In memoriam

A priest pays tribute to Dirk Diggler (Eddie Adams) at his memorial service, 11 March 02025
[Image via coquedesign2000's Flickr photostream]

On 11 March, Jake Dunagan and I staged one of four experiential scenarios set in the year 02025 for the annual South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin, Texas. A trio of fellow future-mongers, Jamais Cascio (Open the Future), Wayne Pethrick (Pitney Bowes), and panel coordinator Michele Bowman (Global Foresight Associates), each devised and presented their own immersive fragment of a different 02025 in the same session. Thus was the audience for "Futurists' Sandbox" serially bombarded with a quartet of alternative futures exploring possible directions for social networking technology.

Together, the five of us had sketched out four very different settings to ensure maximum diversity in the ideas we would present. Jake and I chose to breathe life into the one dubbed "mobilisation", which resembled the generic image of the future that we usually call "discipline" at Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies. Back in March, Jake posted a detailed description of the scenario and its theatrical translation at the HRCFS blog, in two segments, and the quotations below are his:

Combining our concern with expanding IP [intellectual property] rights and their impact on expression and freedom, we decided to integrate elements of the aesthetic economy, IP expansion, and surveillance culture--thus creating a disturbing totalitarian corporate-state.
...
[W]e chose to tell the story of the locked-down Dream Society through a eulogy for Eddie Adams, aka Dirk Diggler from P.T. Anderson's film Boogie Nights [i.e., the central character played by Mark Wahlberg].

Our experiential scenario, a memorial service for pornstar-turned-copyfighter Dirk Diggler, was advertised at SXSW with "in-world" flyers...
[Photo: Stuart Candy]

...dated 02025.
[Design: Eliot Frick]

There was no indication in the SXSW festival materials that our group would be 'performing' scenes from our scenarios, and, after some debate, we decided not to preface the panel with an explanation of the method. This was a risky choice, and with access to the active twitterati and audience members commenting live on the SXSW Meebo chatrooms, we could see that the reaction to the panel was mixed, but passionate. Still, for what might be risked in subverting audience expectation, we feel this performative, immersive technique is much more effective at engaging the audience at both emotional and intellectual levels—creating an unusual, thought-provoking and memorable event.

For those who haven't seen Boogie Nights (01997), the movie chronicles, with documentary plausibility, the rags-to-riches story of a surburban LA busboy whose astonishing endowment in the trouser department leads him to become a 01970s porn icon. Our scenario picked up Diggler's tale where the movie leaves off in the mid-80s, with the protagonist battling alcoholism and impotence. In our hands, his career then weathers a fallow period, during which he sells the rights to the image and likeness of his famous 13-inch member to a dildo company. Years later, in the 01990s, thanks to Viagra he revives his flagging fortunes and re-enters the porn movie business. Things seem to be going swimmingly, until the early 2010s when the long-anticipated technology of teledildonics (virtual sex) comes of age, and his attempt to market the virtual experience of sex with the enviably well-hung Dirk Diggler runs aground. These entrepreneurial efforts are met with a lawsuit by Disney, the company which (in our *hypothetical scenario*) has, via a series of mergers and acquisitions, come into possession of property in his penis. The case drags on for years, eventually finding its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Diggler/Adams fights it with everything he's got. Ultimately, he loses the case, as the court's expansionist reading of the rights he signed away for dildoes in a moment of weakness are deemed also to cover the haptic experience of sex with the "Diggler" character, as well as revenue from his post-contract comeback catalogue of pornographic performances. Eddie Adams, dispossessed of his very manhood by the ubiquitous corporate surveillance and lockdown of intellectual property, dies in 02025, beaten but unbowed. He is a hero of the embattled "copyfight" movement in an America where market logic has come to infuse every social transaction.

It was a lot to try to convey all this experientially in 15 minutes (one quarter of the hour-long session), but we figured it as an interesting twist on a story and character that many in the audience would recognise. By no means was it the stand-and-deliver panel discussion format that many had expected.

