Workshop: Why We Build Worlds, by Liam Young (Unknown Fields) (After Digitalism sub-theme)
We have always learned the future through imaginary worlds. Long before science and simulations, before satellites traced the earth or models calculated climates, we have rehearsed the future in fictions. We have immersed ourselves in imaginary worlds to wrestle with the unbearable questions of our own making, to carry thoughts too heavy to hold alone.
Fiction is not ornament, it is infrastructure, It is how meaning survives time, how it moves across centuries and cultures, how it speaks what cannot be drawn or measured.
Speculative future worlds are often mistaken for prophecy. They are not crystal balls, they are rehearsal rooms, they do not help us predict the future, they prepare us for it, places where we practice becoming something else. Within their imagined streets and speculative landscapes, we test new ways of living, new relationships between humans and machines, between cities and the living Earth, between extinction and survival. We glimpse the beliefs that build worlds and those that end them.
These worlds hold both our brightest hopes and our darkest fears. They are not escapes, they are confrontations that allow us to feel the weight of choices not yet made and think out loud about who we are, what we fear, and what we might yet become. In this sense, Imaginary Worlds are both born from culture and yet also give birth to it. In this workshop we explore how the worlds we imagine do not stay on the page or the screen, they leak outward, into design studios, policy documents, engineering labs, and political dreams.