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MDEFest 2022 – What The Futures!?

What The Futures!? is the second edition of the MDEFest – a non-profit festival celebrating the final projects of the Master in Design for Emergent Futures students with installations, parties, workshops and exhibitions.

MDEFest takes place between the 20th and the 29th of June 2022, in different locations in Barcelona and online.

The Masters in Design for Emergent Futures aims to explore future possibilities and push the boundaries of our societal paradigms. With their final projects, the students create alternative presents and imagine the future as plural, rather than a single definitive path.

Program

Extended Interactions

22-23 & 27-29 June | 08-19h | Palo Alto Nave Fundació, Pellaires 30

The extended interaction exhibition will show a sample of different approaches, showing symbiotic relationships between the human and no-human being, interactions with technology, senses beyond the ordinary and systems interactions. The exhibit will have audiovisual samples, documentaries, artifacts and prototypes available to interact with the audience.

Re-source: Bio-based and Circular Material Workshop

22 June | 18.30-21h | at Connecthort, C/ del Dr. Trueta 100 (TBC)

Can we imagine a future without waste? Can we design, make and source with circularity? In this hands-on workshop, we will explore how food waste can be transformed into a resource, learn about designing for circularity through material lifecycles, and get our hands dirty as we make bio-plastics and other biocomposites using food waste from local industries in Poble Nou.

Living With Organisms

23 June | 14-15.30 | Corpen Barcelona, Pujades 74

Creating a new narrative of how to live with organisms. During this workshop, we will be collaborating with Corpen Gin to create spirulina cocktails. During this activity, the participants will be learning how to incorporate Micro-Organisms into their everyday life.

Sensing Machines

23 June | 17.30-19h | Palo Alto Nave Escoleta

Workshop in which we will generate patterns in textiles with spirulina ink. We will show how technology and biology can be united in the same project to achieve unique patterns generated from movement.

My Trashy Life

23 June | 19-20h | Outside Macba, Plaça dels Àngels 1

My trashy life is creating awareness around the number of products we consume on a monthly bases. Visit the Macba entrance to see me and my 3 months of waste “golden Treasures” create a demonstration.

Con-serve

24-25 June | 13-21h | at LEKA, Carrer de Badajoz 65

Our cultures, relationships, tools and rituals are in constant flux. They evolve based on our resources, climates, economies, industries, and rhythm of life. These crafts and customs bring us together and can help us to understand what is to come. We cannot imagine our futures without understanding our past. We invite you to join us as we speculate on how to observe, conserve, and preserve traditions from the past in order to give life to rituals that allow us to serve-WITH others and safeguard and strengthen relationships. This collective exhibition seeks to generate consciousness about ancient habits that are still in force today, redefine our perceptions of preservation, and contemplate alternative future scenarios around food, crafts, and tools.

Schedule

24 June:

17h – opening explanation

25 June:

14h – Slow Cooking

16h – Crafting the Anthropocene

18h – Hakoura Documentary

20h – Uan Biar Plis, beer and identity

Solar Brunch

26 June | 12-18h | at Connecthort, C/ del Dr. Trueta 100

At the intersection between the slow movement and low-tech, we want to bring awareness and promote a resilient lifestyle. We want to open conversations around how to integrate ancient techniques into our present context.

This event will be focused on ways to be less dependent on energy and promote the use of solar energy in a fun way: solar cooked food, solar powered music, solar fun! When the sun comes down, music will continue powered by bike generators.

Symbiatípico

26 June | 18-00h | at Atípico, Vía Trajana 48, 8.2

During this celebratory exhibition, we invite you to join us as we re-interpret our relationships with our ecological systems. On display, you will find designed artifacts, bio-remediation experiments, symbiotic wearables, interactive art displays, and audiovisuals that push us to re-think our parasitic role in the Anthropocene. We welcome you to enjoy live music and Spirulina cocktails, dress up as a bio-borg, or speculate on how to bio-remediate our plastic planet, form symbiotic relationships with microorganisms, and live in balance with our natural systems.

Walking People (Participatory workshop with the Barcelona Montessori school)

27 June | 10-11.40h | IAAC / Fab Lab Barcelona, Carrer de Pujades, 102

The closing event of the participatory workshop session with the Barcelona Montessori school. Exhibition and workshop about the path we made with the group called the walking people to their magical garden. Their own new school garden which they designed through studying materiality and spatial awareness, through movements and senses. They developed their own needs, their voices and answers to critical questions in our world. Come and see with their eyes!

Realitat Sensorial

28 June | 16-18h | at Ateneu de Fabricació del Parc Tecnológic de Nou Barris, Carrer de Marie Curie 8

We are heading towards a virtual reality. A non-inclusive reality, without physical contact nor interaction with our surroundings. What if instead of creating tools to isolate ourselves from the real world, we create to be more connected, to feel and perceive more of what surrounds us?

Realitat Sensorial aims to present some devices created for this purpose, showing how they work and gathering ideas and feedback on how they can be used in the future.

Gymkhana

28 June | 16-19h | at Ateneu de Fabricació del Parc Tecnológic de Nou Barris, Carrer de Marie Curie 8

Creating new perspectives between generations with the aid of alternative and accessible toys, participatory methods and conversations which includes all the voices, for the exploration of the family structure and invisible realities. Empowering these kinds of perspectives and realities through a Gymkhana around the city, where collaborations and conversations between kids and adults are a must for achieving common goals in our communities.

Hybrid Ecosystems

28 June | 19-23h | at Akasha Hub, Carrer de la Verneda 13-19, Nave 1

Natural and technological ecosystems are closely related, however counter-intuitive it might seem at first. Investigating these overlapping areas through our senses, we venture in hybrid worlds of sounds, visuals and haptics. Between self-mutating algorithms and recursive patterns in nature, we draw similarities and aim to provoke questions about a more sustainable and tangible view of technology.

Sign up for Hybrid Ecosystems here!

The Hike

29 June | 08-12h | Collserolla – Meeting point at Mundet metro station – right exit

A hike in Collserola mountain to reconnect with nature, collect a series of treasures and participate in a collective musical experience at the top.

VIBOLI x SOFT collaboration

29 June 19-20h | at SOFT (Store of Future Things), C/ de Bailèn 11

VIBOLI (Virtual Botanical Library) is a provocation and exhibition exploring biodiversity and our disconnections of the ecological world through a virtual reality experience. The Virtual Reality installation is a collaboration with SOFT, where we explore and research on how to connect the worlds of decentralized blockchain, digital arts, community and education systems about ecology. The result is the virtual botanical library of various trees, and their potential as NFTs to fund future.

Subatomic Notes

website launch

I am prototyping a software tool for networked thought. This is an online demo of the prototype, and a public launch of the project. See here https://github.com/jeremyparadie/Subatomic-Notes#readme

post MDEFest:

The Future of Surf

6 July | 13-14h | Antigua fábrica Estrella Damm, Carrer del Rosselló 515

The Future of Surf seeks to establish a conversation with surfers, both experienced and amateur, into the prospects of the surfing sport in a world challenged by plastic pollution and climate change. What can we as a community do to be part of the solution and what to do we imagine that solution to be like? During the activity we’ll show our findings on alternate materials for surfboards, and alongside the participants we’ll see how to turn these discoveries into realities.