Epoch o’clock: Contemplation in the Anthropocene’s radioactive afterglow
Anthropocene studies are having an identity crisis. It is epoch o’clock and we are not in Kansas or the Holocene anymore. Do you have the time? Are we living in the Anthrobscene (Parikka, Reference Parikka2014), the Capitolocene (Moore, Reference Moore2015), the Technocene (Hornborg, Reference Hornborg, Hamilton, Gemenne and Bonneuil2015), the Necrocene (McBrien, Reference McBrien and Moore2016), the Chthulucene (Haraway, Reference Haraway2016), the Urbanocene (West, Reference West2017), the Planthroposcene (Myers, Reference Myers2017), the Plasticene (Ross, Reference Ross2018), the Neganthropocene (Stiegler, Reference Stiegler2018), the Post-Anthropocene (Jagodzinski, Reference Jagodzinski2024a) or something else? On the “Around the Anthropocene in eighty names” (Chwałczyk, Reference Chwałczyk2020) epoch tour bus, fingers point out the window at culprits whizzing by. What is at stake for humans and not tardigrades is the possibility of a habitable world. As we drive into the collapsing geobiological sunset, it all starts to feel like a terrible Contiki tour hangover. Perhaps that is a tasteless characterisation. Hangovers do not last long. We cannot diminish or look away from the necrotic, slowly unfolding environmental violence (McBrien, Reference McBrien and Moore2016) of the situation. All aboard! Anthroturbation. Check. Ocean acidification. Check. Alterations to carbon and nitrogen levels. Check. Species extinction and rising surface temperatures. Check. Tropical forest loss and terrestrial biosphere degradation (Lewis & Maslin, Reference Lewis and Maslin2015; Rull, Reference Rull2017; Zalasiewicz et al., Reference Zalasiewicz, Waters and Williams2014, Reference Zalasiewicz, Waters, Ivar do Sul, Corcoran, Barnosky and Cearreta2016, Reference Zalasiewicz, Steffen, Leinfelder, Williams and Waters2017). Check. A capitalist logic of endless growth and monoliths of obscene accumulation and waste. Check.
How did we get into this predicament? The authors contemplate this as microplastics have entered human bloodstreams and are being lodged in our organs causing cellular damage (Carrington, Reference Carrington2022). It turns out that plasticky traffic can pile up in bodies like a “car crash in the blood vessels” (Huang cited in Mallapaty, Reference Mallapaty2025), an unfortunate simile to exist. Not only are we biologically breaking off and into each other, conceptually, the modernist tendency to uphold a subject/object divide and see the world as a passive backdrop for human activity is (thankfully) being eroded. Cli-Fi’s positioning can accelerate this eroding demarcation, in that its practices and speculative modes afford contemplation of human-induced catastrophes and narratives oriented to possible futures. As Latour aptly put it: “The Earth is moving yet again, and indeed it makes everything else move at once, as if on the back of a wild horse” (Latour, Reference Latour, Latour and Weibel2020, p. 4). The horse has kicked off our anthropocentric saddlebags. In the age of the so-called Anthropocene, it is difficult to flatten or homogenise its “human-induced” dimension, since there are unequal and asymmetrical relations among humans and non-humans. With the desire to “diminish” deleterious human-induced effects, there is sometimes an assumption that humans and non-human relations such as objects, tools, materials and other biological life (some of which live in our gut biomes) are in fact separable and not assemblages constituted through and with the “other.” The unsustainable industrialisation and destruction inherent to the “Capitolocene” (Moore, Reference Moore2015) is also not evenly concentrated across cultures, histories, nations, countries, technologies, industries, ideologies or people.
It is unlikely that the current sixth wave extinction event predicated on “biological annihilation” (Ceballos et al., Reference Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo2017, p. 6089) will be hijacked by a calamitous, contingent happening “out there,” a scapegoat in the form of an asteroid. The future is not one in which otherworldly beings are coming to destroy or save us. It has become apparent that focusing on extending our current predicament “into” the future will “condemn us to continue fouling our own nests” (Gan, Tsing, Swanson & Bubandt, Reference Gan, Tsing, Swanson, Bubandt, Gan, Tsing, Swanson and Bubandt2017, p. 2). What does a future orientation look and feel like? As a singular noun, “the future” should be approached with caution. Rhetoric directed at the future has its fair share of ethico-political problems; we should resist the idea that what lies ahead is a singular path for the current destructive practices to extend and dominate. We need deep reorganisation and contemplation, not just spring cleaning to dust off the “collateral damage” (Gan et al., Reference Gan, Tsing, Swanson, Bubandt, Gan, Tsing, Swanson and Bubandt2017, p. 7) of our current situation.
After the hangover of the Anthropocene wears off, questions of “progress,” speculative narratives and possible futures linger like the ghost of an extinct species. Different kinds of pedagogical encounters, multisensorial practices and creative interventions are required to grapple with the “kind of subjects we are becoming” (Braidotti, Reference Braidotti2019) in Braidotti’s posthumanist terms. What we “attune” to matters (Felski, Reference Felski2020). How can “narratives of anticipation” (Mayer & Weik von Mossner, Reference Mayer and Weik von Mossner2014) emerge through contemplating and responding to the current Post-Anthropocene era? In this article, we reimagine futures, propose alternative pedagogies of performance and contemplate our relationship with and through the world. We also resist the paralysing force of apocalyptic thinking and the notion of a singular fatalistic future that sustains the destructive tendencies of the Capitalocene (Moore, Reference Moore2015). While the precise events and temporal dimensions of the Anthropocene are contested, the authors’ position is that it has already happened, and we are writing in its radioactive afterglow.
Our research contributes to the Cli-Fi genre by proposing an interactive exhibition, manifesto and theoretical proposal for readers and participants to become affected by “narratives of anticipation” (Mayer & Weik von Mossner, Reference Mayer and Weik von Mossner2014) that can orient us to possible Post-Anthropocene futures. The authors intend to contribute to Cli-Fi’s “heterogeneous body of cultural texts, including literature, film, visual arts, and performances, and scientific works that take on the challenge of prompting global audiences to engage emotionally and intellectually with the implications of anthropogenic climate change” (Leikam & Leyda, Reference Leikam and Leyda2017, p. 110). The FUTURE PROOF art exhibition contributes to a growing interest in the Cli-Fi genre without dictating what type of feelings, affects or sensations might arise for participants, or whether participants or readers align with Post-Anthropocene futures as utopias, dystopias or perhaps non-dichotomous realms in which the Earth’s multispecies are connected in their collective becoming.
