic Countermeasures explores the design and manufacture of a flock of interactive autonomous drones that form their own place specific, local, wfi community and pirate file sharing network. Drifting slowly above the water of Eindhoven’s parks the fleet of modified quadrocopters perform a balletic aerial choreography as their soft glow reflects in the canal below.'
In the end, we only lost one drone to the canal. Not too bad.
In the background, I've been slowly chewing my way through Stuart Candy's PhD thesis, which, taken in light our recent work on design futurescaping, is sparking some interesting thoughts and realisations. A couple of excerpts really stuck out. First, on the relationship between design, politics, and futures:
'To both design and politics, futures affords some tools to crack open times-to-come as a far richer domain for discussion. It also offers the holistic systems-thinking and temporal reach that are necessary to move beyond ideology-driven argumentation about ‘the (singular) future’ into more systematic and multi-dimensional exploration. Politics, in its theoretical aspect, gives futurists and designers a sensitivity to power relations and a range of conceptions of the good and the just at the social level, and in its activist aspect, represents a tradition of exploring and concretely operationalising these ethics in the world. Designers give to futures and politics practitioners a much-needed dose of communications acumen and facility with media, along with a fusion of aesthetic (used here in the narrow sense) with the pragmatic; a necessary equilibrium between form and function.'
And then, on the role of the futurist and the speculative designer:
'Whether the task involves confronting residents of an historic urban district with the unexamined possibility of local businesses being ousted to make way for national chains and the juggernaut of ‘gentrification’; or suggesting to tourism industry representatives that the still-inchoate Hawaiian sovereignty movement may one day soon lead to a rejection of United States occupation and a re-establishment of the traditional ahupua‘a as an ecologically aligned unit of governance; or urging Korean authorities to contemplate the possibility that a much-feared downward trend in population may provide unimagined advantages in the long run (all these are examples of projects I’ve worked on), the future provides a mainline to many matters about which people care most, and thus contains keys to a critical adjustment of perceptions and sensibilities.'
This de/colonisation of the consensus future is something we've been seeing a lot of in the last couple of months, from Anab's participation in Sony's FutureScapes project (blending social justice, sustainability and consumer electronics with a surprising amount of success), HSBC's sudden interest in foresight, or Demos Helsinki's community-mediated backcasting for SPREAD 2050. Wherever the conditions are right, long-term thinking and futures methods seem to be taking root, even if it involves reinventing the wheel.
And looking ahead at the level of the studio, the second week of December sees us joining friend-of-the-flux Scott Smith on a week-long trip to Dubai, where we'll be working on a super-exciting secret project. Jon has been working to get us ready for an epic film shoot, preparing and testing the gear, whilst both Anab and Jon have been working on project strategy, style and aesthetics. Though I can't speak for the others, I'm literally vibrating with anticipation.
Though we've been reassured that she's now back on the grid, Carolina was last seen in a forest in Dorset, and before that, Ecuador, where she was wrangling a giant digital waterfall as part of her work for Nexus Interactive Arts. When all our feet are back on London asphalt, Team Superflux will be in crunch mode, working on projects, prototyping, and big-picture company strategy for the year ahead. We look forward to catching up with you then.
At the end of last week, my TED blog interview went live. It was a lot of fun to do, and my answers reflected on the philosophy behind our design practice, using details from some of our projects to expand on our aspirations for the future. Its quite a long piece, but I hope you enjoy the read.
Following the interview, I hosted a 'live conversation' on the TED site, prompted by the question:
"As unmanned drones, algorithms and prosthetics blur the distinction between man and machine, what, if anything, does it mean to be human?"
I was unsure as to how this live conversation would unfold, as it was only publicly announced just before we kicked off and was scheduled to run for an hour. After about 15 minutes, responses began flooding in, which was a real surprise. Site traffic was so high, in fact, that the conversation was extended by an additional half hour. I was typing furiously, trying to respond to as many people as possible, fielding challenging comments and questions. It was a great experience, and a lot of fun!
Here's the full thread, if you fancy checking it out.
After months of toil deep in the Drupal mines, we have just launched our shiny new website. Though we were fond of the old site, we really needed the space and structure to expand on individual projects and the studio's core mission. The new site comes with our new logo, inspired by the Devanagari script, and designed by the talented Fran Marchesi.
