Artwork from the Future

Artwork from the Future

by Tamás Fogarasy

In this assignment, students are asked to create stories (creative writing) about an artwork “from the future”. They should build a story that describes the artist and the era and the society in which the artwork originates/will originate in detail. This will stimulate the students’ imagination, strengthen their imaginative skills and facilitate a critical discussion about the structure of contemporary and probable societies.

The exercise encourages students to explore social tensions, formulate socially critical narratives, and empathize with specific human fates in a focused way. Students will explore the socio-cultural context of the artworks “created” and shared with them by their peers or the instructor through a guided process of analysis.
The non-existent, future artifact brings these themes to the surface with the help of the instructor. This exercise initiates a theoretical discussion among the students. All participants will be able to discuss alternative visions of the future concerning art trends in a cultural, socio-economic, and art-historical context.
Due to the nature of the exercise, this can be both humorous and serious, as fiction gives free rein to the imagination. There is no “correct” solution to this exercise, but creative ideas should be rewarded, for example, by allowing the students to vote for the solutions they like best. The theoretical background of this assignment is loosely related to the field of Speculative Design research and design practice, specifically when designers and creators sketch different social visions.

  • It should be decided in advance whether the teacher generates one or more “works of art” (images, videos, audio material) or whether this is left to the students in the class (which will make the exercise longer). Of course, these artworks don’t exist, so the teacher should search for them online (i.e., lesser-known works, photos, or random futuristic objects) or generate a work of art using Stable Diffusion, WOMBO Dream, or other online tools.
  • In class, students are divided into groups of 2–3 students.
  • The teacher explains that in the following minutes, the students are analyzing an artwork that originates from the future but somehow surfaces in our modern days. Students have to make guesses and come up with creative ideas about the artist’s intention and the artwork’s sociocultural contexts without having any clues about them. (It solely depends on the teacher how to handle this task.) The teacher shouldn’t hand out ready-made solutions or examples and even refrain from giving too much context to the task so that the students can come up with their ideas independently, without being influenced (consciously or subconsciously).
  • (optional) Students create these futuristic (from roughly 2080 to 2100) artworks, for example, by editing montages with editors or whiteboards. For this optional step, they may use Google or other search tools and edit images, videos, pictures, or even sounds they found online. These images should come across as artworks – a sort of pseudo-artwork. Before this step, the teacher could call students’ attention to websites that use the power of AI to generate paintings or other artwork-like images, such as hotpot.ai/art-maker, Stable Diffusion, or WOMBO Dream.
  • The students are then asked to quietly (without the group members talking to each other) analyze the artwork they were presented by either the instructor or their peers. (1 minute)
  • Each team member should note the analysis and their thoughts on the pseudo-artwork. They have 5 minutes to compose their thoughts on paper. The teacher can pre-prepare some questions to inspire the students.
    Here are some ideas:

    • 
Who could this futuristic author be?
    • 
Why will they create this artwork?
    • For whom will these artworks be made?
    • What branch of the arts could the artwork belong to, and why?
  • The students share their thoughts with the rest of their group.
  • In groups, the students create a compelling narrative about the pseudo-artwork and then summarize their thoughts in a concise digital poster – such as a whiteboard, with which they present their analysis.
  • The teams present their results to each other on the whiteboard
  • During – or preferably after – each presentation, the teacher should facilitate the start of a complex discussion or debate based on what has been said, mainly focusing on socio-critical questions. It should be lively and centered around the optimistic or dystopian worldview and art’s general role, touching on possible branches of the discipline and the artists’ general well-being. This task aims to create logical correlations between the present and the projected future.
  • To end this task, the teacher should give some time for general feedback on what was said during the lesson.
  • (optional) Ballot: every participant has three points on the whiteboard. They can vote on the sections of any presentation they liked the best. Based on all the votes, it will be self-evident what the lesson’s highlights were. The instructor should reflect on the votes to further improve engagement.
Three elements are sketched on a grey and purple watercolor background. A calendar with the year
Artwork from the Future

Artwork from the future @ 2021 by Tamás Fogarasy is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal

Tamás Fogarasy, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), Budapest

Author’s Encouragement
A quick and creative task that can be used in any class setting, meaning that it doesn’t require too much background knowledge of art.
This task stimulates the students’ creative thinking processes, strengthens their imagination, and facilitates critical thinking by engaging students in discussions of probable societal hierarchies.

Prior Knowledge and Preparation
The teacher chooses to select the “artworks” in question, providing students with exciting, strange, and unique items, images, pictures, or sounds, as well as the core contextual background that would serve as a guideline for the students (when or where the artwork was created, etc.).

Accessibility:
Assistance for Learners
This excercise can be simplified by mitigating digital processes where possible: The teacher can simplify this task for the students by searching for the futuristic artwork online beforehand or by facilitating the debate in a classroom (live) setting instead of hosting it online, adding the need for digital competencies.

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