As D’Avanzo states, “non-scientists, including climate-change sceptics, may be more receptive to information about warming and its consequences in fictional narratives in contrast to more traditional non-fiction approaches” (D’Avanzo, Reference D’Avanzo2018). We suggest that the FUTURE PROOF project is relevant to environmental education by offering an imaginative, meditative and co-creative space for participants to engage with climate change issues through a fictional narrative. Our argument is that in a crucial sense, people likely need to feel something deeply about their connection to Mater Gaia and cultivate their awareness of ecological entanglement (Talgorn & Ullerup, Reference Talgorn and Ullerup2023) affectively. The authors’ view is that excessively negative emotions relating to the future (in the singular) and climate change can produce feelings of helplessness and despair (Leavenworth & Manni, Reference Leavenworth and Manni2021) and therefore sway people to become disaffected and detached from thinking-feeling ecologically. Simply declaring that one is “entangled” or “interconnected” with “nature” is not the solution. It is through arts-based practices and co-creative, co-constitutive processes that an imaginative world emerges through which to approach and make sense of environmental issues.
The FUTURE PROOF project draws on Taoism and Zen philosophy to propose feeling-thinking differently. FUTURE PROOF thus aims to be a generative space for people to disrupt hyperattentive loops, such that they might experience attunement to ecological thinking-feeling that underpins this Cli-Fi issue’s themes. The re(image)ined objects we propose throughout this article, such as the shark skin dressing gown/Cli-Fi robe encourage the participant to contribute to a co-collaborative evolving Cli-Fi narrative. The meditative Zen practice of haiku writing, originally performed by poets such as Matsuo Bashō, allows the FUTURE PROOF exhibition participant to engage with non-screen tech and reflect upon their position within the FUTURE PROOF web of potential approaches to climate change. As a short film, a manifesto and an orientation to our Post-Anthropocene present, FUTURE PROOF engages with environmental issues including coastal erosion and extreme weather events, triggered by destructive human behaviour.
The “post” in our article’s title suggests that the Anthropocene has already happened, and we invite participants in the FUTURE PROOF project to contemplate what desirable futures look and feel like. The kind of orientation to the future that FUTURE PROOF is proposing is a slower, less distracted space-place-time for participants to attune to the more-than-human and the nonhuman (Grusin, Reference Grusin2015) as opposed to the usual self-interested anthropocentrism predicated on hierarchies of dominance, wealth accumulation and market competition that runs throughout the neoliberal mindset of the Capitalist Real (Fisher, Reference Fisher2014). Art education is especially relevant in the Post-Anthropocene era since it enables us to creatively negotiate the impact that humans are having upon the world (Jagodzinski, Reference Jagodzinski2024a). Let us lament the present, pause for a moment and become FUTURE PROOF.
Disrupting hyperattentive loops
In his book Pedagogical Encounters in the Post-Anthropocene, Jan Jagodzinski identifies a trope for the Post-Anthropocene: a requirement to cultivate a new relationality to non-human others and recognise our species as a simultaneously impotent and powerful force (Jagodzinski, Reference Jagodzinski2024a, p. 1). Coming to terms with our Post-Anthropocene era requires responding to the present. The moment requires deep contemplation and imaginatio Footnote 1 practices that cultivate it. Yet in our educational and cultural landscapes, the very possibility of contemplation in a hyperattentive achievement society is becoming diminished through the loshing of attention and the reduction of all learning experiences to quantifiable outputs. Metrics rule. Culturally, we are woozy with achievement. Our hearts palpitate in a marathon oriented to a future that is hellbent on proving itself to be productive, capturable, quantifiable and economically rapturous. Jagodzinski argues that in Western public schools, there has been an underestimation and a dismissal of art’s capacity to make a “possible contribution to existential questions that profoundly affect the social order” (Jagodzinski, Reference Jagodzinski2024b, p. 479). In Australia, the price gouging of higher education parallels this dismissal. Financial disincentives from the Australian government that aimed to deter students from studying the arts and humanities at university have failed (Cassidy, Reference Cassidy2024). In the context of secondary schooling and higher education, learning is more than an “economic transaction between a buyer and a seller” (Lorenz, 2012, as cited in Desierto & de Maio, Reference Desierto and de Maio2020, p. 153) and schools and universities should not be seen as certificate or degree mills or factories for the machinations of productivity and current capitalist ideologies around “progress” to prevail. We require a different approach to start to clean out the befouled nest we have made.
According to philosopher Byung-Chul Han, our current Western achievement society is characterised by hyperattention whereby our focus is constantly hijacked and thinly scattered across different tasks, sources and processes (Han, Reference Han2015). Checking emails at 1 am. Reports due that bleed into the already-strained idea of a “weekend.” Immediate action and imminent consequences. As we close our eyes and drift off to hypnagogia land, we feel the itch of real world fumes on our skin and minds. After getting stuck in addictive “loops” of scrolling short-form video content, the authors consider, through Han’s concept of hyperattention (Han, Reference Han2015), how leisure time is being commodified, captured and parsed by algorithms that metricise and hijack awareness. The boundaries between personal and professional, leisure and work, are more strained than our eyes: Listen to yog oculars even though yog lids may be shut. The electro-beasts are hungry for more. There is no ocular or contemplative closure possible in a digital culture predicated on endless looping. As Han argues, the “neoliberal imperative of optimization and performance does not allow for any completion. Everything is provisional and incomplete; nothing is final and conclusive” (Han, Reference Han2020, p. 28). This is future shock. The future is a wolf at the door always wanting to be fed. The future’s belly grumbles.
The drone bombing of primal screens
Our educational institutions can also be subject to regimes of measurement and digital capture that assume all our learning and “performances” in institutions, schools, universities or workplaces are reducible to quantifiable data. Metrics can be “used as proxies to attempt to quantify success and discern quality” (Brabazon & Lawrence, Reference Brabazon and Lawrence2023, p. 95), leading to a so-called “spectacle of excellence” whereby numbers in spreadsheets and reports, outward appearances of prestige and success to “consumers” of education and learning data become an institutional goal rather than “excellence in and of itself” (Brabazon & Lawrence, Reference Brabazon and Lawrence2023, p. 95). There is also what might be called a “spectacle of productivity,” which is at odds with the necessity for deep contemplation the current era requires. We have a right to exist outside of metricisation and attention hijacking, to orient to the present and indeed the future. The FUTURE PROOF MANIFESTO proposes an “interventionist” (Priyadharshini, Reference Priyadharshini2021) approach that encourages imaginative yet critical responses to possible futures, drawing on Taoist and Zen principles. The FUTURE PROOF project aims to disrupt the current drone bombing of information into our primal screens. Imagining futures requires a deep attention, new futures that do not merely mirror the current predicament. We need restorative moments of “profound idleness” (Han, Reference Han2015, p. 8) and play to take the apocalypse off speed dial.