So, when people entered the auditorium, they were greeted by sombre organ music, a suitably reverential arrangement of ELO's "Living Thing", from the Boogie Nights soundtrack (arranged and prerecorded by our talented friend John Maus). This was the first element of immersion in our memorial service for Eddie Adams, to be followed by impassioned eulogies by his priest (me), lawyer (Jake), and erstwhile co-star, Rollergirl (the incomparable Sandy Stone, who lives in Austin and graciously agreed to be involved).

The presentation was six months ago yesterday, and this post is long overdue (mea culpa). One reason for that is I'd been hoping, at first, for some video of the panel to surface, since the material shot on an ancient Hi-8 camera by our friends at the back of the hall didn't turn out. We do however have components from the slideshow we produced to accompany the Diggler eulogies, to provide a little more flavour...

Above: some nostalgic shots from Rollergirl's Polaroid archive
[Images: Captured from Boogie Nights by Stuart Candy, composited by Matthew Jensen]

An automated copyright protection system prevents unauthorised / unpaid glimpses of the Diggler jewels
[Image: Stuart Candy, captured from Boogie Nights]

Copyfight Protesters turn out in droves supporting the Adams/Diggler bid to ressert rights to his famous appendage
[Round placards design: Melissa Jordan, PinkergreenFound image: Stuart Candy | Compositing: Eliot Frick]

Outside the Supreme Court, Eddie Adams reflects on the judges' decision
[Found image: Stuart Candy, via Caroline Bonarde Ucci's Flickr photostream
Aged by Melissa Jordan, Pinkergreen]

Eddie Adams, copyfight hero, at the sunset of his life
[Image captured from Shooter by Stuart Candy
Aged by Melissa Jordan, Pinkergreen]

The other three presentations were wildly different, both from ours and from each other.

Wayne's was a slick corporate presentation by Datapoints.net, a shadowy, all-seeing data aggregation enterprise (with a real website that you can find here):

Screenshot from Datapoints.net, a successful personal data aggregation and marketing site in 02025
[Design: Wayne Pethrick]

Michele's took the form of a charity auction benefiting the "Make A Friend Foundation" (for kids who can't afford to join Facebook), featuring a number of coveted future products and services on which attendees could bid.

Some of the items under the charity auctioneer's hammer of Michele Bowman in 02025
[Designs by Pinkergreen | Images via FringeHog]

Finally, Jamais staged an other-worldly ultimatum from a hive-mind called "The Chorus". The question for audience members: will you join, or will you opt out?

Screenshot from "The Chorus"
[Performed by Jamais Cascio
Audio available in full [mp3, 6.4Mb) here, via Open the Future]

Looking back six months later, what Jamais wrote at Open the Future on the day of the show still resonates:

The futurists' panel was... weird.

No, scratch that. It was freaking bizarre.

Indeed it was. From my point of view, that's partly because of the frenzied preparation which took up the entire time from flying into Austin until going onstage. Combined with which, of course, the content was somewhat surreal (twenty-four hours before the panel, our shopping list included dry ice, a 13-inch dildo, and a priest's outfit). Also, more poignantly, although we had decided long beforehand on the memorial setting for this experiential scenario, in the previous week both Jake and I had been obliged to attend funeral services in the wake of real bereavements.

Life's ironies can be pretty extraordinary.

In any case, thanks are due to all who made this possible, including our hosts in Austin; our talented designer friends who helped bring the story to life; guest star Sandy Stone (for her compelling portrayal of Rollergirl, at ridiculously short notice); and of course our fellow futurist panelists who boldly agreed to immerse the audience in these four 02025s, FoundFutures guerrilla-style.

It made for an experience that I, for one, won't ever forget.

Related posts:
> Experiential scenarios on video
> Found futures> More found futures
> McChinatown

Fatigue, irritability, and much, much more!

Since the Nissan old suit, I've been curious about other wearable simulators. Check this out...

The Empathy Belly® Pregnancy Simulator | Image: Birthways, Inc.

