A Night of Inception and Worldbuilding

I must admit it has been a while since my last post. So much has taken place over the course of these last few but short weeks. To start things of, I would like to recap on this night's event, the 5d Flux Conference. It was truly an amazing night showcasing the melting pot of ideas and the future of interactive design. Nearly decades ago it was mere magic to have objects materialize out of thin air. However, within recent years we have witnessed a large influx of technology within a personable sector. Hardware capable of out-computing the NASA JPL supercomputers of the 60s or the 80s are now available at our fingertips with smartphones and tablet machines. Software used to conceive and composite the high end special effects of 90s blockbusters are now within the reach of the public. We are granted the access to a digitized reality, high fidelity simulation and rapid fabrication. Here's a crazy fact, there were millions more transitors produced than individual grains of rice globally within just this past year.

With the shortening of our attention spans as one of the trade offs, we have witnessed this change within less than 10 years. In short what it means is that things on the technology sector are exponentially skyrocketing and will never cease. The industry and our creativity run concurrently with technology at different wavelengths, but always forward. Much like a double edged sword, it can be argued that while technology serves to compensate some of the short comings of our human abilities at the same time it limits our creativity, and vice versa. Same thing can be argued with the "industry" being called VUCA. However, one of the most extraordinary examples showcased was 3D printing.

I recall during the Spring of 2009, I had purchased a copy of Exodessey from the Steambot Studios. I came across a page that featured a 1/3 scale model of the Main character Harry Vicard. I had the opportunity to meet with one of the concept artists behind the book, and I asked him how they created this model. Basically the character was visuallized within Zbrush and then printed through a 3D printer. The process sounded simple, yet I never imagined how far many deviously talented individuals would take the technology. It covered everything, complex sustainable architecture, extremely fuel efficient vehicle chassis,  Nike shoes, bone replacements, even human tissue. It is such a wierd thought to ponder around a liver being printed out of a machine. The printer isn't intimidated by such daunting complexity, it only reads complexity as a binary command.

What was learnt from today was that these issues aren't such a hindrance in our ability for world-building and Inception. The process in which the ideas come to be realized within the space of our reality has met the age of rapid fabrication. Although we may be telling the same story repeatedly throughout the course of our history, we learn to build better metaphors and meanings for ourselves. The connect we bear is constructed by the same metaphors we share and tell amongst ourselves.