Our installation offers participants a meditative and therapeutic space for contemplation. Time is suspended through meditative Zen engagement with co-creative objects, such as a View-Master, a mirror, sand and stone writing devices. Through the use of generative AI, we have re(image)ined these objects. By being enlisted in FUTURE PROOF, participants respond to and co-contribute to a collaborative Cli-Fi narrative. Participating in an evolving, everyday global Cli-Fi narrative unites us as we navigate possible Post-Anthropocene futures. The microcosmos reflected through our engagement with our inner landscape in the form of healing practices, such as the writing of haiku or “Cli-Fiku” results in an imaginative and speculative transformation of the larger cosmos that we are physically enmeshed with.
FUTURE PROOF’s conceptual approach aligns with Webb’s (2018) view on fiction that “possible futures can be posited in creative and imaginative ways unrestricted by reality but related to actual conditions” (Webb, 2018, as cited in Leavenworth & Manni, Reference Leavenworth and Manni2021, p. 731). Taking a speculative approach means proactive engagement with environmental issues through co-creative imaginings, arts-based practice and the production of films, narratives, objects and scripts. We also wish to resist beating others over the head with the doom and gloom stick as a response to educating and facilitating learning about the environment. The authors agree with Tim Morton’s position on apocalyptic thinking (Morton, Reference Morton2010) which is that it can cause ecological thought paralysis and be unhelpful because its spectacularism and transcendental qualities abstract the issue of mass extinction as a physical, real and increasingly probable event (Armitstead, Cain, & Tresilian, Reference Armitstead, Cain and Tresilian2018). We also contend that distraction and commodification of attention are a form of hijacking that can potentially contribute to ecological apathy in that they erode the capacity for slower, meditative forms of contemplation. In capitalist systems, many people are excessively busy, distracted or navigating chaos. The authors see FUTURE PROOF as a generative move in environmental education that makes way for contemplative spaces; these spaces are therapeutic in that they promote slower forms of engagement and awareness by disrupting hyperattentive screen cultures.
The FUTURE PROOF backstory
FUTURE PROOF sprouted as a short film script; an inner dialogue between Cli-Fi lovers navigating the after-effects of a cataclysmic event. Inspired by Brian Hannant’s voiceover narration of The Feral Kid’s tale of a time before the apocalypse in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Reference Miller1981), FUTURE PROOF’s opening monologue describes a giant VELVET WAVE that rises from the depths of the ocean and drowns THE STOLEN RED ROCK. The homes of the ruling elite, once prime real estate, ripple under the tide like obsequious Fata Morganas. Kandy, the film’s protagonist, sits with crossed legs, wearing a white robe. A typewriter rests in the sand in front of him. With painted pink fingernails, Kandy makes a series of hand gestures towards the machine. When nothing appears on the page, Kandy becomes frustrated. Letting out a shriek, he pours a brown liquid from a watering can on the typewriter and then polishes it with a rag.
Figure 1. Kandy pouring liquid on a typewriter.
FUTURE PROOF adapts a hotpot of ideas from French avant-garde filmmaker Chris Marker’s La Jetee (Reference Marker1962) and Terry Gilliam’s feature-length reimagining of Marker’s film, 12 Monkeys (Reference Gilliam1995). 12 Monkeys expands upon Chris Marker’s original narrative with the time-travelling protagonist James Cole’s escape from a mental institution in a white dressing gown. Gilliam’s reimagining of a backstory for Marker’s protagonist and the idea that “The Man”/James Cole might not be a time traveller, but rather a delusional schizophrenic escaped from a mental hospital, provided inspiration for the character Kandy. The shift in 12 Monkeys’ Cli-Fi narrative, in which Cole navigates time travel in a faulty time machine, differs from La Jetee and FUTURE PROOF’s focus upon protagonists who can traverse time through connections to memories and dreams. While Cole must answer to the scientists who sent him back to the past and the psychiatrists who await him there, Kandy communicates with Zelda and Mater Gaia in the present through his engagement with rituals and sacred objects.
The ultimate healer in FUTURE PROOF is Mother Nature. Invasive technology that damages humans’ ability to connect with her is outlawed. Primitive analogue technology entwined with nature assists humans to harness their imaginations. Engaged in peculiar rituals in the sand dunes with a rusty typewriter, shifting from shouts and shrieks with a half-shaved head, to being enamoured by the sight of a millipede; Kandy exists in a liminal zone of quivering ancient mollusc lips and purple liquids gushing from the pincers of mutated beasts. Inside this uncharted region filled with the violet screeches of luminous alien insects and the pitter-patter of rain upon cephalopod beaks, Kandy & Zeldar engage in rituals with objects, reanimating their primal screens.
The blending of the real and surreal in FUTURE PROOF indicates that white robed Kandy, not dissimilar to James Cole in the film 12 Monkeys, may very well be a dangerous escapee from a locked mental ward. Conversely, Kandy could also be a time traveller trying to save the world from impending doom. Niander Wallace’s Blade Runner (2049) (Villeneuve, Reference Villeneuve2017) Zen monk samue was a further reference which helped to shape Kandy’s costume design. Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), Japan’s most famous wandering haiku master (Bashō, Reference Bashō2017), who often dressed in Zen robes, was also a major influence upon FUTURE PROOF’s central motifs.
Figure 2. Image of Matsuo Bashō.
Figure 3. Kandy meditating in the sand dunes.
The FUTURE PROOF film, exhibition and manifesto
The original FUTURE PROOF film was a test run. A scene from the extended narrative introduced the main characters Kandy and Zeldar. The initial intention was to see how the main characters might fit within the narrative’s story world and to ascertain if certain plot details needed to be further fleshed out. Kandy and Zeldar’s dialogue consisted of voice-overs. Filmed in two separate locations, the test scene cut between the characters’ different worlds, following their telepathic dialogue through a montage of images that infused an eclectic mix of discordant sound effects, adding a nonsensical element to FUTURE PROOF’s subconscious landscape.
Figure 4. A participant inside the FUTURE PROOF tent.
Rather than pursuing financial backers, we presented FUTURE PROOF as a visual arts installation to test ideas directly with audiences. In the installation, FUTURE PROOF ducibus domus or dome guides stood silently in white dressing gowns in front of two tents filled with beach sand and objects from THE FUTURE PROOF world. Stiff lipped and staring into the distance, the ducibus domus refrained from speaking and communicated through gestures and body language. This involved a lot of solemn expressions, followed by coaxing hand gestures and smiles. Eventually, after participants had decided they were not going to be slimed, the ducibus domus helped them don a white dressing gown.