"The Empathy Belly"® Pregnancy Simulator lets you know what it feels like to be pregnant! It is a multi-component, weighted "garment" that will -- through medically accurate simulation -- enable men, women, teenage girls and boys to experience over 20 symptoms and effects of pregnancy, including:

• Weight gain of 30 pounds (13.6 kg.)
• Fetal kicking and stroking movements
• Shallow breathing and shortness of breath
• Increased blood pressure, pulse and body temperature
• Bladder pressure and frequency of urination
• Low backaches; shift in center of gravity; waddling
• Fatigue, irritability, and much, much more!

"About The Belly"

Is this for real, I wondered? Turns out that, yes, it is...

"I wish you were pregnant for a day," she said. "Just to feel what it’s like!"

Millions of women have expressed similar fantasies to their husbands and boyfriends, which explains the ongoing success of "The Empathy Belly" pregnancy simulator.
[...]
As an educational tool, the Empathy Belly has numerous applications.

Hollywood uses it to train actresses preparing for pregnant roles, although the suits are too cumbersome to wear during actual scenes.

Ford Motor Co. engineers have worn them to design more pregnant-friendly cars, and sociologists have used them to study attitudes about pregnancy in the workplace.

Hospitals use the belly to give expecting fathers a taste of the physical and psychological impact of pregnancy. And it is also widely used with teenage boys and girls to encourage celibacy (or birth control).

The simulator is meant to be worn for only 30 minutes. In order to wear it for more than three hours in an unsupervised environment, I had to sign multiple health waivers.
[...]
My wife squeezes my fake body parts and is amused to see me walk like Baby Huey, the oversized cartoon duck. Mission accomplished. But she also notes I am not experiencing any heartburn (her archnemesis) or water retention in my legs and ankles. She’s absolutely correct, but a suit like this could never 100 percent duplicate her experience.
[...]
Overall, simulated motherhood wasn’t too much of an ordeal until the evening, when Stacy convinced me to sleep in the suit for "the full experience." I took her advice and grabbed a couch cushion to use as a body pillow. Resting on my back for the first time, it felt like a rhino was stomping on my stomach in hiking boots.

I spent the entire night shifting between three different positions: laying on my right or left sides and propped up sitting against the couch cushion. Each time I switched positions, I felt the rhino’s boots kick in again. And I asked myself: How do pregnant women get any serious sleep?

Answer: They often don’t.

~Darren Garnick, "Labor of love: Dad tries 'Belly' on for size", Boston Herald, 9 July 02007.

Garnick's 24 hours of simulated pregnancy earned him a measure of notoriety. Other men have since taken up the challenge, for instance, the hosts of Internet TV show Dadlabs; "An edgy, fun and Informative show for dads and the women who tolerate and/or love them".


(Video posted 2 April 02008.)

Meanwhile, the same company can also outfit you to get a feel for the adverse health effects of heavy smoking, with "The Empathy Lungs"™ C.O.P.D. Simulator -- C.O.P.D. stands for "Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (which is comprised primarily of Emphysema and/or Chronic Bronchitis), as well as Asthma and Lung Cancer."



Although like all infomercials it verges on self-parody, to me this really is a fascinating intervention. A couple of observations made during the video by Empathy Lungs co-inventor Linda Ware:

Both I, and the professionals I interviewed, all agreed on one fact: that whatever wrongdoing or self-destructive behaviour people are engaged in, be it smoking, drinking too much, overeating until they're obese etc, people are experts at rationalising and staying in denial about how much harm they are causing themselves.
[...]
Given this pervasive denial of smokers, and knowing as an educator that experience is a much more persuasive teacher than just words, I set out to develop a device that would simulate the experience of C.O.P.D. to let smokers get a sneak preview of the probable future if they kept smoking.
[...]
The Empathy Lungs is a multi-component garment, put on only by a professional in the medical, educational, or social service fields. It is designed to be worn once by each person, for as little as ten minutes, in an office or classroom setting. In a medically accurate manner, the Empathy Lungs realistically simulates ten of the physical and emotional symptoms of C.O.P.D.
[...]
The exciting thing about the Empathy Lungs is that, since it gives people an experience that is tangible, here-and-now, visceral and emotional, it gets past the wall of denial. You put it on someone, and suddenly they feel debilitated, handicapped, and sick. Then, even after just ten minutes, you take it off of them, and they are elated that the C.O.P.D. wasn't real -- this time.

