By: Joseph Gleasure [ Instagram | Tumblr ]
Vision of the Future is a design research project focused on presenting and archiving a set of personal references from the 1990s and early 2000s. It primarily focuses on digital publications and the multimedia content that came with them. This article serves as an introduction to the concept.
- The project is currently hosted on Tumblr as a series of video files and write ups: https://visionofthefuture95.tumblr.com/
- I also sometimes feature scans and updates related to the project on my Instagram, however it is much more brief to suit the medium: https://www.instagram.com/vision_of_the_future_95/
Around two years ago I started collecting design publications that came with CD-ROMs or DVDs full of obsolete file formats and videos that had been lost to the internet. Vision of the Future is a way of archiving these publications and presenting them as part of a cohesive project. All of the content I post is repurposed from these magazines or other relevant digital sources, I then make .ISO copies of the discs and host them on Internet Archive for anyone to access.
Often times I will make minor edits and change the music to the videos I post to recontextualize the content, basically a simple way to show how this visual content isn’t a static artifact but part of a living history or design and culture. Essentially each post creates a rabbit hole of interconnected creative content for the audience to explore and also to keep a record of my thought process and design references.
The name of the project comes from the book Vision of The Future by Phillips Electronics, which covers a series of 70 or so design concepts Phillips developed in the mid-90s which eventually culminated in the creation of a commercial line of wearable electronics. I wrote an expansive essay (LINK) two years ago on this project and the phrase has become something of a personal mantra.
Design research should inform a design practice and that design practice should offer a positive vision of the future. Collecting objects of cultural capital that sit and collect dust in a bedroom is a pointless endeavor as design as with fashion is only given meaning by its real-world application. These things must be shared and used to inspire further creation.
What drew me to the phrase is that is encapsulates a certain kind of thinking that was everywhere in the late 1990s, a time when people were optimistic about the future. A time where technology was approached with unbridled optimism and not taken for granted as an extension of our lives, in many ways it was the wild west for these ideas, and anything seemed possible.
This of course was reflected in the design as extremely talented people constrained by emerging technologies like Photoshop, Macromedia Flash, and new digital techniques created incredible work. However, these days it seems as if culture is stuck; many have theorized why throwing ideas like refinement culture, the end of history, and hyperreality around and maybe they’re right.
“Everything is a remix” was a phrase I heard over and over again growing up and it often times it seems like nothing original will ever exist again, like we’re stuck in some kind of time loop. This alongside other cultural developments have led to a profound sense of hopelessness and malign nihilism amongst young people today.
Vision of The Future represents a bastion of a previously exuberant culture, a bulwark against the despair present today, and a reminder of what was once possible and what might be possible again.