Closing their fists in the shape of a rock, the FUTURE PROOF ducibus domus moved their fists up and down three times as if involved in a game of rock, paper, scissors. The dome guides then paused for a moment, to build suspense, before placing their fingers upon their hearts in scissor formation. With a wink and a smile, the ducibus domus solemnly made the sign of the rock with their fists, and the FUTURE PROOF initiation was complete. FUTURE PROOF initiates were then handed a blank piece of paper and the FUTURE PROOF manifesto. With a stern nod, the ducibus domus unzipped the tent, and new initiates were granted entry.
Objects related to the short film—including an old broken typewriter, pink nail polish, a pencil, a mirror and a View-Master—were curated on the beach sand within the tent. These FUTURE PROOF objects were presented as a form of simulacra that participants could engage with. The View-Master slides revealed Kandy in a white dressing gown in the West Australian sand dunes. Several participants spent a long time engaged with the objects in the tent. After returning the white dressing gown, some participants placed their fingers in scissor formation upon their hearts and then made the symbol of the rock.
Figure 5. A View-Master curated on the sand inside the FUTURE PROOF tent.
Future proofing the present
We can never “escape” technology. It is too late to close Pandora’s box. Digital technologies, like all technologies, cannot be disentangled from the human subject (Stiegler, Reference Stiegler2004; Letiche, Lightfoot, & Lilley, Reference Letiche, Lightfoot and Lilley2023). Australian digital media theorist Belinda Barnet proposes that technology is entangled with human agency in that the possibilities for action, ideation and motivation that are afforded to us by technology are co-constitutive of our identities. Barnet argues that technology seeps into (and is constitutive of) human agency to such an extent that this is not merely “a metaphor for subject-constitution, or more precisely, this is not a choice” (Barnet, Reference Barnet2003). Yet we do have choices regarding our relationship to screens and how our attention is directed. We need a readjustment, a reorientation, an intervention: We hug and kiss techno-toys that enlighten cool dawn but we do not hesitate to bish, glack and losh machines that rob us of our primal screen. We turn to the social criticism in Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg’s oeuvre to guide our discussion.
A gristle gun aimed at digital-algorithmic screen culture
Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (Cronenberg, Reference Cronenberg1999) is a body horror film that explores the dissolving membrane between the real and the virtual through its characters’ entanglements with biotechnology. The plot revolves around protagonist Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a video game designer whose work eXistenZ is targeted by assassins while playing her own game. The character of Ted Pikul (Jude Law) is enlisted by Geller to join the game and finds himself increasingly unable to demarcate fantasy from reality. Pikul advances in the eXistenZ game by assembling a “gristle gun” from “the special,” a mutant reptilian dish with bones and muscle fibre leftovers. He systematically clicks the interlocking skeletal and muscular pieces together, removing a section of his own teeth to complete an assassination weapon with an equally grotesque and wonderful magazine made of undetectable tooth bullets. “I find this disgusting, but I can’t help myself” (Cronenberg, Reference Cronenberg1999) Pikul squirms. In the game, Pikul’s behaviour is compulsive; however, he is also aware of his predicament.
In the film, human bodies are contaminated through infected animals-game pods that connect to their spinal columns via “UmbiCords.” The quasi-corporate sensibility of the proprietary noun “UmbiCords” references commodification, which, along with horror and mass media, contributes to a trifecta of “enduring Cronenbergian concern” (Warwick, Reference Warwick2021, p. 434). As the name suggests, umbilical-like cords plug into “bioports;” fleshy tunnels that afford players virtual immersion and an escape from reality. The disconnection that Pikul feels to his real life becomes more severe as the film unfolds. Pikul says to Geller: “I’m feeling a little disconnected from my real life. I’m kind of losing touch with the texture of it, you know what I mean? I mean, I actually think there’s an element of psychosis involved here.” Geller replies: “Yes! This is a great sign. It means your nervous system is fully engaging with the game architecture” (Cronenberg, Reference Cronenberg1999). The duality of digital escapism’s allure and poison is a key theme in Cronenberg’s work: “In eXistenZ, immersion into artificial paradises is a way of coping with a dull existence” (Merás, Reference Merás2014, p. 106). At the risk of “opening an old wound” (Warwick, Reference Warwick2021, p. 420), we argue that returning to the metaphor of human-technology extension in Cronenberg’s film eXistenZ (Cronenberg, Reference Cronenberg1999), as well as its themes of overstimulation, addiction and “contamination,” are worth revisiting with relation to Western digital-algorithmic screen cultures.
The authors acknowledge that we are irrevocably entangled with digital technologies since they allow us to “externalise” memory, skills and knowledge, and technology is not inherently negative nor escapable. Philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s use of the term “pharmakon” (Stiegler, Reference Stiegler1998/1994) illustrates the dual nature of technology and technics (Letiche, Lightfood & Lilley, Reference Letiche, Lightfoot and Lilley2023). As Bluemink writes: “Stiegler argued that technics was a pharmakon–a Greek word meaning both ‘poison’ and ‘cure’. It was both the poison that affected contemporary society, and also the cure through which it could be saved. It was both an external form into which we pass our knowledge, and an internal condition which makes us human” (Bluemink, Reference Bluemink2020). We acknowledge the benefits of moderated screen time and technologies, particularly in regard to this project, and we consider screen technology as being a pharmakon. However, the deleterious aspects of overstimulation pertaining to digital media and internet addiction should not be underestimated. The physical and mental health problems associated with social media and internet addiction are sharply coming into view. Excessive screen technologies and social media can affect emotional and cognitive factors of child development (Chung & Lee, Reference Chung and Lee2023), for instance, and there is a correlation between social media usage and health issues such as stress, loneliness, depression, anxiety and self-harm (Abrams, Reference Abrams2023). We are living in “overstimulated times” (Thierbach-McLean, Reference Thierbach-McLean2024). FUTURE PROOF is a gristle gun with its crosshairs on the deleterious aspects of screen “engagement.” It takes aim at the infectivity of hyperattention that seeps into our minds. Let us fashion our own weapon from the leftovers of FUTURE PROOF shark teeth and gongshi rocks.
