“The Extrapolation Factory is an imagination-based studio for design-led futures studies, founded by Chris Woebken and Elliott P. Montgomery. The studio develops experimental methods for collaboratively prototyping, experiencing and impacting future scenarios.”
Joining the founders of The Extrapolation Factory, Natsuki organized and facilitated three workshops—UNICEF MSA Visioning Workshop in New York City, Mobile Service Station at PS 147 in Bushwick, Brooklyn and Discount Possibilities during NYU’s ITP Summer Camp.
UNICEF MSA Visioning Workshop
UNICEF employees who make up the Multilateral Systems Analysis in Governance and Multilateral Affairs group approached the Extrapolation Factory to facilitate a visioning workshop process around their group’s goals for the future.
We proposed the idea of developing a series of fictional dream sequences that children around the world might relate to through the lens of international children's experiences. The dream sequences were visualized and communicated as paper-craft dioramas that depict the elements of the dream (or metaphors for the ideas) as a way to archive the thoughts that surfaced during the workshop. These dreams were not meant as prescriptive agendas for their work, but rather as ideation for instances that could serve as inspirational reference points going forward.
Role: project manager
Sade‘s Dream
Sade is from a place in the middle of conflict and chaos. Her dream is to have an engine that can transport her to a better place; not just to live but to imagine new possible futures. The engine brings her to the moon, animals are reassuring. There, she meets a boy, who has also escaped from his own country in conflict. They come together to experience peace and take that as a first step to envisioning how they can bring that peace back to their cities and villages.
Malaya‘s Dream
Malaya lost her home after the Hayan typhoon hit the Philippines. Her dream is to have a 3D printer that can turn what we consider as trash into new things. With it, she prints food for her family and her community so that they can eat all together. She also prints a disk of knowledge and uploads it into her head so that she doesn't have to go to a conventional school anymore. Now she can come anything she wants to be.
Abdi Obama’s Dream
Abdi was born in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. He never knew his home, but he knew the desert and had dreams of a home. He went to school, and he learned about oceans, jungles, and many other things. In his dream, he is visited by an army of squids at night, and he tells them to summon the shark to come and chase away the evil doers so that he can go home. The squids bring their ocean friends with them, and one of them takes Abdi back home. The shark chases the evil doers to the desert, where the scorpion is waiting. Abdi’s home is surrounded by trees, birds, and animals, but very modern. He has a permanent home and school and a car.
Frida's Dream
Frida lives in a rural community in Pakistan, where child marriage is still a common practice. Young girls are married off to wealthy elderly men. Her dream is to have an angel who would whisper to her parents and change their minds about her upcoming marriage so that she can go to school, and eventually get married to a person of her choice at the right time.
2014
Mobile Services Stations @ PS147
The Extrapolation Factory was invited by NurtureArt to lead a five-week short course on futures studies with students at Public School 147 in the spring of 2014. The students were challenged to imagine new mobile services that could change social scenarios in their neighborhood, in Bushwick, over the next 20 – 25 years.
Following a discussion and lecture on the evolution of mobile services, the students began their futuring process by generating a list of ideas and issues that they deemed interesting, important or exciting. Their lists covered themes such as social media, pop culture, gender, food, and health. The students associated ideas on their list with four domains that may play significant roles in the future (climate, language, insects and robots) to generate concepts for their mobile services.
After sketching several iterations on their ideas, the students’ final concepts were actualized as scale models, which were exhibited in the exhibition ‘Multiplicity’ at Invisible Exports gallery, opening August 1, 2014.
Students created mobile services such as Spare Change Machine, a robotic service that digests scrap metal and shapes it into coins for supporting homeless people; Insect Clinic, a service that offers breeding and delivery of beneficial symbiotic insects for community gardens; and Insta-Bug, an animal operated service that deploys photographing insects to document your life and upload to your social media stream.
Role: Teaching assistant
2014
For more about NurtureArt, click here.
Discount Possibilities
Discount Possibilities – Canal Street is jointly organized and run by The Extrapolation Factory and the Situation Lab as an opportunity to explore experiential and guerrilla futures strategies.
On Sunday June 8, 2014 at NYU’s ITP Camp, ITP students worked together to create artifacts from futures that might be found at a black market street sale on Canal Street in Chinatown a decade, a generation, or a century from today. Participants attempted to imagine tomorrow’s irresistible bargains, knockoffs and impulse buys.
Participants created a variety of future products such as Granny Snuff, a future drug to help the elderly population escape the hardships of old age; Couple Bubble is a device that creates a bubble shield around a couple in public space; and Dream Catcher, a digital interface to capture nightly dreams for future replay and broadcasting.
At the end of the workshop, the resulting products were carried to Canal Street at the corner of Broadway for a pop-up sale, advertised as ‘Discount Possibilities’.
Role: Workshop planning, preparation and packaging design assistant.
2014
For more about The Extrapolation Factory, click here.