Case Study #2 - Signs From the Near Future

For this week's case study, I chose the work of Fernando Barbella. He is a creative director and designer who started the tumblr page Signs From the Near Future. Here he has photographs that have been altered to create his vision of our future. These photographs are his interpretation of how we as a society deal with our continually evolving technology. He uses current technological trends to guide his work. In an article on Fast Company, Barbella is quoted saying, 

"New materials, mashups between living organisms and nanotechnologies, improved capabilities for formerly ‘dumb’ and inanimate things . . . There’s lots of awesome things going on around us! And the fact is all these things are going to cease being just ‘projects’ to become part of our reality at any time soon." 

His work shows us how we as a culture may struggle to incorporate some of this new, exciting technology into our current infrastructure. He says,

"On the other hand, I chose to express these things by signs deployed in ordinary places, featuring instructions and warnings because I feel that as we increasingly depend on technology, we will probably have less space for individual judgment to make decisions"

His work takes an aspect of our current reality that is "remixed" with a piece of technology we may encounter and have to incorporate into our everyday lives. For example, we are getting closer and closer to having self-driving cars become available to the public. Barbella imagines our future with cabs that are self-driving. So, again, he is taking something that currently exists and incorporating a new technology that will be a part of our future. He takes a photo of a NYC cab and adds text to help us imagine how a future with self-driving cars could look like.

Another technology that has already been developed but has not made the mainstream are "smart glasses." Here is a sign from the future taking the incorporation of this new technology into account.

As we share more and more of our lives online, we as a society have to deal with the reality of "oversharing." In this photo of a smartphone (a current technology), he shows us what we may start doing to safeguard against oversharing and putting too much out there online.

Synthetic meat is something that has already been developed but is continually being developed to mimic real meat more and more. Here, we see a market that is selling synthetic meat. In Barbella's future, synthetic meat makes the mainstream.

Overall, I enjoyed studying his work, which is a "remix" of our present with the near future. I like how his work is realistic and uses technology that is already developed but not yet mainstream, or is very close to being developed in our near future. Barbella takes something already existing and makes it into a new creation, very similar to what is asked of us in this course, INTE 5340. This week, we are discussing copyrights and fair use. Some of his work features logos and brands we currently use and what results from the "remix" is Barbella's interpretation of our future with the addition of new technologies. This seems -- from what we've learned this week -- that his work falls under "fair use." His work was created with a "transformative" purpose -- as an artistic expression and social commentary on what our very near future could be like as we incorporate newer technologies into our present-day lives.

One thing I would have liked to learn more about is his creative process. I would have liked to learn more about how he made his work, what inspired him, and what continues to inspire. There is very limited information online about him as an artist, and I was only able to pull a few things about him from the interwebs. It seems his main work is in creating advertisements, and his Signs From the Near Future started out as a fun side project and has now been made into a book. Since his work is now published as a book, I think it is safe to say that his photographs are protected by fair use rights.