Chatting with today about his New World's Fair (which hopes to paint an optimistic, definite vision of the future), I noticed how these projects so often turn to *retro*futurism in art direction. What would a now-rooted, forward-facing hopepunk aesthetic look like?
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It's somehow disappointing that the easiest way to evoke optimistic visions of the future in 2022 is to use visual language from the 50's and 60's.
I guess web3 folks often evoke the future with 80's vaporwave vibes. Not helping, really.
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Related: it'd be fun to crowdfund concept artists to illustrate passages like these from Where's My Flying Car. (cc )
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Many people suggested that solarpunk may be a now-rooted, optimistic aesthetic for the future. I wonder… how does it translate into graphic design? What's a solarpunk poster look like? How does the style influence type, layout, shape, color choices?
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Separately, while I like solarpunk, it's often not as ambitious as I want. Yes, walkable cities with plants everywhere, and stately floating airships. I want a future with those things and also: alchemy; nanomachines; cities on the moon, on Titan, under the sea; immortality; etc.
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Another way to put that: solarpunk does a good job of portraying "cozy futurism" but not, say, let's-get-to-Kardashev-II-futurism. nintil.com/cozy-futurism
(See also: "hopepunk"! beforewegoblog.com/purity-and-fut)
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This is a really nice prompt from . One way to capture this sort of learning curve is unhinged abundance—e.g. window panes made of diamonds.
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Replying to @carpdiem @andy_matuschak and @camwiese
How do you capture decades of marginal improvements in manufacturing techniques leading to a 90% drop in the price of solar panels?
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Quite a striking response to solarpunk from : . See the manifesto: nasjaq.substack.com/p/the-terrapun with some interesting comments on aesthetic references. Also:
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to expand outward and create more Earths - more Terras - this is terrapunk. We do not cower, we build new worlds. We do not dismantle capitalism, we utilize it to create more resources than ever imagined. We are sovereign masters of our surroundings, and we create relentlessly.
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The Interior design concept for Symphony Hall enterance by John DeMaio. The idea of having a free flowing interior with different acoustic environments. The musician chooses where to play based on the acoustics they would like for their piece.
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A lot of good responses rejected my premise—i.e. arguing that it's fine/good to use retro visuals to paint the future. This is a particularly thorough treatment!
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Replying to @andy_matuschak and @camwiese
The problem is that if you try to *avoid* retro-futurism, you invariably end up with something like this
By which I mean: bland, copycat visions and design of some cliché
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You ever think once architects learned how to make curves they went a little crazy with them?
Kinda like how, once we invented a way to make large unbroken sheets of glass, suddenly glass was *everywhere*