Choose your instincts wisely

A day or two ago I stumbled across this fascinating project, the Alertness Enhancing Device by Susanna Hertrich, an MA student in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art, London.

Image: Susanna Hertrich, via we-make-money-not-art

Before/after | Image: Susanna Hertrich

Writes Hertrich:

This project picks on how much today's people have detached themselves from their original animal inheritance. Which of our lost animal abilities do we miss and how would we try to regain them?

It is said that no other generation before has been as anxious and risk aware as ours. Other than animals, we aren't equipped for the challenges of contemporary living. We don't have the abilities to identify the real dangers in a surplus of potential threats and horror scenarios offered to us by mass media. We don't have the right instincts to tell threat from panicmongering.

This device is meant as a physical prosthesis for a lost or missing natural instinct for the real fears and dangers that threaten us – as opposed to perceived risks that often cause a public outrage.
[...]
The device stimulates goosebumps and shivers that go down your spine through microcurrents resulting in your neck hair standing up. You will be more alert and ready for the real dangers in life.

A chart at Hertrich's website illustrates the tremendous disproportionality between statistical risks (below the line) and the issues that actually cause us to worry (above it):

Image: Susanna Hertrich

This is a marvellously clear portrayal of that disjuncture. (I'd like to dig into the data behind each of these misshapen risk-snowmen -- but details notwithstanding, it makes intuitive a rather tricky point, with a whole lot of examples.*) And the Alertness Enhancing Device is a splendidly provocative route toward narrowing that gap.

Adds Régine "we-make-money-not-art" Debatty:

While we consciously know what are the things that really threatens us, we tend to dedicate much more of attention to spectacular disasters with many deaths.

That's when the Alertness Enhancing Device comes in. If you feel dispassionate and bored when reading news stories about another environmental pollution scandal, it's probably time to turn the dial of the device on.

~"Prosthesis for a lost instinct", 21 February 02008

I'm excited about this project, but not on account of the recovery of "lost animal abilities" angle so much. That frame conceals, I think, what's rather more novel here. No animal -- including humanity -- has developed properly calibrated survival strategies, let alone instincts, for such challenges as traffic accidents, cancer, and pollution. These threats (in their present forms) play little or no part in the wilds of the jungle or savannah. They are not the problems we evolved to deal with, even though they have become some of the most pressing risks we now face.

This approach reunites the assertion of animality (if we insist on understanding our embodiedness that way), with highly subtle collective cognitive operation -- in effect, guiding evolution, which is of course what technocultural change is all about (McLuhan: "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us"). What's interesting to me is that the recruitment of the body enables (more) direct feedback loops, expressed in somatic language, which bypasses (or, better yet, compresses into instantaneously "comprehensible" form) the complex conjecture of risk assessment. It also makes available a new take on both future-shock therapy and ambient foresight -- perhaps indeed a counterpart idea; embodied foresight -- concerning the engagement of new risks, in old forms. It's a programmable, strap-on judgment heuristic. Or, if you prefer, prosthetic intuition.

Taking the hypothetical proposed by this device a step further, I should add right away that we ought to be mindful of some of the risks (more risks!) associated with the implementation of such a system. Who wears it, and with what effects, and with what actrivation thresholds, and for what purposes -- all are politically charged questions raised even at the hypothetical level by an intervention of this form. Maybe my hackles are too quick to go up, but there are spectres here of Pavlov's dogs, of psychiatric treatments such as shock therapy, and more broadly speaking, other bodily and neural policing strategies (about which my colleagues Sean Smith and Jake Dunagan, among others, will be able to comment far more intelligently). Still, this activation and fine-tuning of instinctive responses for the purposes of presenting complex risks that provides great food for thought. Perhaps later versions could include specialised and nuanced bodily responses tailored specifically to the issue (so, for instance, riding in an SUV could cause your skin to crawl in a really unique way -- in case it doesn't already).

Commenting on Daniel Gilbert's observations about why climate change is such a tough issue for us to wrap our primate heads around, it was noted here a couple of months ago that...

without a mechanism for manifesting the outcome of long-slow processes here and now, a mechanism for rendering visible the risks and opportunities that are otherwise invisible, we will have no choice but to keep stumbling on happiness and catastrophe alike.

