the IDEA

Overview

scienceFUTURE is a dreamlike glimpse of the future in the present. The project explores how we imagine the future by collectively creating the life story of X, a woman born in 2045. ‘X’ is the chromosome all humans share and also the universal unknown in mathematics. X could be your grandchild or great-grandchild. The goal is not so much to predict the future, as to nurture deeper and more complex attitudes towards the eternal ‘becoming’ of the present.

From computers to catscans, General Motors to general relativity, DNA to derivative loans, science increasingly shapes how we are conceived and how we die, how we work, travel, and socialise. There is much discussion about how hyper-dense flows of information are changing our social, economic and political networks. Most profoundly, new information networks are transforming the meaning and use of the languages and codes through which we understand ourselves. Through the story of one woman, the project hopes to trace the less obvious possibilities between the frontiers of rational knowledge and intuitive vision, between the specialist languages of mathematics and the inexpressible sum of collective human experience, between humans as scientists and scientists as humans.

scienceFUTURE: The Cloudlife of X is a web-based collaborative documentary experiment by filmmaker Christine Cynn (co-director of the award-winning documentary THE ACT OF KILLING) which explores how scientists and science students imagine the future by collectively creating the life story of X, a woman born in 2045. ‘X’ is the chromosome all humans share and also the universal unknown in mathematics. X could be your grandchild or great-grandchild.

A groundbreaking fusion of fiction within documentary and product within process, scienceFUTURE will take place over several years and utilise participatory experiments in many mediums including:

• Web-based collective narrative experimentation with researchers from leading international scientific institutions through XquisiteFUTURE, a new interactive video software

• An online forum around the fiction world of X and the science inspiring the scenes featuring web-based collaboration between students in class- rooms/youth organisations from around the world and scientists at leading research institutions, along with writers, directors, and curators of film, theatre, literature, and fine art.

• documentary role-playing experiments (similar to those in THE ACT OF KILLING)

Final outputs will include:

• A documentary feature film

• An ongong online social forum on science and the future, expanded from the intermediate website, which will include interactive video elements from the film and an open-ended participatory narrative experiment

• Art installations

• Live presentations

scienceFUTURE: The Cloudlife of X is currently in the research and development stage. Director Christine Cynn is assembling a core team to develop the project and actively seeking science organisations and research facilities to participate in scienceFUTURE. Early collaborators include producer Kristian Mosvold (Substans Film AS, Norway), Tishna Molla (bandit hq, UK), John Arvid Berger (JAB Film AS, Norway), Margret Jonasdottir (Sagafilm, Iceland), Oliver Bown (Design Lab at University of Sydney), Valentin Manz (artist, UK) and the Creative Science Foundation.