Compulsivity and habituation: a slot machine for the mind
Just one more video, just one more image, just one more post, just one more piece of “content,” just one more…. Swiping down on the Android YouTube app to reload a queasy blur of video thumbnails parallels the variable reward feature and bodily motion required to operate a slot machine (Bhargava & Velasquez, Reference Bhargava and Velasquez2021, p. 327). Like Cronenberg’s gristle gun fashioned from reptilian and amphibious bones and muscles (Cronenberg, Reference Cronenberg1999), we may find it disgusting, but in the moment of compulsivity, we cannot help it. Our Cronenbergian selves gorge on digital junk to habitually reinforce a “monstrously connected chimera” (Chun, Reference Chun2016, p. 3) via a dopamine drip to our “ventral striatum” (Abrams, Reference Abrams2023). When dopamine-rich raw experiences take over the nervous system, a return to less saturated ones can feel underwhelming. For many of us, the nearly constant physical attachment to and dependence on mobile devices means phones are already a permanent technological appendage. They can track our movements and actions and reinforce or shape our desires and moods.
Algorithmic influence bleeds into our lives to such an extent that its affectivity may be inseparable from our perceptions of “personal choice.” Consider, for instance, the way that constant tracking and digital mediation can “override or circumvent our cognitive processes. It is impulse and affect over thinking and consideration of the longer-term implications and consequences of our actions” (Podoshen, Reference Podoshen2020, p. 280, italicisation in original). Cognitive and behavioural persuasion and impulsivity extend far beyond the advertisement of goods and services on social media platforms. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, for instance, involved the psychological profiles of American voters being obtained through a data leak of 87 million Facebook profiles, which were used to influence voter behaviour in the 2016 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz (Cadwalladr & Graham-Harrison, Reference Cadwalladr and Graham-Harrison2018; Confessore, Reference Confessore2018). The question of “choice” in relation to the digital is also predicated on the possibility of resistance.
It is difficult to exist without a digital presence, and, to continue with the Cronenbergian theme of extension and the motif of the biotechnological fused appendage (Katz, Reference Katz2024), our selves are also being extended after our physical bodies have decomposed. “To become the new flesh, you first have to kill the old flesh” (Cronenberg, Reference Cronenberg1983). Even when our biological bodies are gone, we may be afforded a “posthumous” digital presence via avatars or social media accounts kept alive by companies, on behalf of deceased users (Meese et al., Reference Meese, Nansen, Kohn, Arnold and Gibbs2015). This raises ethical issues regarding the posthumous representation of users’ data.
Another issue that draws on the Cronenbergian theme of overstimulation is what the authors call the sugar rush brain drain. It can be difficult, if not impossible, for educators to “compete” for students’ attention with the influence of addictive short-form content, as well as trends on social media platforms that rely on algorithmic attentional vectors and UI design influenced by addictive mechanisms such as the “slot machine effect” (Bhargava & Velasquez, Reference Bhargava and Velasquez2021). The process of reading itself is considered “boring” since it cannot compete with the overstimulating attentional demands of what Fisher calls the “communicative sensation-stimulus matrix” (Fisher, Reference Fisher2014, p. 22). The ventral striatum dopamine drip, brought into the classroom, has consequences for students’ literacy skills development and critical thinking capacities.
Re(image)ining FUTURE PROOF objects
We reimagine the FUTURE PROOF objects from their initial installation with DALL-E 3 (Open AI, 2023), a diffusion-based text-to-image machine learning model. Throughout this process, we take philosophical and visual design inspiration from David Cronenberg’s film oeuvre, cave formations and scholars’ rocks, naturally shaped stones that are objects of contemplation in East Asian cultures (Dodson, Reference Dodson2021). We furthermore consider the aesthetic minimalism and beauty of Japanese Zen rock garden design (Van Tonder, Lyons, & Ejima, Reference Van Tonder, Lyons and Ejima2002) to shape the triangular placement of remodelled gongshi “caves” for a future interactive public art installation. We propose that our diffusion-based imagery-inspired “re(image)inings” offer design cues to shape future interactive public art installations whose themes and concerns are situated in the Cli-Fi genre. With the proposed reimagined FUTURE PROOF art installation, we seek to “initiate” new contemplative and creative practices in our Post-Anthropocene era.
Figure 6. Re(image)ined FUTURE PROOF cave object [Diffusion-based image].
In the diffusion-based digital image above, an organic cave-like structure is influenced by Cronenbergian imagery and themes, with the left-hand side of the internal wall of the cave appearing like a semi-translucent fleshy membrane-tent canvas. This aspect of visual design is a reminder of the biotechnological entanglements that we find ourselves negotiating in the current era. We propose that the diffusion-based image above is a jumping off point for designing human-sized cave-like structures in which FUTURE PROOF participants-initiates can enter to meditate and reflect, write haiku, listen to ambient soundscapes and engage with a reimagined View-Master.
The diffusion-based re(image)ining of the tent from the initial FUTURE PROOF project has a Taoist influence in that the cave-like structure is reminiscent of a human-sized scholars’ rock whose hollow interior allows a space for a human to sit inside.
As Tzu (Reference Tzu2015) states in Chapter 11 of Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching:
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the centre hole that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it liveable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
In this sense, we propose that the cave-like structures are akin to hollowed-out scholars’ rocks. For Taoist practitioners, scholars’ rocks are conceived as “an index or a synecdoche of harmony with nature” as well as a signifier of an “authentic connection to the landscape and an aesthetic reminder of that spiritual connection” (Dodson, Reference Dodson2021, p. 11). Like Dodson (Reference Dodson2021), we view the resurgence in interest towards contemplative objects such as scholars’ rocks as being related to our current ecological predicament. Scholars’ rocks are important for their capacities to initiate contemplation, to slow us down and to realign ourselves at “a time when things feel out of balance with nature, the environment, and society” (Dodson, Reference Dodson2021, p. 12).
Rather than hold a stone in one’s hand or reflect on it at a distance, we see the concept of the scholars’ or viewing stone as being something in which a FUTURE PROOF initiate enters. In our Post-Anthropocene era, we acknowledge the irony in fighting images with more images, and throughout this research project, our intentions co-evolved to incorporate digital imagery as a prompt or design cue for sculpting quasi-natural objects that can initiate contemplative practices and have the capacity to disrupt image feeds.
A Zen-inspired triangulation
Three cave-like structures offer different sensory experiences to FUTURE PROOF initiates. One structure borrows influence from deprivation-based spiritualistic practices and therefore has “nothing” in it; a second cave contains a reimagined View-Master; and the third cave in the tripartite structure offers an ambient soundscape and a pencil and paper to initiate haiku writing practices.