We've added an explanation of Superflux's structure, some examples of our way of working, profiles of our associates, and links to presentations and publications. We've also included an email newsletter, for more regular updates from the studio. Big kudos and thanks to Jon for all the development work, Justin for the incredible effort with words, and Carolina and Noah for their valuable input.
Here's the old website, for comparison and posterity:
As October's Indian summer starts to fade away, it's time to reconcile ourselves to the reality of autumn, and reflect on a busy couple of months at Superflux HQ.
At various points in the last few months, it's been hard to remember a time before we were working on the new website, text iterations and design decisions weighing heavy as we juggled pitches, project work and the endlessly challenging task of defining Superflux's core mission – something we'd all grasped at an intuitive level, but found near-impossible to articulate.
But now it's done, and we're back on the grid. So let's take a look at some of the other things we've been up to.
In the final week of August, we dialled into the Yeditepe International Research Conference of Foresight and Futures 2011 to deliver a poster presentation on 'Design Futurescaping'. This was part of a decidedly post-geographical session on participatory foresight and images of the future, with Team Superflux beamed onto a screen in a Turkish university, alongside Noah Raford and Scott Smith (both in London), Wendy Schultz (Oxford), and Jake Dunagan (Bay Area, CA).
With Anab travelling to Rotterdam at the end of September, to present on design fiction at V2_, we developed some of the ideas from this rapidly-assembled poster presentation into a longer paper to accompany her talk. Combining points from 'Learning to Play with Tomorrow', Anab's keynote from LIFT 2009 (as unpacked by Bruce Sterling) with case studies and best practices from our work, Syd Mead's designs for the world of Blade Runner, and academic writings on the public understanding of science and technology, the paper – also titled 'Design Futurescaping' – can be found in Blowup Reader #3.
From the Lab side of our operations, in August, we decided to pitch one of our ongoing projects to The Designer Fund in Silicon Valley. To our surprise and delight, we were one of the eight teams selected for mentorship and seed funding, with three months of guidance and support to help us take our idea from concept to prototype. Once at the prototype stage, we hope to be a position to consider additional funding options, with the aim of realising a minimum viable product.
Our team for this project is small and agile, with our associate Mark working on physical computing, technologist Tim Brooke lending his expertise in computer vision and robotics, Jon focusing on user experience, and Anab working on story and narrative. As of October, we are roughly half-way through prototype development, and, though we can't say too much, things are ticking over nicely.
Also under the Lab umbrella, we've been extending the work we started with Song of the Machine, building on our collaboration with Dr. Patrick Degenaar and his research team at Newcastle University. On one level, we've been brainstorming ways to develop our research. We're eager to kick off some kind of qualitative user research, focusing on the ways our prospective users are likely to interact with their immediate (domestic) environment.
At the same time, we've also been focusing on some of the commercial aspects of the team's research. Patrick Stevenson-Keating, a skilled and versatile designer, has been working with us to develop a form factor prototype of the wearable – something that can help Dr. Degenaar expand on the product concept and functions when pitching to investors.
In addition to our activities in the studio, we've found time to catch up with friends and travellers. We've had interesting conversations with the fine folks at Precipice Design and MMM/Re:think. In Rotterdam, Anab enjoyed catching up with Alex Deschamps-Sonsino, Julian Bleecker, and Michelle Kasprzak. Back in London, we touched base with futurists-in-transit Scott Smith and Heather Schlegel, and bade a reluctant farewell to Noah Raford, who we wish every success in his voluntary secondment to Abu Dhabi.
Earlier this month, a new exhibition titled 'Talk to Me' curated by Paola Antonelli opened at MoMA in New York. And we are super excited to have two of our projects: the 5th Dimensional Camera and Lukalive in the show! 'Talk to Me' curated by Paola Antonelli opens at MoMA in New York. And we are super excited to have two of our projects: the 5th Dimensional Camera and Lukalive in the show!
From the MoMA site: "Talk to Me is an exhibition on the communication between people and objects, and how designers write the initial script that enables the two parties to communicate effectively and elegantly.
