The Future is Our Business: A Visual History of Future Expertise

未来是我们的事业：未来专业知识的视觉历史

• 批准号: AH/K005510/1
• 负责人: Sandra Kemp
• 金额: $ 4.08万
• 依托单位: Victoria and Albert Museum
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FK005510%2F1
• 关键词: Future; Our; Business; Visual; History

Nearly all cultures have developed models of how to project and predict the future. Ways of thinking about the future range widely: from diviners and alchemists, through urban improvers and insurance companies, trend forecasters and risk assessors, and to film-makers and novelists. Projections of the future engage, whether explicitly or implicitly, with their own present. They may critique an existing state of affairs, or simply offer the promise of a better world. There is in one sense an inherent contradiction in the premise that expertise in projecting and predicting the future is possible. By their very nature, claims about the future are unverifiable at the time they are made. This places high rhetorical demands on self-proclaimed futurists or experts in the future who must demonstrate their superior insight through spiritual, statistical, or scientific means. The project will explore what societies at different times and places have considered constitutes expertise in the future, and how this expertise has manifested itself visually. This project will explore one major aspect of future expertise, specifically examining the visual dimension of the futurist's repertoire of persuasion. Most work in the field has emphasized text as the primary instrument of the futurologist. As a recent BBC radio documentary on the topic suggests, there is popular fascination with the predictions of future experts, from the Oracle at Delphi through Nostradamus and the science fiction authors of the twentieth century, and a rich literature on such expertise exists. The visual analogue to this tradition, however, has typically been treated dismissively. Future projection by artists and designers is sometimes used as an adjunct to verbal description; often it is seen as exceptional or eccentric (with notable exceptions, such as the oeuvre of Leonardo da Vinci). This project will examine less canonical material, seeking to provide an account of future expertise as such rather than a series of monographic examples. In addition, the scope of research will incorporate 'non-artistic' visual material of a technical nature, such as patents, diagrams, maps, charts and graphs. The research will feed into the V&A's inaugural exhibition for its new set of temporary exhibition galleries opening in 2016. 'The Future: A History' will be a thoughtful, research-driven examination of imaginary projection as a historical phenomenon across the globe. It will chart a passage from medieval depictions of the future as divinely revealed (e.g. medieval images of the last judgment), through increasingly instrumental and secular attempts to control the future (e.g. in modernist city planning), to a more recent exploration of explicit fictionalization as a modus operandi for future-oriented art and design, as practitioners have become more self-aware about their work's fundamentally speculative character. It will explore many interrelated avenues of research: cross-cultural comparison of religious art (eschatological imagery) and material culture (divination and fortune-telling tools); visual representations of utopias and dystopias, which have functioned as important means of political expression, particularly in repressive societies; and specific object typologies that have been used for manifesting possible futures (prototypes, renderings, data visualizations). Together, the physical artefacts and the models they represent constitute the hopes and fears of past and present.

几乎所有的文化都发展出了预测未来的模式。人们思考未来的方式多种多样：从预言家和预言家，到城市改善者和保险公司，到趋势预测者和风险评估者，再到电影制片人和小说家。对未来的预测，无论是明示的还是暗示的，都与他们自己的现在相关联。他们可能会批评现有的事态，或只是提供一个更美好的世界的承诺。从某种意义上说，预测和预测未来的专门知识是可能的这一前提存在着内在的矛盾。就其本质而言，关于未来的主张在提出时是无法证实的。这对自称未来学家或未来专家的人提出了很高的修辞要求，他们必须通过精神、统计或科学手段来证明自己的上级洞察力。该项目将探讨不同时间和地点的社会认为什么是未来的专业知识，以及这种专业知识如何在视觉上表现出来。这个项目将探讨未来专业知识的一个主要方面，特别是研究未来学家的说服剧目的视觉维度。该领域的大多数工作都强调文本是未来学家的主要工具。正如英国广播公司（BBC）最近关于这一主题的广播纪录片所表明的那样，人们对未来专家的预测非常着迷，从德尔菲的神谕到诺查丹玛斯，再到20世纪的科幻小说作家，关于这种专业知识的文献非常丰富。然而，这种传统的视觉模拟通常被轻视。艺术家和设计师对未来的预测有时被用作口头描述的辅助手段;通常它被视为例外或古怪（除了显著的例外，如列奥纳多达芬奇的作品）。这个项目将检查不规范的材料，寻求提供一个未来的专业知识，而不是一系列的专题例子。此外，研究范围将包括技术性质的“非艺术”视觉材料，如专利，图表，地图，图表和图表。这项研究将纳入V&A的首届展览，其新的一套临时展览画廊将于2016年开幕。“未来：一段历史”将是一个深思熟虑的，研究驱动的检查想象投影作为一个历史现象在地球仪。它将描绘一段来自中世纪的预言，（例如中世纪的最后审判图像），通过越来越多的工具和世俗的企图来控制未来（例如在现代主义城市规划中），到最近对明确的虚构作为面向未来的艺术和设计的一种运作方式的探索，因为从业者对他们工作的基本投机性质有了更多的自我意识。它将探索许多相互关联的研究途径：宗教艺术（末世图像）和物质文化（占卜和算命工具）的跨文化比较;乌托邦和反乌托邦的视觉表现，这是政治表达的重要手段，特别是在压抑的社会中;以及用于表现可能的未来（原型，渲染，数据可视化）的特定对象类型学。这些实物制品和它们所代表的模型共同构成了过去和现在的希望和恐惧。