After designing, sculpting and/or manufacturing these cave-like scholars’ stone objects for the purposes of a public art installation, we propose that the visual structure of Japanese Zen garden design can shape layout considerations for a quasi-Cronenbergian rock garden in which multiple participants can enter caves to engage in creative and contemplative practices. Van Tonder et al. (Reference Van Tonder, Lyons and Ejima2002) offer an analysis of a Zen garden at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, Japan. The Zen garden is contained in a mostly empty rectangle of raked gravel as the foundation for a simple arrangement of rocks; the site is characterised by minimalistic aesthetics and compositional sparseness. Examining the spatial structure of the garden, the researchers found that the rocks’ placement and overall layout were akin to a “simple, dichotomously branched tree that converges on the principal garden-viewing area on the balcony” (Van Tonder et al., Reference Van Tonder, Lyons and Ejima2002, p. 359).
This implicit design of an “abstract, minimalist depiction of natural scenery” (Van Tonder et al., Reference Van Tonder, Lyons and Ejima2002, p. 359) is overlaid as a shadow of a tree on the garden’s mapped spatial dimensions to demonstrate its design influence. We take inspiration from this analysis; rather than “implicit,” the shadows of trees in public areas can be incorporated explicitly as a design cue for the placement of Cronenbergian designed objects in an interactive space that invites contemplation and creative practices such as haiku. The shadows of branches might overlap against cave objects at different times of the day and produce a dynamic natural element to the sculptural work that shapes an interplay of darkness and light.
The View-Master cave: solitary stereoscopic cinema
Figure 7. Re(image)ined FUTURE PROOF View-Master object [Diffusion-based image].
For the View-Master re(image)ining, David Cronenberg and HR Giger influenced its visual design; a text-to-image prompt references ancient organic driftwood, caves, wombs, membranes, cocoons, as well as hybrid chimera-like subjects, such as sea creatures, rock formations and Zen influences generated by the phrase “Zen salmon rock.” To return to Han’s idea of hyperattention (Reference Han2015), the View-Master disrupts scattered sources of information and awareness, catapulting the viewer into a small series of images that require a focused, almost meditation-like engagement. The View-Master viewing experience is therefore a kind of departure from the looping of algorithmic visual culture, especially short-form content which relies on slot machine-like design (Bhargava & Velasquez, Reference Bhargava and Velasquez2021). Andrejevic’s term “digital enclosure” is relevant here. Digital enclosure relates to “the forms of productivity and monitoring enabled by ubiquitous interactivity” and has the “potential to facilitate unprecedented commodification of previously non-proprietary information” (Andrejevic, 2000, as cited in Richardson, Reference Richardson2018, p. 82). Anyone who has had their attention hijacked by scrolling video and image feeds and then forgotten what they were doing or what they watched can attest to this. The slower, more tactile modes of engagement and meditating on found and natural objects with the View-Master as a screen act as counterpoints to hyperattentive digital experiences. For Andrews, the concept of the therapeutic landscape is “a particular type of well-being experience associated with healing, recovery, restoration and place” (Andrews, Reference Andrews, Brown, Andrews, Cummins, Greenhough, Lewis and Power2017, p. 59). We aim to contribute to the “conceptual expansions of the therapeutic landscape concept” (Doughty, Reference Doughty, Howard, Thompson, Waterton and Atha2018, p. 345) by suggesting that FUTURE PROOF technologies such as a reimagined stereoscopic viewing device can contribute to a therapeutic space in which participants can disrupt scattered modes of awareness produced, in part, by algorithmic-digital screen culture and design.
The View-Master is like a small private cinema for the oculars with protective shielding that blocks out peripheral vision, an intimate space that departs from more passive ways of viewing images. The View-Master disrupts a rapid-fire procession of digital image-based hyperattention. As Banyard (Reference Banyard2013) points out, stereoscopic image presentation affords a kind of enchantment and imaginative play associated with a child’s experience of visual imagery during early memory formation of storytelling practices. Unlike viewing experiences at the cinema, however, the View-Master affords FUTURE PROOF participants a more solitary and distinctly embodied, perhaps slightly uncomfortable and unconventional viewing experience in which there is less possibility of suspending disbelief. The View-Master has an interventional capacity here: participants are drawn away from more passive forms of viewing such as receiving a mild dopamine buzz of scrolling short-form content or movie viewership that is predicated on pleasurable immersion where the act of viewing itself is suspended. Banyard contrasts viewing imagery in a cinema to viewing stereoscopic imagery with a View-Master, arguing that “the phenomenology of viewing imagery through a stereoscope is marked by the physical contact the observer has with the actual device: the stereoscopic apparatus is always felt, held in the observer’s hands and pressed up to the eyes in order to see the interior image” (Banyard, Reference Banyard2013, p. 114).
Another aspect of View-Master technology that contributes to participants’ sensorial experience is the fact that its analogue quality disrupts the processual rhythms of digital images presented to a “user” through algorithmic looping and curation. The analogue screen technology here presents the opportunity for the participant to control the speed of their engagement and encourages a slower, more deliberate, more intentional gaze. Users are often not as “in control” of their relationship to image and video “consumption” as short-form content producers and social media companies would like the user to believe. Rather, users’ attention can become weaponised, controlled and manipulated to such an extent that the illusion of user control is hegemonically reinforced as “screen time” turns into a commodified leisure activity the user seems to choose. “Users” are not supposed to look away; users are supposed to be hunched-over-hopelessly addicted-not looking at the clock, in a state of submission with a social-screen slot machine whose visual graphics, sound dynamics and screen ergonomics are designed for users to “play to extinction” (Schüll, 2008, as cited in Zuboff, Reference Zuboff2019). This kind of predatory surveillance capitalism is predicated on a revolving door of attention as something that is hijacked, parsed and captured via an algorithmic logic of attentional optimisation.
The sensory deprivation cave
We propose to leave one “cave” empty. Here, we have drawn influence from Taoist cave discourses and mind-altering experiences involving the pineal gland. According to Chia (Reference Chia2007), when humans stay in darkness for prolonged periods, the pineal gland “initiates a cascade of inhibitory reactions, permitting visions and dream-states to emerge in conscious awareness,” allowing the brain to create the spirit molecules 5-methoxy-dimethyltryptamine and dimethyltryptamine, resulting in “transcendental experiences” (pp. 38–39). For thousands of years, complete darkness found within caves has been utilised by numerous spiritual traditions to alter the body’s chemistry and affect the “Crystal Palace” hidden deep within the brain—containing the pineal, pituitary, hypothalamus and thalamus glands (Chia, Reference Chia2007, p. 32).