This is a really cool project, I think, because it asks us to rethink and perhaps redesign the coupling of our thoughts and feelings, the unmooring of which have put at serious risk not just our bodies, but entire ecosystems. It suggests how we might choose to render available otherwise abstract and distant thought processes, both immediately and profoundly. So, prosthetic intuition about risk scenarios, both wearable and distributed elsewhere in our informational environments, will now figure more prominently in my ruminations about how we might feel (v. tr.) tomorrow.

* Incidentally, here's a comparable graphic from the National Safety Council (U.S.), of positively Tuftean clarity and elegance, posted by Bruce "Schneier on Security" Schneier:

Mapping C-change

Hawaii Blue Line Project | Photo: the sceptical futuryst

/Continued from two previous posts.../

For the first piece in what has become a sort of mini-trilogy, I described the Hawaii Blue Line Project, a climate change consciousness-raising effort recently staged in Honolulu, which involved drawing a line in the streets behind Waikiki to mark the new waterfront -- other things being equal -- if the sea level were to rise one metre, as projected by the end of the century. I said that the project exemplified what we call ambient foresight; the embedding of cues in our mental environment today to encourage the consideration of alternative tomorrows.

The second post looked at why, psychologically, people tend to discount long-slow risks -- temporally and spatially diffused crisis states -- such as climate change; which provides a rationale for ambient foresight in public spaces.

In this third and final post, I want to close the circle by situating the Hawaii Blue Line Project amid other efforts along similar lines, so to speak, which may help folks who share the concerns articulated so far, to design more effective future-oriented interventions like this.

Beginnings

I asked Jeff Mikulina, President of the Hawaii Chapter of the Sierra Club which organised this event, where the idea came from. He replied that he had thought it was an original, but then discovered it had been done before elsewhere.

I've looked into this and found several examples of similar initiatives in other American cities, though I haven't found even a cursory comparative examination of them anywhere else. In no particular order, here's some info about the ones I've found...

There's the San Francisco-based FutureSeaLevel.org, "a collaboration of Aquarium of the Bay Foundation, the Sierra Club and the San Francisco Department of the Environment (SF Environment)". Enterprisingly, they have produced "future sea level" tape which you can order at the website. They have staged a series of related events dating back to September 02006.

Photo: Charles Chipman/futuresealevel.org | via Treehugger

Image: Screenshot from futuresealevel.org

Another strand of work has been going on in Seattle, where an art collective called Watermark staged a number of walks through the city's downtown area, "using soil to mark a line of new 'terrain' -- the shoreline that would be created in the case of a twenty foot rise in sea-level, as could occur with the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets".

The group's website explains:

For each performance, participants walk the line of the future shoreline, sometimes marking it with different materials such as seeds or water. The idea is to help each one of us envision a possible future and some of the ramifications of climate change. While we cannot predict exactly what the impacts of climate change will be, we seek to use the power of imagination in order to acknowledge the possibilities and open up new ways of thinking about our impact on the planet. We hope that through this process of visualization, we can create a call to action.

One such performance was promoted as part of "Step It Up 2007", a climate change awareness initiative [more background] cofounded by environmentalist Bill McKibben, which is how I found it.

Image: Watermark

Image: Watermark

Not to be left out, of course, New York has its own project in this vein, called High Water Line, charting a ten foot sea-level rise around Brooklyn and Lower Mahattan. (I found this via Bruce Cahan at Stanford). HighWaterLine was initiated by artist Eve Mosher, in partnership with The Canary Project (global warming never looked so pretty!) and she's been blogging its progress since April 02007. Mosher elegantly outlines its philosophy at her website:

High Water Line seeks to engage people on the street, in the neighborhoods where they live, work and play. People will encounter the chalk line and the beacons while going about their daily lives. The work is an intervention in routine - the public's as well as my own. This aspect of the piece ensures catching the public's attention, and it provides easy and direct access. The simplicity of the project, aesthetically and visually, will appeal to people of all ages, ethnicities and economic backgrounds. Climate change is a silent, invisible threat - High Water Line gives voice and makes visible the affects of this threat. High Water Line is designed to engage the community and promote thoughtful, informed dialogue and action.

Image: Eve Mosher, High Water Line 02007 via The Canary Project

(I have a feeling the above image was a visualisation produced before the installation itself started. Here are some actual photos from Mosher's blog...)