The exhibition hinges on an important development in the culture of design (and in culture at large), a shift from the centrality of function to that of meaning. From this perspective, all objects contain information that goes well beyond their immediate use or appearance. In some cases, objects exist to provide us with access to complex systems and networks, behaving as gateways and interpreters. Whether openly and actively, or in subtle, subliminal ways, things talk to us, and designers help us develop and improvise the dialogue." Both projects will be exhibited in the esteemed company of friends and colleagues such as Hiromi Ozaki, Dunne&Raby, James King, Revital Cohen, Berg, Tinker, Poke, Chris O'Shea, Natalie Jeremijenko, Usman Haque, Sascha Pohflepp, Chris Woebken, Julian Bleecker, all the way to Google, Apple and Nintendo. If you are in New York anytime till 7th November, do check it out, and send us pictures!
This month was nearly lost in the fine mist of London rain and summer exhaustion. Luckily, some well-judged holiday time pulled us back from the brink of madness. Anab and Jon found some time to escape to the Lancashire seaside and the Lake District.
(company co-directors not pictured)
Carolina fled to the relative safety and zero-internet freedom of the Austrian Alps (for hiking and project work).
And Justin braved the depths of West London in a mission to Kew Gardens, to check out various carnivorous plants and the Victorian precursors of Biosphere 2.
On the other side of the Atlantic, 'Talk to Me' opened at MoMA. All the projects in the exhibition can be followed through their QR codes and hashtags. Lukalive is #ttmluka:
The 5th Dimensional Camera is #ttmcamera:
As the show opened to the press and public, we got some great coverage, from a cameo in Jason Polan's sketches from the installation, through to photos and write-ups on CNN Money, The Wall Street Journal and Core77.
Elsewhere, we watched Geoffrey B. West's seminar for the Long Now, in which he lays out his thoughts on the lifespans of organisations, cities, and organisms, which resonated strongly with some work we have been brainstorming & prototyping in the past few weeks – a series of workshops around Design Prospecting and DIY Urbanism, which we will be rolling out in collaboration with organisations in London, New York, Mumbai, and elsewhere. We enjoyed Karl Schroeder's musings on 'Wicked Problems', this post on Robot Domesticity from BLDGBLOG, and Adam Rothestein and Scott Smith's respective pieces on drones and UAVs.
Outside the catch-up on brain fodder, we have been stuck in a strange whirlwind of rapid product development, number-crunching, graph-making, and pitch-writing, for a project that has seen us up at all hours. Anab and Jon, flanked by long-term collaborators Tim Brooke and Mark Selby, have learnt more about startup funding, mobile gaming, and augmented reality that they ever thought possible. The future is exciting, and we continue building, making and prototyping.
As the month drew to close, Justin celebrated his birthday with friends and the rest of the studio, in St. James's Park, serenaded by a brass band of well-attired retirees.
June was a month of scheming, planning, writing, making and building. We continue to do the whole 'blood, sweat and tears' bit, working with clients to rugby-tackle complex problems and forge beautiful things from sheer force-of-willpower. All while keeping the balance sheet happy, and the accountant off our back (we love you, really). Though tricky at the best of times, its super-rewarding to be in the process of developing a 'new kind of design practice', something we need to write about more. In the meantime, a quick glimpse of what happened in June. We hit the ground running at International Science Day, hopping across the North Sea to Turku, Finland, for a programme grounded in its role as European Capital of Culture 2011. I presented on the thinking and design process behind the 5th Dimensional Camera, marshalling Indian gods and monsters in support of her unique take on the (constested) 'many-worlds' interpretation. It was a great day, with some brilliant speakers (and the Finnish press agree). 
Our optogenetics project 'Song of the Machine' was featured on the Fast Company Design blog, in a great piece by John Pavlus.
Having been working with Motiroti on the digital platform for WhatCounts, it was cool to see the exhibition kick-off with a brace of speeches and performances at the Rag Factory off Brick Lane.
In the studio, Carolina struggled to keep us 'up' and enthusiastic enough to impart some basic Spanish. Upside-down question marks a'plenty. Me gustas!
This guy parked outside for an afternoon, delivering liquid coolant to keep the studio's shiny new quantum computer ticking over. (Disclaimer: this may be a lie) 
And there was cake. June was also the month of final-year degree shows. As a studio we visited the AA end-of-year show, trekking across a rain-sodden London to catch up with the students whose work we'd previously seen as guest critics for Unknown Fields. Later in the month, we rocked up to the RCA Show, and dragged our 'Quantum Internet' researcher to Central Saint Martins's graduating show, blinding him with graphic design, and leaving us hopeful and inspired. From the AA's Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu, GravityONE to the Solar Sinter Project by RCA's Markus Kayser:Also loved the awesome Urban Stargazing, Energy Pilots and Sea Chair projects.