In The Taoist Soul Body, Chia (Reference Chia2007) affirms that “when you return to nature’s original darkness, you return to the womb of the universe,” and the glands within the Crystal Palace become stimulated, allowing the soul to roam uninhibited and connect with the source of the universe (p. 34). In the first chapter of the ancient Taoist text the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu (Reference Tzu2015) states that within darkness, from which the unknown arises, “all understanding” occurs through a “gateway” or threshold (p. 1). During the last stages of Kan and Li meditation, a Taoist master searches for the perfect cave in a granite mountain; a place their body will be safe from the elements and animals, so that they can return to their innate being and leave their physical form while they journey within the cosmos (Chia, Reference Chia2007, p. 35).
Chia (Reference Chia2007) posits that “the spirit molecules allow us to reconnect to divine consciousness. They cause colour imagery, out-of-body experiences, lucid dreams, visions of beings and/or animals, mystic states, subjective “other realities” and experiences of “being somewhere else”—all are the language of dreams” (p. 56). The cave concept we have reimagined draws from a rich Taoist landscape of spiritual practices to renegotiate and disrupt our preoccupation with digital imagery. We also intend to create a triangulation of sensory experiences for participants; the caves potentially connect with one another in a creative-contemplative unfolding. For example, after engaging with imagery in the View-Master cave, a participant may then choose to enter a cave with nothing in it to reflect and process the images; in turn, entering the haiku/soundscape cave may initiate a creative trajectory that draws from experiences in the other caves.
Crystal palaces and cool dawn
Art can assist us to imagine and contemplate a concertina of pasts, presents and futures; it can facilitate ecologically minded discourses and practices that grapple with our Post-Anthropocene era. The FUTURE PROOF re(image)inings are part of our response to a hyperattentive achievement society marked by scattered attention, constant screen-mediated digital input and the commodification of leisure as a vector of distraction. While negotiating these issues and themes throughout this evolving project, the future’s grumbling belly has only grown louder. Hypnagogia land is setting in once again, and this time, we brush the itch of real world fumes away like aranearum. We cast aside doppelganger digital Fata Morganas that bleed into our Crystal Palaces and harness our mind’s ocular. Mater Gaia whispers into our bony labyrinths: “Imaginatio is an opening into futures.” Pincers gush violet prima materia; Juicy Ku losh techno-beasts. Parting curtain sand reveals Damperia linearis and cephalopod beaks. Ducibus domus gesture to cool dawn. Let the spores of FUTURE PROOF circulate and germinate inside its initiates’ infinite primal screens.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the Whadjuk people of Noongar Boodja as the traditional custodians of the land and sea in the southwest of Western Australia.
Financial support
No direct funding was received for the project.
Ethical standards
Nothing to note.
Appendix FUTURE PROOF Manifesto
Figure 8. FUTURE PROOF manifesto image #1.
Crinkle-Brows and Automated Cave Slaves: come harness yog mind’s ocular. Come free yogshelves of techno-haze that seeks to rob us of precious starfish, curtain sand and comb millipede. Let us handsome and wisp caress xerophyte and exoskeleton, so we may suckle the dew of our afterbirths and kneel soft at the testa of ancient mollusc lips.
We are not afraid of techno-tools: we are FUTURE PROOF. We hug and kiss techno-toys that enlighten cool dawn but we do not hesitate to bish, glack and losh machines that rob us of our primal screen. Fear not the real world. It is just a place we eat, breed and sleep. Inside this domus yog are FUTURE PROOF and far beyond if yog seek the breast. Release yog hearts of future shock, those pincers on temples that diminish yog fronds to lisp. The sky is a fierce velvet womb of love that seeks to heal and know us; the sand, a living, breathing kaleidoscope that shelters us from electro-beasts.
Fear not the future but be not an automated gastropod that feasts upon techno-weeds. Observe and ponder naturae as yog ground yogself in yog primal screen. Hands and feet caress sand and breathe in weight. Close yog oculars and then release. Let yog primal screen fill with imaginatio. If it is static, let it chimera. If it moves, relish the breeze. Yog body is a pleasure temple. Yog senses the ultimate gift. Sniff the leaves of Adenanthos sericeus and know she is yog friend.
Yog mind is a primal screen: a technological galaxy superior to any machine past, present, future. Love yog screen, feed simplicity and complexity with gentleness and breathe. Mater Mermaid is here to remind us of the days when our spirits were piscis and our land-oculars were shut. Bow and pray but do not utter words from yog spongy lips. Sprinkle sand on her cordia piscina. It is the highest clam of respect.
Figure 9. FUTURE PROOF manifesto image #2.
Leave behind the desire to sail a beast’s skin filled with air into Uncle Ventus’s ribs. There are utres of pigment that can enhance yog cuticles. There are setis and a speculum to decorate yog oculars. Our ducibus domus provide pleasure of finery, so yog may enhance yog senses and teleport yogshelves. Yog circumo is yog to keep or yog to gift.
Do not be fooled by techno-skunks. Within this domus yog are FUTURE PROOF. Yog is at liberty to caress and manipulate the images on yog primal screen by whatever feels mundi. Inside yog will find a plethora of screens and extensions but beware of amputations unless they benefit yog anima. Clock is meaningless when yog commune with Mater Gaia and massage yog primal screen. Breathe deeply… … breathe… … slowly… … and embrace… Fata Morgana. Listen to yog oculars even though yog lids maybe shut. Feel yog body against those tiny petras that have dreamt since the yawning of clock.
Mater Mermaid’s womb provides sanctuary from technological entanglement and the itch of real world fumes. Mater Mermaid was the first of Atargatis’s kind to take refuge in the dunes of Terra Australis as she rested upon Mater Gaia’s sandy hips. Mater Gaia whispered into her bony labyrinth and Mater Mermaid began to dream. Oculars wide, her primal screen chimeraed beyond the exquisiteness of Terra Australis’s dunes. Feather-headed dusk beetles transformed into hovering machines. Damperia linearis sparkled moth glow. Uncle Ventus spun the blades of a silent mantis that snipped at a transparent plume.
Okeanos bubbled and frothed as Mater Mermaid sat mute in Terra Australis’s dunes. In Okeanos belly our liberator had lost the ability to indulge in hypnagogia. Peace fell upon our scaly Queen. Her cordia piscina began to quiver as a cloud shifted and revealed Sirius B.
Figure 10. FUTURE PROOF manifesto image #3.
The View-Master is a powerful techno-tool that can assist yog in the organisation of yog thoughts. Its capabilities are limitless in combination with yog primal screen. Place yog oculars inside its ocular pits and yog may enter its realm. Move close to the fire-fist and illuminate yog screen. The images yog see before yog are representations of yog or other yogs. Let yog primal screen rest upon a simple pattern to harness yog thoughts and lexis.