Image: HighWaterLine, August 02007

Image: HighWaterLine, October 02007

Finally, a controversial campaign to enable this kind of ambient foresight on a semi-permanent basis has been unfolding under the banner of lightblueline in Santa Barbara, California; "a public information project to paint on the streets the message that human induced climate change will impact coastal cities. Whenever you cross the light blue line, remember that the coastline is an outcome of our collective human efforts."

Bruce Caron, lightblueline's "#1 painter", said in November 02006:

This is where the original idea for lightblueline occured-- I was walking down Anacapa between de la Guerra and Cota after watching An Inconvenient Truth. And this is where a dedicated team of volunteers has been working to create the first lightblueline street painting action.

We are working hard with the City government to create a best-practice example for this public education effort, so that we can pass on this information to volunteers in other cities. The lessons we learn here will help grow this movement across the globe.

Here in Santa Barbara we have so much to lose should global warming create a rise in our sea level. Our beautiful beaches and the entire waterfront (not to mention the freeway, railroad, and airport--planes, trains, and automobiles are all at risk), would be ravaged over the decades, with each year sending new waves across roads and into our cliffs.

The plan (from lightblueline's photos at Flickr):





Early in August 02007, the Santa Barbara Independent newspaper reported that Caron's proposal for a permanent (painted) "light blue line 1,000 feet long throughout downtown Santa Barbara to show where the sea would rise if Greenland were to melt as a result of global warming" seemed good to go [original emphasis]. Just two weeks later, Caron withdrew the plan, under heavy pressure from people concerned about adverse impact on property values.

Middles

We can see from the above that there are various ways of approaching or carrying out a blue line project. There are three dimensions of variation I want to mention.

One is the sea-level projection around which any given project will revolve. A choice has to be made as to the relevant timeframe (02050? 02100? centuries beyond that?). Likewise, it matters which particular climate change model you're working from -- because different assumptions about the sea-rise model produce widely differing forecasts (not to mention variable levels of behaviour/emissions change). The Honolulu project "assumes" one metre of level rise, as does the New York effort. Santa Barbara chose a "predictable, worst-case scenario" of seven metres due to complete melting of the Greenland ice cap over a period of centuries. Which begs the question whether a more conservative, near-term impact might not have been more successful for an already ambitious painted-line project.

Another dimension of variation between projects, a category of options among which an organiser needs to choose, is the medium in which the sea-level changes are marked. Different media express a range of visual properties (colour, visibility) and degrees of permanence. So, soil (Seattle), chalk (Honolulu, New York), or tape (San Francisco) are obviously more temporary than paint (as proposed for Santa Barbara). It stands to reason that greater permanence could yield greater impact over time, but also attract greater difficulty in the process of obtaining approval -- or greater legal risk in going ahead without approval. The proportionality of potential impact and installation difficulty became a familiar dilemma during our FoundFutures:Chinatown art project (e.g., getting permission to install a bronze plaque "commemorating" a bird flu outbreak in 02016).

Finally, location is another dimension of difference. One option is to map the projected "new shoreline" -- how far the water could reach "inland" in scenario X. Here the line on the ground represents a hypothetical demarcation between waterlogged buildings and dry ones. This was the Hawaii Blue Line strategy, and seems to be the most common. However, an alternative way of mapping sea-level change is not on the ground, but on existing buildings, say along the current waterfront, showing where the risen seas would reach -- the "new watermark". (Both approaches to line location, it is important to mention, assume "other things being equal" -- ceteris paribus, as the economists say -- i.e., no mitigating intervention to hold back the rising tide.)

Ends

So how effective is this type of project in achieving the ends its animators typically have in mind?

An interesting and difficult question.

It's worth pointing out that since awareness-raising and behaviour change are the goal -- which the actual manifesting of blue lines is merely one way of approaching -- a campaign for a high-stakes, high-visibility, ongoing (i.e., relatively permanent) "ambient foresight" blue line exstallation could succeed as a political intervention even if it failed as an art project. That is to say -- for example in Honolulu -- in principle, an effort to get approval for a monitory sea-level rise marker along the hotels on the beach at Waikiki, could successfully raise local awareness of the risks of climate change even if the blue line were not approved and thus never painted.

It would be interesting to know how the (so far "unsuccessful") Santa Barbara project is doing in terms of catalysing public discussion. I don't know how to verify this, but I suspect it could well have started and sustained more conversations as an idea alone than the equally noble, and so far, more photogenic -- yet ephemeral -- chalk n' soil efforts mounted elsewhere.