We also had some friends to visit -- shoving chai at the likes of Nicolas Nova, Noah Raford, Chris Haughton and Rory Hyde! Lovely. For now, we'll leave you with Rory's presentation on potential futures for design practice, a sharp analaysis and the subject of much discussion and head-scratching within the studio.
July! How are you doing?
This is May, and we at Superflux are like a swan – calm and serene from above (well mostly), but paddling frantically beneath the surface. After April's Irish cyborgs, Hungarian pirates and Harlem journeys, life continues apace. First and foremost, we're overjoyed to announce a couple of additions to the team. We have two amazing, talented individuals joining the Superflux Family, lending our practice a greater breadth of skills and activities, and boosting our general sense of happiness and well-being. Say hello to Justin Pickard and Carolina Vallejo!
Justin Pickard
Those of you who have seen 'Song of the Machine' have already met Justin Pickard – futurist, writer, and self-proclaimed 'gonzo ethnographer'. Justin is a graduate of Goldsmiths' MA in Digital Media, with a broader 'base' in anthropology and geopolitics, Justin's work is defined by his abiding interests in technology, society, and science fiction; and the sites where they come into contact. Whether simulating the future of security as 'game master' on a massively-multiplayer forecasting game, helping reimagine video capture as a team sport, or researching activism in the global clothing industry, he has worked across disciplines; striving to grapple with the emerging contours of the 21st century. He spends far too much time of his free time on Twitter, where he can be found – posting furiously – as @justinpickard.
Carolina Vallejo
Photo Credit: Rotobooth
Carolina Vallejo is a creative strategist and maker who moves between the lines and in the intersections of many disciplines: from physical computing, interaction design, and digital narratives, to literature, theatre, publishing, advertising, and architecture. She likes to think about how human interactions are mediated by technology, the cultural industries, and politics & current affairs. Carolina is originally from Bogotá and has worked, lived and studied in Barcelona, New York, Tokyo and London. Carolina holds an MA in Interactive Telecommunications from ITP, New York, a Masters in Publishing from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and has pursued independent studies in graphic design, architecture and education. She is also the mastermind behind Design for the First World, and can be found on Twitter as @carolinavallejo.
New Summer Studio
We have a lovely new studio space within stumbling distance of Liverpool Street Station. It's light, airy, and perfect for welcoming in the summer. That said, our search for a more permanent base of operations continues, as we hunt for a space that can accommodate our needs for prototyping, Lab activities, and so forth. If you hear of anything, please drop us a line; last month's sticker-bounty still stands.
Other News We are working on couple of strategy documents for clients, getting excited about upcoming projects, exhibitions and talks, and plotting an event or two. Jon is slaving at the digital coalface, forging our new website from sweat and pixels. I should be preparing for a talk at International Science Day in Turku, Finland, as part of its 'European Capital of Culture' activities in 2011, but my fellow speakers' credentials have left my frozen. Justin secretly hopes I can ambush Hannu Rajaniemi, whose debut novel he was reading while we were working on 'Song of the Machine'. Set in a strange and distant future, The Quantum Thief (2010) represents Rajaniemi's attempt to meld science fiction and the pulp crime fiction of the early twentieth-century:
'This was an optogenetic black box upload. Very crude: it must have been agony. It's an old trick, pre-Collapse. They used to do it with rats. You infect the target with a virus that makes their neurons sensitive to yellow light. Then you stimulate the brain with lasers for hours, capture the firing patterns and train a black box function to emulate them. That's where those little holes in his skull are from. Optic fibres. Upload tendrils.' The tzaddik brushes the chocolatier's thinning hair carefully with a gloved hand: there are tiny black dots in the scalp beneath, a few centimetres apart.
-- Hannu Rajaniemi, The Quantum Thief (2010), p. 34
And that Superflux book recommendation deftly returns us to our ongoing affair with optogenetics, lending a much-needed coherence to the universe, and our activities within it. Sorted.
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