Leonardo, Volume 57, Issue 3

Editorial

Future Mapping: You Are Here

I was recently asked to share thoughts on how to co-create the future in honor of International Women’s Day, for Creative Switzerland. My first thought was a question: Who are the cartographers mapping human futures today? In reply, I turn to the pages of Leonardo and the work across the Leosphere that chart a course forward led by irrepressible curiosity, experimental collaborations, and creative sparks of experience and inquiry. I think of women whose vision, ingenuity, and resilience inspire us all. Women of valor who interweave strength with courage and humility. I think of men whose insights, vulnerability, humor, and humanity enable us all. Men of true grit, grace, and generosity. I think of people of all genders embracing the truth of who we are at our core. I think of those who are emerging and those yet to come. My unborn granddaughter, my nieta, and the generations to follow. These are the mapmakers shaping our shared future. I love maps. I miss the kind of maps you hold in your hands, the ones you meticulously fold and unfold to scan and decode directions before retracing intricate lines, reverting them to original design, pocket-sized origami rectangles. I miss looking up from my phone to consult public maps spread out on walls or kiosks, the ones with a reassuringly assertive star that indicate “You Are Here!” Leonardo pursues future mapping to guide us through an increasingly unrecognizable world whose foundational transformation is accelerated by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the demise of planetary stability. The instability of human systems and ecosystems is accentuated by the devastation of climate catastrophe, mass extinctions, and civil society breakdown. While these profound disruptions threaten to overwhelm us with utter disorientation, if not despair, Leonardo reminds us to find hope in the possibility of radical reorientation. Throughout this volume and this issue, Leonardo continues its quest to reveal new perspectives that reorient us and point the way ahead. We need new  perspectives. We need all of us. And none of us, no matter how lonely or small, is alone. Together, we bear collective witness and responsibility to a fundamental shift from the Extractive Era to a Regenerative Future. The outgoing Extractive Era dominated human experience defined by three power plays: to contain, control, and conquer. The emerging Regenerative Future is shaped by three imperatives: to connect, collaborate, and above all co-create. To co-create a regenerative future, we do not need to outsmart AI nor outpace climate change; we need to humanize interrelationships within a multi-species planet and a multi-intelligence world. We all need to become more human, more humane, to humanize how we navigate this period of existential threats and usher in a period of exquisite thriving. At Leonardo, we recognize that complex times require creative strategies. The world is calling us to unleash our birthright of creativity, curiosity, and wonder. Let us join the mapmakers to co-create a future in which all of humankind values humankindness, compassion, and peace. Let us co-create a world with a constellation of creative work to H.E.A.L., an acronym for hope, empathy, awe, and love. Let us co-create a time to honor all people who embrace the entwined audacity and humility, who love and bring new life into our gorgeous, fragile world. If we look closely, we all face a star right in the middle of our maps indicating “You Are Here.” Ready or not, here we are.

Diana Ayton-Shenker
Chief Executive Officer, Leonardo/ISAST
Executive Director of the ASU Partnership

Open Access Article

All Watched Over by Our Data Double

Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan, and Ben Rubin, in collaboration with Robert Gerard Pietrusko and Stewart Smith, EXIT, 2008--2019. Collection Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. (<c> Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Photo<c>Luc Boegly.)

ABSTRACT: The term data double denotes information generated by and collected from users of networked communications to construct relational databases in marketing and other domains. Each subject (user) of this surveillance-panoptical system inevitably informs and objectifies all other subjects. Social media experiences are based on our continuously “tracked” engagement. Surveillance functions across written and spoken language, biometrics, geolocation, and visual and behavioral patterns. This text is primarily concerned with visual media and its production and (re)circulation as the accumulation of data through uploading, viewing, liking, commenting, remixing, and sharing. The article explores how selected media artists reflect upon the potential of recirculating information to reveal our data doubles and the surveillance-panoptical system.