As for Hawaii's Blue Line Project, it seems to have been quite successful, as far as it goes. Not only was it reported in the local media (the Honolulu daily Star-Bulletin; the University of Hawaii's student paper Ka Leo), but nationally and internationally also. Let me again emphasise the exceptional difficulty of gauging how well a political art intervention, such as those described here, engages people and changes minds. But more qualified than I to address that question is Jeff Mikulina, who organised the event, and responded to my request with this assessment of the project's impact:

In this case, I think it worked pretty well. Of course, when first envisioned I saw a line of children wearing blue shirts and holding hands across the entirety of Honolulu--blocking traffic, the whole works. That would have been a loud blow on the conch. But this is Hawaii, and we have limited resources and laws to follow. So chalking a line 7 blocks with about 50 kids was pretty good. The message got out. The Associated Press and Reuters picked it up and the story (or mention of the students chalking the sea level rise) made it into a few hundred papers worldwide. CNN and New York Times mentioned it--and followed through with an editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/opinion/08fri4.html.

So their were a number of targets that we were seeking to reach with the event: the delegates at the meeting, the general local public (in the vicinity and through local media), the actual students and participants chalking the line, local opinion leaders and decision makers (ie lawmakers), and finally, the international community. The last one was a big component because we wanted to really highlight the vulnerability of not only Hawaii, but of island states and nations globally--no one is immune from this. The iconographic "Waikiki" was the perfect poster child, so to speak, for the loss that Hawaii (and other coastal areas) might experience. The fact that something so well known could cease to exist hopefully opened some eyes.

The other challenge we have with this issue is credibility. Many probably asked if the line was legit or if we were just using some scare tactics. That's why I wanted to have a strong, respected academic voice developing the line (Prof. Chip Fletcher) and err on the conservative side in explaining the factors behind the line. So hopefully that message penetrated as well.

Now did people go home and immediately change their bulbs to CFLs and trade their cars in for a bike? No. But this action hopefully contributed to the growing unease or cognitive dissonance of behavior and effect. The students doing the chalking was meant to deliver that message in a more emotional (this is their future) approach.

So, there's no way to guarantee that it works. Still, from my point of view, despite the systemic uncertainties inherent in collectively steering this Titanic, it's too important a challenge not to try. And, as a mechanism or catalyst for forward thinking, it can't fail to affect at least some of those who encounter it, and thereby contribute incrementally to the solution rather than the problem. Indeed, we have good reason to think that, carefully designed, this kind of intervention can make an important difference. Jeff again:

It gets people thinking. Wow, this is what will happen. It makes the invisible future visible. Ideally, it links current actions with future reactions and emboldens people into believing that they can actually shaping the outcome (which they can).

That's ambient foresight.

Stumbling on foresight

This happy fellow is Daniel Gilbert | Image: Marilynn Oliphant / Time

/Continued from previous post.../

Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert wrote a fantastic book called Stumbling on Happiness which I read last summer. Gilbert is an expert in the field of affective forecasting; how we think we'll feel in response to certain things happening to us. The main argument of his book is that when it comes to these kinds of forecasts -- matters as basic as what will make us happy or sad -- we're frequently wrong. Things we expect to be devastating turn out not to be so bad. Events we expect to transform our lives for the better might not have remotely the impact we thought. And on top of all that, our recollections of what we expected are distorted in hindsight, with the effect of hiding from our own view how wrong we were.

This systematic psychological quirk -- more a quirkplex, really -- is, or at least ought to be, rather a critical concern for this blog, and, I'd say, for futures in general. Because the contention that we should exercise foresight (or, engage in considering alternative futures) more often and more assiduously than we usually do -- an argument I advance with monotonous regularity -- is underpinned by the assumption that such work can make a positive difference to our decision-making. Or, to put it another way, that pursuing preferred futures (individually as well as collectively) is more meaningful and effective than simply meandering along, foresightless.

I realise I may seem to be biting off a lot to chew by raising questions so fundamental to my chosen field in a blog post. (That's probably the main reason I haven't written about Stumbling until now, even though when I read it eight months ago I thought it was terrific, and did not fail to note these troubling connections.) However, though Gilbert's book doesn't say too much about affective forecasting in relation to longer, slower, more systemic challenges, it turns out he has looked at how the problems of affective forecasting relate to such challenges. Specifically, he wrote about global warming (topic du jour here at t.s.f.) in an article for the Los Angeles Times in July 02006, a couple of months after the book was released. I just came across the LA Times piece over the weekend. Here's a shortened version:

No one seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won’t involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.

