25 April 2013- Off the Cloud and Into the Cave: Designing for Tomorrow’s Digital Dystopia Today at Südthüringer-Wald-Institut

Off the Cloud and Into the Cave: Designing for Tomorrow’s Digital Dystopia Today at Südthüringer-Wald-Institut
presented by Jason Reizner

 

Off the Cloud and Into the Cave:
Designing for Tomorrow’s Digital Dystopia Today at Südthüringer-Wald-Institut
Südthüringer-Wald-Institut is an independent, distributed research organization founded in a cave 200m deep below the Southern Thuringian Forest in the former East Germany. Physically positioned as a default site of refuge from the possibly inevitable collapse of the pervasive technological and social infrastructures that scaffold contemporary existence, the conceptual agenda of the Institute is framed by the present luxury of a world where discourse around mitigating unpleasant contingencies is still unhindered by the profound stress of needing to survive them. Embracing the ethos of “hope for the best, expect the worst,” the work of the Institute locates the creative potential of technocratic doomsday fetishism within the service of a pragmatic functionalism.
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About Jason Reizner
Jason Reizner is a dyslexic hypochondriac originally from Chicago. After stints in film, print and interactive, he works now as a researcher in Interaction and Experience Design on the Faculty of Computer Science and Languages at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Köthen (Anhalt), Germany, and is a founding member of Südthüringer-Wald-Institut. He holds a Bachelor’s in Film, Video & Integrated Media from Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in Vancouver, Canada and a Master’s in Media Art and Design from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.