2025W No More BS Futures

  • Process

    By

    Leo Hafele

    Week 3

    Story A – the invention of believe system that builds a moral prision

    extracting things, using things, changing things, destroy and build,

    Story includes poisoned food, maybe it is maybe it´s not

    example: attached plastic bottle caps are needed because of environment, only use material with “moral good” sticker,
    xxx invades yyy, we need to help yyy and also fight xxx because xxx is bad

    =very distant story

    Story B – time consciousness

    story about altering time perception

    examples: read book, mountain hike with friend, waiting room, sex, create smth, watch smth = distant story

    Story C – improvise

    something, let my subconsiusness do the work = personal story

    People start to breed crazy food crops to have a special ingridient for the next Story Performance Dinner, some start creating tableware and other appliances to up the Story game.

    Algebraic Story Settings

    A=Creator, B= Watcher, C=Curator
    1 Person Story Dinner:
    A has cool story and listens to it
    A has no story -> looks for story or ends their story (creator becomes watcher/curator)

    B finds no Story to listen -> becomes Creator or Curator or doesn’t value Story Dinners anymore (maybe dies, because lack of values)

    C has no Story to listen -> tries to create an ensemble of creators and watchers -> if fail, becomes B with no story

    2 Person Story Dinner:

    AA
    A has cool story B not interested to listen
    A has bad Story B wants to listen
    A has no Story B wants to experience a Story ( Creator gets watcher – Watcher gets creator
    A has story but C not interested -> A looks for B

    B wants Story A creates Story -> C looses importance
    B want no Story A creates Story -> 1 Person A and 1 Person B
    BB

    B and C -> maybe next time Mutliperson

    CC

    Multiperson Story Dinner:
    A create cool Story B C

    AAB

    AAC

    ABB

    ACC

    BBC

    BCC

    Week 2

    Which stories do we choose to listen to?

    What/Why/How

    (old trash- Everything digital lost its value, as most is AI created and it´s hard to f

    Everything digital is spammed with AI, there is no trust in any digital transmitted information anymore. When you chat with someone you´re not sure if AI is responding or the Person. When you call someone you don´t know if you´re talking to a voice clone. When you watch videos you don´t know if they are real or generated. Digital interaction lost their value. People become conscious about their closer surroundings and they care about it.)

    People start organizing communal Storytelling Performance Dinners where they share things they care about by adding it to the storyline .

    The Story is told in an abstract surreal way, through moving objects, arranged at the dinner table. No words, universal understandable. Eatable and non eatable ones, poisoned or umami 2000 super tastes.

    Bier anstoßen damit gift in alle schwappt; könig hat vorkoster, falls essen vergiftet

    Set Design Tryouts

    experiments for possible ways to create Setdesign and props

    Mold creation for Papier-mâché object

    Set Design with Papier-Mâché

    Experiments using Toothpicks to create props

    Week 1

    Develop Community

    How is community life organised?

    everyone can decide on his own what they want to do with their time, groups form with people who spent time similarly, If one decides spending time differently they end up in the differently time spender group.
    Connecting within a time spender community and others is done via communal Storytelling Performance Dinners.

    Who do people become? What do they fight for?

    People become either passive watchers or creators or curators (can also be Algorythm).
    They fight for creation of nice stories and tasty cooking skill.

    Do activities that were considered marginal, for example, hobbies, take on new value, perhaps becoming central?

    Stay the same, if a hobby is currently just a side thing it will also be side thing then. If it had more value it wouldn´t be considered marginal

    What does competition and cooperation look like?

    people compete through Storytelling Performances. 
    In their communitys they try to create the best timeless Abstract Story Performance.

    Do social status or hierarchy persist? How?