The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a shoe bomb. And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year to prevent global terrorism and … well, essentially nothing to prevent global warming.

Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features —- features that terrorism has and that global warming lacks.

First, global warming lacks a mustache. No, really. We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. [...] Global warming isn’t trying to kill us, and that’s a shame. If climate change had been visited on us by a brutal dictator or an evil empire, the war on warming would be this nation’s top priority.

The second reason why global warming doesn’t put our brains on orange alert is that it doesn’t violate our moral sensibilities. It doesn’t cause our blood to boil (at least not figuratively) because it doesn’t force us to entertain thoughts that we find indecent, impious or repulsive. [...] The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets.

The third reason why global warming doesn’t trigger our concern is that we see it as a threat to our futures —- not our afternoons. Like all animals, people are quick to respond to clear and present danger, which is why it takes us just a few milliseconds to duck when a wayward baseball comes speeding toward our eyes. [...] We haven’t quite gotten the knack of treating the future like the present it will soon become because we’ve only been practicing for a few million years. If global warming took out an eye every now and then, OSHA would regulate it into nonexistence.

There is a fourth reason why we just can’t seem to get worked up about global warming. [...] Because we barely notice changes that happen gradually, we accept gradual changes that we would reject if they happened abruptly. [...] Environmentalists despair that global warming is happening so fast. In fact, it isn’t happening fast enough. If President Bush could jump in a time machine and experience a single day in 2056, he’d return to the present shocked and awed, prepared to do anything it took to solve the problem.

~Daniel Gilbert, "If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming", Los Angeles Times, reproduced at Stumbling on Happiness weblog (Random House), 2 July 02006 [emphasis added].

Brilliant, isn't it? Gilbert says, self-deprecatingly, in his introductory comments, "I keep having the odd thought that I will someday look back on this and realize that it was the only important thing I ever wrote." Seems a little downbeat. Everything I've read of his has not only been exceptionally interesting, but has also dealt with some pretty important issues.

Still, the problem he's describing here truly is monumental -- with emphasis on "mental". (Just shoot me.) We have an ingrained, collective psychological blindspot for the types of harm which are most serious and world-changing, and are instead obsessed by patrolling colourful trivialities like sexual preference or things that take out people's eyes.

All this is, more or less, the rationale -- whether the organisers know it or not -- behind efforts such as the Blue Line Project (ha! I told you this was a continuation from the last post). It's very consciously the reason for efforts we've made to put vividly imagined alternative futures into the public domain. It is a reason for developing both future-shock therapy, and its gentle cousin, ambient foresight.

Because without a mechanism for manifesting the outcome of long-slow processes here and now, a mechanism for rendering visible the risks and opportunities that are otherwise invisible, we will have no choice but to keep stumbling on happiness and catastrophe alike.

Our alternative strategy, which it is my aim to help advance as far as I can, is to make available the ingredients for people to stumble on foresight. And thereby to help develop a social capacity for thinking ahead that would make colossal blunders, like unwitting anthropogenic climate change, unthinkable (um, figuratively).

Then, my friends, the world might be safe for democracy.

/To part three.../

A thin blue line

I took these photos last Wednesday, 30 January, while participating in a project to trace a blue line through the streets of Honolulu to show where sea level is expected to reach by the century's end.

The "Blue Line Project" was coordinated by the Hawaii chapter of ecological organisation The Sierra Club (whose President, Jeff Mikulina, we met last year -- mentioned in this previous post).

What occasioned this good natured bit of activism was that for two days last week, Honolulu hosted a climate change conference initiated by President Bush, for representatives of sixteen of the world's largest economies, as well as EU and UN delegates. The venue was the East-West Center (a.k.a. the "Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between East and West" established by U.S. Congress in 01960), a federal institution adjacent to the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the organisation which pays for my fellowship to study there.

The talks, which were closed to the public, played out at the Kennedy Theater, which I can see out my window, right across the street, as I type. It was funny to be so close to an international news event and yet to have no access to it.

People I know here in Hawaii who take an interest in such things had good reason to doubt both the sincerity and the efficacy of talks initiated by a federal administration that has persistently denied any need for action on climate change. But they all recognised the opportunity to raise awareness both locally and internationally about these issues and attendant risks.

