Futurescaping workshop
Future Erasure is a futurescaping workshop created to immerse and engage museums in a difficult but pressing problem: What is the possible future of heritage in a world where there is no universal canon to distinguish what is worth remembering and preserving from what is not?
Based on research about current trends, indicators and technologies, we imagined a future where museums are so overwhelmed by the amount of items that should count as heritage; they can no longer keep their full collections and must delete 20% of it every year. To figure out what to delete and how this challenge would affect the museum experience of this future, we invited a group of heritage experts from different museums to form the “Deletion Bureau. The experts came from European museums, thus the activities focused around issues regarding European heritage and personalised the materials around the scenario and the problems their institutions face.
We used speculative design and design fiction methods to create materials for this future, such as newspapers, films and a series of physical prototypes, to immerse our participants in this future scenario. The experience centered on three major tasks in order to stimulate debate and push our participants to articulate their values and visions for the futures of their institutions' heritage: creating an algorithm for deletion, prototyping devices for experiencing deleted objects, and envisioning systems for the public to interact with deleted heritage.
Credits:
Workshop was organized by CIID Research as part of the CoHERE project.
Workshop Research and Design: Annelie Berner
Research: Gabi Arrigoni, Areti Galani
Visual Identity: Calle Nordenskjöld
Interface & Machine Design: Peter Kuhberg
Awards:
Dazeen Awards, Longlisted
2019, Future Erasure
IxDA Awards, Shortlisted,
2019, Future Erasure
Core77 Design Awards, Notable,
2018, Future Erasure