Nicole Yi Messier
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Smithsonian Futures

Part exhibition, part festival, FUTURES presents nearly 32,000 square feet of new immersive site-specific art installations, interactives, working experiments, inventions, speculative designs, and “artifacts of the future,” as well as historic objects and discoveries from 23 of the Smithsonian’s museums, major initiatives, and research centers. Of the nearly 150 objects on view, several are making their public debut: an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven rover from Alphabet’s X that could transform agriculture; a Planetary Society space sail for deep space travel; a Loon internet balloon; the first full-scale Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome built in North America; the world’s first controlled thermonuclear fusion device; and more.

Smithsonian FUTURES Exhibit

Part exhibition, part festival, FUTURES presents nearly 32,000 square feet of new immersive site-specific art installations, interactives, working experiments, inventions, speculative designs, and “artifacts of the future,” as well as historic objects and discoveries from 23 of the Smithsonian’s museums, major initiatives, and research centers. Of the nearly 150 objects on view, several are making their public debut: an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven rover from Alphabet’s X that could transform agriculture; a Planetary Society space sail for deep space travel; a Loon internet balloon; the first full-scale Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome built in North America; the world’s first controlled thermonuclear fusion device; and more.

FUTURES Beacons

Every day we make contributions to the future, often quietly. Those actions shape the future and eventually frame how we see the world. Still, it’s hard to imagine what comes next when we’re stuck in today. FUTURES Beacons asks visitors to begin exercising the muscles and developing the habits that make us better at thinking about what comes next. They pave the way for us to see new possibilities everywhere. 

Each Beacon invites you to a conversation about the future you want to see for yourself, your community, and the world, all inspired by the objects around you. Your personal values and ideas, speculative headlines from the future you’re creating, and moment-to-moment insights about how your responses compare to others are all part of this new museum experience. As you leave, you’ll see yourself reflected in this new future, along with insights on the futures we most want and possible future timelines.

To create FUTURES Beacons, designers LAB at Rockwell Group layered emerging technologies not yet seen together—massively-scaled LED displays, holograms, video games, multiplayer interactions, data visualization, and intuitive ultrasonic haptic controls that let you to gesture mid-air to select choices on screen, creating the illusion of touch without making contact.

The FUTURES Beacons script is grounded in research from the Institute for the Future (IFTF) around storytelling tools that help people to imagine the future more clearly and empathize with citizens of the future. The concept is called “specificity training,” a form of mental time travel to get the brain to imagine what doesn’t yet exist. This imagination training can help us build authentic hope for the future, even in the face of urgent global challenges like pandemic recovery and climate change.

The project is made possible by SoftBank Group Corp, one of the world’s largest global technology investors. SoftBank invests in companies using artificial intelligence and transformational technologies with a goal to positively impact the way people work, live and play. 

Credits

A Rockwell Group project. Lead developer for final gallery which included data visualizations and body gestures controlled by a realsense camera. Futures Beacons copy credit to Brad McDonald.

 

FUTURES Exhibit Smithsonian Nicole Yi Messier