Futuring

Claire Isabel Webb
Perceiving
Artists and philosophers have long mediated nature through "technologies of perception": instruments and assemblages that have reframed our world. Although virtual environments, simulations, and speculative intelligences seem novel, they are ancient epistemic objects. From Galileo's telescope to virtual, alien worlds created with AIs, we have developed technologies of perception that relens "real" natures — and more deeply understand what it means to be human.

Zeina Koreitem
Imaging
“Architecture today is immersed in an immense cultural experiment called imaging. We can feel our images changing us. Our relationship to our thoughts, to our sense of time, to the cadence of our attentiveness--all of this is now subject to rapid revision. To patiently describe the world to oneself is to prepare the ground for politics that do not yet exist. Signal. Image. Architecture. is a pathographic manifesto: a philosophical diagnosis of architecture's technical consciousness before and after electronic images. What happens to the architectural mind when it finally realizes that images are not drawings?” -- John May, Signal. Image. Architecture. (Columbia, 2019)

Damjan Jovanovic
Worldmaking
The talk will introduce "Worldmaking", a new design paradigm that employs video game technologies to explore new ways of modeling and perception. As a case study, we will look at Planet Garden, a speculative video game project that envisions the future of AI-driven planetary stewardship of nature. The game features a multi-scalar system simulation of a post-scarcity environment coupled with a sprawling narrative exploring the future of earth after singularity, offering a glimpse into potential future planetary environments. By integrating speculative and transdisciplinary ideas from architectural design, dynamic systems, ecology, and artificial intelligence, the project pioneers the 'Large World Model' - a novel concept utilizing custom multi-modal generative AI to support creation of rich, immersive virtual worlds.

M. Casey Rehm
Building
The rising ubiquity and sophistication of digital methods for the automation of intellectual labor is reshaping the future of architecture and design. The application of artificial intelligence to design will be discussed through the lens of three territories: perception, generation, and mediation. Examples from the work of Studio MMR, the research projects of the MS Architectural Technology postgraduate program, and from commercial applications in the building industry will be used to outline how this technology simultaneously allows for the expansion of the role of the architect and introduces new competition in territories of expertise traditionally dominated by the field.

Dr. Claire Isabel Webb
Associate Director of Future Humans at the Berggruen Institute, and Los Angeles, California
Claire Isabel Webb directs the Berggruen Institute’s Future Humans program that investigates the histories and futures of life, mind, and outer space. Webb earned her Ph.D. from MIT’s History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) program in 2020. Her book project, Reflexive Alienation, explores how scientists since the Space Age, despite alien life forms' perpetual and perhaps permanent unknowability, have designed sophisticated experiments of expectation that anticipate other biologies and intelligences.

Jackilin Hah Bloom
Graduate Thesis Coordinator and faculty at SCI-Arc. She leads JHB Studio, a creative practice that embraces the integration of art, technology, and nature to inform the making of buildings, interiors, objects, and landscapes.

Damjan Jovanovic
Co-founder of the Los Angeles-based game design studio Lifeforms.io and serves as faculty at SCI-Arc. He is an artist and designer working at the intersection of video games, artificial intelligence, and architecture.

Zeina Koreitem
Design faculty at SCI-Arc and founding partner, with John May, of MILLIØNS, a Los Angeles-based design practice. Most recently, Koreitem and May were named by Wallpaper* as one of the “USA 400: The People Shaping America’s Creative Landscape in 2024.

M. Casey Rehm
Designer based in Los Angeles, whose work focuses on the integration of machine learning, intelligent agency, and platform software for design and cultural production. He is a founding partner of Studio MMR and the Coordinator of the MS in Architectural Technology at SCI-Arc.