Hence the Blue Line Project.

Bright blue chalk and duct tape were made available to the fifty or so folks who turned out at the Old Stadium Park in Mo'ili'ili, a few blocks southwest of campus, to participate in the action. I was especially happy to be involved, because this was an idea that Jake and I had at one stage hoped to incorporate into FoundFutures last October, before conceding that installing hundreds of artifacts in the streets representing a series of alternative future Chinatowns was probably enough to take on for one project.

A map distributed in advance showed where we would be tracing the blue line:


Which was based on part of the map projecting a one-metre sea-level rise produced by scientists at University of Hawaii, and discussed at this blog in October.

This particular blue line intervention is not the first project of its kind, but it is, I think, an interesting meme accompanying growing acceptance of the reality of climate change. By projecting possible futures into the present; feeding forward; embedding cues to consider alternative futures into our mental environment today; it represents an excellent example of what we like to call ambient foresight.

/To be continued.../

Outdoor installation takes cover

Photo: Jake Dunagan

Elements of our ambient foresight "exstallation", FoundFutures:Chinatown, described in these three previous posts, have been moved off the streets and into temporary residence at The Arts at Mark's Garage, Nuuanu Avenue, Honolulu. They form part of an exhibition on Alternative Urban Futures which opened on Tuesday, and runs until 17 November. There is some other very cool stuff in the show which we haven't had a chance to look at closely, so far, but anyone in the area is encouraged to check it out.

The introductory matter to our contribution in the gallery reads as follows:

FoundFutures injects futures into the present. It is a multimedia, collaborative project based on the idea that a wider range of possible futures should be made visible and thinkable to people in their everyday lives. The project was created and is led by two doctoral candidates in political science at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, who are also futures researchers at the Hawai'i Research Center for Futures Studies (HRCFS). We aim to provoke thought, conversation, and action by creating and distributing art, artifacts, images, performances and other media that embody possible worlds to come.

Making alternative futures tangible is an antidote to the singular, colonized future we are given by mass media, consumer culture, and an intrinsically shortsighted political system. We want participants to be directly confronted with long-range choices, to feel just how different their various futures could be from the present, and from each other. We call this future-shock therapy. Our aim is not to push people towards particular conclusions, but simply to invite deeper engagement with the field of possibilities.

Photo: Jake Dunagan

This side of the display shows elements from an earlier foray into experiential scenarios, for "Hawaii 2050", a statewide discussion which launched in August 02006. These pieces suggest aspects of a high-tech future Hawai'i (artwork by Sky Kiyabu and Steve Kiyabu). Next, in May 02007, we sent to leaders across the community four postcards from alternative versions of Hawai'i in 02036, on consecutive days and with no return address (designed by Yumi Vong).

On the other side of this panel are elements from four immersive futures designed for our first foray into community and street art – FoundFutures:Chinatown. The first future (McChinatown) was staged for the First Friday art event on October 5. Two others have been displayed since (Green Dragon and The Bird Cage). One will continue beyond this show (Dig Deeper). If you are interested in exploring the futures of Chinatown and Hawaii beyond the urgent, immediate concerns of today, please consider attending our Chinatown Futures Workshop on 17 November (RSVP to info at foundfutures dot com). To discuss futures thinking, or specific issues raised by this distributed installation, don't hesitate to contact us.

Stuart Candy & Jake Dunagan
Directors, FoundFutures:Chinatown
22 October 02007

Photo: Jake Dunagan

Our contribution to the Arts at Marks exhibition has been quite an effort, involving many people. Below is a list of acknowledgements from Jake and me, as it appears at the show:

McCHINATOWN

Designers:
Jesse Arneson
Mark Guillermo
Ryan Yamamoto

Installation assistance:
Duk Bu
Brady Fern
JoDee and Ernie Hunt
Pegge Hopper
Rich Richardson
Roy Venters
Melanie Yang

Protesters:
Guen Montgomery (lead)
Jason Adams
Christina Hoe
Bianca Isaki
Rohan Kalyan
John Maus
Josh Pryor
Lorenzo Rinelli
Matthew Stits


GREEN DRAGON

Designer:
Yumi Vong
[for more of Yumi's outstanding work, check out her website]