The Empathy Belly and Empathy Lungs each simulate physiological states that in some cases represent genuine future possibilities for the wearer, and in other cases might be used by parties seeking a more empathic (Greek: empatheia "passion", from en- "in" + pathos "feeling") comprehension of the lives of others -- for instance, the belly for fathers-to-be; the lungs for families of elderly smokers. In relation to the pregnancy simulator, the verisimilitude of the suit may be less important than the heuristic value of encountering the "shape" of the experience, so to speak; not to mention the social importance of simply being willing to try it on. This certainly seems to be the case with the men who wore the belly in public -- both Garnick's article and the Dadlabs show emphasise, if light heartedly, the extremely positive response from women to their daring.

Both these outfits prompt me to spend more time considering the values and limitations of "embodied foresight" generally. For me, the specific bodily states (old age, pregnancy, ill health) stand as examples of a "wearable" approach of thinking and feeling ahead, which can also be accomplished by other kinds of intervention. Simulated and vicarious experiences of possible futures range from thought experiments, to films, to participatory exercises and games, through to -- some day soon -- direct neural interface; all these and more can be located on a continuum of foresight (or rather foresense) activities.

Now, the particular uses that existing simulation suits may be put to are bound to vary, of course, and I'm less enthused by some than others. For instance, I'm not especially keen on the Empathy Belly being used to scare teenagers into not having sex. Then again, maybe ten minutes in a "harrassed parent of a pregnant teenager" suit would change my mind.

Nerve, the future issue

Nerve, published in New York, is a new magazine -- about sex, of all things -- which I encountered today for the first time. In the words of its founding editors:

We have created Nerve because we think sex is beautiful and absurd, remarkably fun and reliably trauma-inducing. In short, it is a subject in need of a fearless, intelligent forum for both genders.
. . .
Nerve intends to be more graphic, forthright, and topical than "erotica," but less blockheadedly masculine than "pornography." It's about sexual literature, art, and politics as well as about getting off — and we realize that these interests sometimes conflict.
. . .
This is why we think the subject of sex deserves a magazine of its own: less to celebrate the gymnastics of sex than to appreciate the way it humbles us, renders us blushing teenagers.

While I'm not yet familiar with the content, I do appreciate the sensibility.

The reason I bring it up is that it seems the Nerve "Future Issue" was recently released, dedicated to exploring, through short stories and the like, the social role of sex in 2033. Apparently the publication of articles online is staggered over a few months, so some of the material is already up, but further explorations in this vein are forthcoming. For example, a piece online from 21 July: "70 is the new 30" by Douglas Rushkoff... In 2033, old is the new young. A series of email messages from a 75-year-old reveals that this development comes with certain sexual and professional challenges.

This future-themed edition was sponsored by a Swedish vodka brand -- but using suitably futurised advertising ("voted #1 vodka of 2033"), which leapt out for me as a great example of future-oriented art/design/communication, a topic that has preoccupied me much of late but about which I haven't written a lot in this forum, yet. Still, I think we can expect to see a lot more of this type of playful, immersive use of future imagery as time goes on, and I'll elaborate on that with a post in the near future.

I also really like this, from the editorial introduction to the Future Issue:

If, in 1973, you'd asked a writer to envision pop culture circa 2006, would he have predicted online dating, tax-deductible $12 martinis, BlackBerry sex and Gawker? If Voltaire, the VH1 commentator of the 18th century, were alive today, would he declare that if Paris Hilton didn't exist, it would have been necessary to invent her?

If nothing else, they have certainly grasped the need to unchain imagination to come up with anything useful about the futures of culture. Extrapolate and perish!