A FUTURE PROOF ku is three lexis tunnels. The first is three lexis flakes, the second five, the last two. Cogitate upon manifestations inside the View-Master’s pits in combination with yog primal screen. Guide yog tempus as yog cephalopod beak squirts lexis tunnels. Alone, like any other techno-funk, the View-Master is meaningless without a juicy primal screen. Harness yog mind’s ocular and dissolve yog cephalopod beak.
Our visions are not adumbrations of Mater Gaia’s children: they are Mater Gaia’s children in combination with creatures, thoughts and carbons from other realms. Mater Mermaid called us into the dunes and enlightened our aranearums. Although we cannot see her, our thoughts collide inside her primal screen.
Figure 11. FUTURE PROOF manifesto image #4.
FUTURE PROOF Glossary
- Adenanthos sericeus:
-
Commonly known as the Woolly Bush
- Aranearums:
-
Cobwebs
- Atargatis:
-
The first mermaid
- Automated Cave Slaves:
-
Lazy beings with claustrophobic abodes filled with the latest technology
- Bish:
-
To break
- Bony labyrinth:
-
A complex structure inside the human ear
- Carbons from other realms:
-
Imprints/memories from another time
- Cephalopod beak:
-
A device used for collating words
- Chimera:
-
Colloquial term to describe dance and movement
- Circumo:
-
Envelope
- Clock:
-
Colloquial term for time
- Comb millipede:
-
A millipede that resembles a comb
- Cool dawn:
-
Colloquial term to describe the future
- Cordia piscina:
-
Fish’s tail
- Crinkle-Brows:
-
Individuals belonging to the human race who bear the unfortunate disposition of wrinkled foreheads due to constant entanglement with technology
- Curtain sand:
-
Sand that has the appearance of a curtain due to its shape when it moves
- Damperia linearis:
-
Commonly known as the Wedge-leaved Damperia
- Domus:
-
FUTURE PROOF domelike structure
- Ducibus domus:
-
Dome guides
- Electro-beasts:
-
Aggressive forms of technology which seek to attack an individual in an invasive manner
- Fata Morgana:
-
A superior mirage
- Fire-fist:
-
Colloquial term for light
- Fronds to lisp:
-
Colloquial term likening an individual of the human race to a plant or tree in harmonious communication with Mater Gaia
- Future shock:
-
A sudden anxious realisation that an individual is displaced amongst technology and machines
- Glack:
-
To destroy
- Hypnagogia:
-
A period of lucidity before sleep
- Itch of real world fumes:
-
A creeping sensation which manifests upon the skin due to exposure to harmful technology
- Imaginatio:
-
Imagination
- Juicy:
-
Colloquial term to describe something with zest and vigour
- Ku:
-
Colloquial term for haiku
- Land-oculars:
-
Eyes that can see on land
- Losh:
-
To strike out in a violent manner
- Lexis:
-
Word (Singular)
- Lexeis:
-
Word (Plural)
- Lexis flakes:
-
Syllables
- Lexis tunnels:
-
Sentences
- Mater Gaia:
-
Mother Earth
- Mater Mermaid:
-
Mother Mermaid
- Mind’s ocular:
-
Inner vison/mind’s eye
- Mundi:
-
Good
- Naturae:
-
Nature
- Oculars:
-
Eyes
- Okeanos:
-
The oceans
- Petras:
-
Rocks
- Piscis:
-
Fish
- Pleasure temple:
-
A healthy body
- Sail a beast’s skin filled with air into Uncle Ventus’s ribs:
-
Kick a football into the wind
- Setis:
-
Brushes
- Speculum:
-
Mirror
- Spongy lips:
-
Human lips that have piscis memory
- Stellae:
-
Stars
- Beast’s skin filled with air:
-
A football
- Taste the breeze:
-
Colloquial term to describe the celebration of stimuli
- Techno-funk:
-
Useful technology
- Techno-haze:
-
Technological overload
- Techno-skunks:
-
Odious technology
- Techno-tools:
-
Practical technology
- Techno-toys:
-
Technology that creates a sense of rapture
- Techno-weeds:
-
Useless technology which needs to be removed
- Tempus:
-
Time
- Testa:
-
Shell
- The highest clam of respect:
-
The ultimate pearl of veneration, clasped in silence
- The Primal Screen:
-
The mind
- The View-Master:
-
A sacred divination apparatus made from an ibis skull
- Uncle Ventus:
-
The wind
- Utres of pigment:
-
Bottles of nail polish
- Xerophyte:
-
A plant that can survive on minimal water
- Yawning of clock:
-
Beginning of time
- Yog:
-
You or your
- Yogself:
-
Yourself
- Yogshelves:
-
Yourselves
Figure 12. FUTURE PROOF manifesto image #5.
Re(image)ined AI FUTURE PROOF objects 2025
Figure 13. Re(image)ined FUTURE PROOF dressing gown [Diffusion-based image].
Figure 14. Re(image)ined FUTURE PROOF mirror 2025 [Diffusion-based image].
Figure 15. Re(image)ined FUTURE PROOF nail polish 2025 [Diffusion-based image].
Figure 16. Re(image)ined FUTURE PROOF ink writing device [Diffusion-based image].
Figure 17. Re(image)ined egg carton Zen rock haiku writing sphere [Diffusion-based image].
Figure 18. Re(image)ined FUTURE PROOF 1ST gongshi pencil 2025 [Diffusion-based image].
Figure 19. Re(image)ined FUTURE PROOF 2ND gongshi pencil 2025 [Diffusion-based image].
Author Biographies
Brenton Rossow is an interdisciplinary artist from Western Australia. His films include Shanghainese Parklife: Cultivating the Taoist body (2017), Clouds and 4 cigarettes (2017), and Lindsay’s Story (2022). Brenton has been involved in creative projects, such as the Rockingham Noongar Stories Project 2019, the West Australian Museum 2019 Migrant Stories Project, and the Moorditj Footprints project 2020-present. His research interests include Taoism, haiku, Chinese cinema, experimental filmmaking, animation, junk art & puzzle films.
Darren Tynan is a media artist, educator, and PhD candidate in Creative Media at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. He works across field recording and soundwalking, photography, video, academic/creative writing, and experimental machine learning-based sound, image, and animation practices. Some of his broad research interests include digital media practice, posthumanism, distributed cognition, Anthropocene studies, sound studies, memory, affect, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of technology. Darren’s current research explores how his digital media practices are collectively performed and sustained through a constellation of technical, material, affective, and social relations.
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