Additional scenario
development:
Aaron Rosa

Cultural advisors:
Roger Ames
Matthew McDonald

Translations:
Chien-Yuan Chen
Tianyuan Huang

Installation assistance:
Brady Fern
Charles Wong


THE BIRD CAGE

Designer:
Matthew Jensen
[development of many of the beautiful artifacts for this scenario, designed or overseen by Matt, can be found at the Ritual Lab website, dating back about a month]

Additional artwork:
The Great Bendango
Kristin Dennis
Nathan Verrill

Installation assistance:
Oren Schlieman & Fran Butera
Tim Braden
Richard Lum, Worldwide Travel
Maya van Leemput & Bram Goots
Matthew Jensen

Production assistance:
Seong Won Park

Special thanks to
M.P. Lei Shop (at Maunakea & Pauahi), providers of leis for "Hang Ten flu" memorial plaque


This project would not have been possible without
the support of the following individuals:

Wiwik Bunjamin-Mau, Rich Richardson, and Erik Takeshita at The Arts at Mark's Garage

Matthew Jensen

Yumi Vong

Carolyn Borges at Tom Terrific's Printshop, Manoa

Prof Jim Dator, Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies


The contribution of the following is also much appreciated:

Steve Kiyabu
Sky Kiyabu
Ed Korybski
Chetan Mangat
Bernard Uy


Photography by:

Stuart Candy
Jake Dunagan
Bram Goots
Matthew Stits
Yumi Vong

The Bird Cage

Photo: Stuart Candy

On Tuesday, 16 October 02007, this bronze plaque appeared on the corner of Maunakea and Pauahi Streets in Chinatown, Honolulu -- testimony to the resilient response of the community to a hypothetical tragedy that would not occur for another ten years.

Chinatown has in its history been ravaged by the plague, quarantined, and burned to the ground. In April 02016, the future rhymes with bygone times as bird flu rears its beady-eyed little head. Our distributed installation played out the scenario in reverse, from the installation of the memorial 18 months after the outbreak...

Photo: Bram Goots

Photo: Stuart Candy

To the revival of entrepreneurial activity shortly after the epidemic...

"Dust to Dust" flyer: Matthew Jensen

Photo: Bram Goots

Photo: Stuart Candy

"Jake Stuart" poster: Matthew Jensen / Photo: Bram Goots

Photo: Bram Goots

Photo: Stuart Candy

"Still Paradise" poster: Matthew Jensen

To official notices posted by the National Agency for Investigative Epidemiology (N.A.I.E.) as the crisis was brought under control...

"Evacuation" poster: Matthew Jensen / Photo: Stuart Candy

Photo: Bram Goots

Photo: Stuart Candy

"All Clear" poster: Matthew Jensen / Photo: Stuart Candy

Photo: Stuart Candy

To impromptu messages placed in the streets by ordinary people when the outbreak first occurred...

"Missing" installation design: Matthew Jensen / Photo: Stuart Candy

Photo: Stuart Candy

Photo: Stuart Candy

Below, the outline scenario that Jake Dunagan and I wrote for this third phase of FoundFutures : Chinatown...

THE BIRD CAGE ~02016
What if Chinatown were ground zero of a new influenza epidemic?

Chinatown has long been haunted by tragedy. In 01886 and again in 01900, it was burned to the ground. When a deadly strain of influenza called H8N2 broke out in April 02016, this tragedy in paradise was global news; but local authorities acted quickly. Aircraft were grounded and as Honolulu's "Hang Ten Flu" took hold, the National Guard immediately quarantined Chinatown and systematically raided all residences and businesses in search of individuals exhibiting symptoms.

The rapid response of authorities, and establishment of military/medical checkpoints along all highways across the island, meant that the crisis could be confined to O'ahu. Residents and visitors at risk of infection were relocated to mobile quarantine facilities in Honolulu or on the North Shore (several cruise liners were requisitioned for this purpose by the National Agency for Investigative Epidemiology, the newly established, disease-oriented tactical response branch of FEMA). The ill were then shipped to more secure facilities on Moloka'i for treatment -- and, in one out of every three cases, burial.

The "Weeping Spring" of 02016 brought tourism and most other aspects of everyday life on O'ahu to a standstill. The origins of the virus remain controversial -- at first thought to due to low-quality imported poultry, the outbreak has reportedly been traced to a security lapse at a university research facility on the island. Investigations are still underway.

During the tragedy, the community of Chinatown was frozen. A high proportion of residents lost family members, and the cessation of construction which had occurred at first from necessity was extended while residents debated next steps. However, eighteen months later the citizenry has regrouped and, led by a newly elected, youthful Mayor C. Ballesteros, a renewed sense of shared purpose and identity is discernible. The temporary interruption in shipments and motorized traffic had the effect of heightening awareness of Hawaii's isolation, and increased calls for self-reliance. Many residents have begun cultivating their own food sources, and plans are afoot to turn a number of Chinatown streets into public gardens.
[Update 30 October 02007: See also previous scenario... Green Dragon / Next post... Outdoor installation takes cover]

McChinatown

Honolulu's Chinatown is among the city's oldest and most iconic districts. It's a bastion of small family-owned businesses, where so far no franchise stores or national restaurant chains have opened.

On Friday 5 October, the following suddenly appeared there:

Large posters announcing a new Starbucks moving into a large corner building that has been vacant for three years...

Artwork: Jesse Arneson

Photo: Jake Dunagan

Signs for TGI Friday's (a US bar and restaurant franchise) opening soon on a property at the southeast corner of Chinatown...

Artwork: Ryan Yamamoto

Photo: Matthew Stits

A banner inviting bids for luxury loft apartments, starting at $2.1 million, in one of the district's most recognisable buildings...

Sign design: Mark Guillermo / Photo: Stuart Candy

Photo: Matthew Stits

That evening, members of a grassroots activist group gathered outside the supposed future Starbucks, calling on patrons of the area's monthly First Friday art walk to "Save Chinatown" from what appeared to be a stealthy corporate takeover by investment consortium Aloha™ Land and Water (investaloha.com). They distributed paraphernalia including flyers ("Honolulu's Chinatown: The Next Waikiki?"), postcards, buttons -- and even fortune cookies (e.g. "Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without"), and they directed concerned parties to savechinatown.org. [Note, 18 October 02010: these in-scenario sites are unfortunately no longer live.]

Postcard design: Mark Guillermo

Photo: Matthew Stits

Honolulu Weekly Back Page, Wednesday 3 October / Photo: Stuart Candy

This intervention, which manifests or simulates one possible near-term future for the area, generated some attention, including a front-page story in the Honolulu Advertiser (the state's largest newspaper), and shorter (but slightly more accurate) coverage in the other major daily, the Star-Bulletin [links fixed 18 October 02010, the latter courtesy of Internet Archive's marvellous Wayback Machine; scroll to the article amusingly titled article, "Futurists set up fake scenario"].

Here's the scenario, written by Jake Dunagan and me, which served as the basis for this exercise in ambient foresight:

McCHINATOWN ~02010
What if Chinatown were taken over by corporate interests?

A Starbucks on a prime corner of Honolulu's most eclectic, gritty, and original neighborhood proved to be a tipping point -- and a litmus test of allegiances -- in the ongoing development of Chinatown. Some saw it as a hopeful symbol of the district finally catching up with a globally connected, 21st century city; others feared the beginning of the end for independent business and local character. Against the short-lived protests of the grassroots Save Chinatown! coalition, international entrepreneurs Aloha™ Land and Water led a new wave of investment in the district.

Week by week, new ventures and ubiquitous chain stores could be found opening their doors to a throng of customers. Free shuttles for shoppers from Waikiki became a common sight, and luxury lofts became the rage for a crop of young, urban professionals. Old time landowners and traditional Chinatown residents leapt at the opportunities this presented, and vacant lots filled immediately.

Some in the arts community became concerned at the loss of character and uniqueness that had been a powerful attractor for artists and other "creatives" on the island. Meanwhile, new zero-tolerance policies against prostitution, drug users, and homeless persons had their effect -- complaints about these problems are now seldom heard, streets are clean, and a recycling program has been instituted, receiving high praise among environmentalists well beyond the neighborhood.

There is talk of re-naming the district, in pursuit of a fresh image, also to reflect the fact that now less than 5% of residents or business owners are of Chinese background (and less than 25% of Asian descent generally). This proposal remains controversial though, and its prospects are uncertain. What is certain is that the Chinatown of today would be hardly recognizable to someone who knew it a decade ago.

[Update 30 October 02007: Next scenario... Green Dragon]

[Update 18 October 02010: Links fixed. Also, the year in which this scenario was set is now almost gone and Chinatown has not yet fallen prey to international developers, as far as we know.]