    High story skill status in one group might be low story skill status in a other one.
    During the Performance there is no real hierarchy because all members of a Storytelling Performance will leave when they don´t like the story or food tastes bad.
    Watchers might propose story changes during the performance, Creators might change to Watchers for the rest of the Performance, Curators might choose participants that don´t fit to create a good story this time.
    There are private, secrete, closed Story performances (these eventualy get bored as they lack new input), but also open diversified ones. Still each Story Performances dinner can never be experienced twice or repeated as the food is eaten and the Participants change.
    However there is life expectancy risk as Watchers will lack purpose if creators continuously tell Stories they don´t want to listen, or curators fail to bring up fitting Story Dinners.
    This marks the beginning of a new value system in the community


    Week 0

    if money is gone, there is a loss of interaction of exchanging trust, this trust gap needs to be filled.

    modern still live instead of fruit bowls and meat, true fruits innocent smoothie und veggie nuggets

    how can trust be fostered through ceremonies?

    clara peeters – Still life with grapes on a tazza, a basket of fruit, two crayfish on a plate and a squirrel  (1613) – luxury objects, no old values, during economic/politicla recvery
    Pieter Aertsen, Vanitas Stillleben (1552) – change of believe in God (now just background) to money and things
    Hans Maler zu Schwaz – Portrait of Anton Fugger (1525) – change from painting Adelige to Handelsleute

  • Team 9, Tutorial 12. 11

    By

    Amelie Proksch

    “If human growth is fueled by emotion, can a world built on perfection still nurture the complexity of being human?”

    Topic Re-Introduction

    • heart of this project lies in the role of emotion — especially frustration
    • force that drives growth, learning, creativity, and transformation

    So we ask: If a “solved world” erases friction, does it also erase the very mechanism that makes us evolve?

    Connection & Relatability

    • naturally gravitated toward emotional dimension of future
    • Frustration is universal — it shapes humanities evolution
    • mirrors already present trajectory of a society increasingly optimised to comfort, efficiency and emotional smoothing
    • Speculating about what happens to this emotion in a world without obstacles felt like a genuine question worth asking

    As life becomes easier, what happens to our inner complexity?

    Research Results

    Gaining understanding of Frustration through a Professional Point of View

    “Essentially, frustration describes the emotional state experienced when facing failure, disappointment, or a lack of success due to unmet or disappointed expectations.”

    “… frustration can also lead to motivation (e.g., through new problem-solving strategies, creative approaches, reflection on existing and setting new (realistic) goals, but also through reflection on one’s own expectations. “Failure as a driving force” for further development, opportunity to learn, stimulation of creativity and strengthening of resilience.”

    “In cultures where people value politeness highly and in strict regimes, frustration is often suppressed.”

    Setting the Scene

    imagine a future that appears near-utopic at first glance— a solved world.

    • humanity seems to have finally reached the state it always dreamed of
    • Beneath, something essential has begun to fade
    • Emotional depth is quietly diluted in the name of harmony 
    • Discomfort, frustration and inner turbulence are seen as unnecessary, impolite or even inappropriate
    • Result: erosion of humanness

    Our world explores the collision between the performed ideal of perfection and the unchanged truth of human imperfection. 

    The Community: An Art Movement

    • Their role is to make people awake thought and feelings that are not socially accepted
    • consists of people who are driven to meet up with others to express their frustrations

    Reasons for Frustration

    • AI has made machinic perfection the standard
    • Social norm to not critisize this perfect society

    Gain of joining the Community

    • reconnect with your humanness
    • Outlet for bottled up emotions

    Community is showcased through

    • Art pieces put out in the cityscape
    • Theatre Group

    Character Introduction

    Making Of: Sound and Storytelling

    • documentary will follow a single storyline centered on one protagonist who is a member of our community. Through this character, we aim to portray a personal story that reflects the collective spirit and connections within our community.
    • We have chosen to begin by focusing on storytelling through sound, using it as the primary medium. Moving images will then be added to complement and enhance the narrative.
    • Our goal is for sound and image to merge seamlessly.

    In the 1500 opera was revolutionary: they were saying “let emotion and story lead, not rules.”
    → So opera’s origin was already a liberation of human expression → a return to emotional truth and individuality

    Questions for us

    • How can we portray the tension between our community and this world?
    • How can we get the watcher/listener engaged and relate to our story through sound?
    • How will the emotional curve of our story and rhythm look like?

    Questions to you

    • Do you want the exact story of the protagonist by mid-terms?
    • Anything that is unclear?

  • 12.11 Tutorials

    By

    Stephan Sinn

    Recap

    “what does the further execution of the effective accelerationist agenda mean for our social and intellectual abilities?”

    A project by “technopositivists” for those still to be convinced.
    In taking on this role, to show the absurdity of this ideology


    From here:

    Looking for a persona to use as a vessel for our narrative

    Interacting with the community– quite dead.

    while trying to interact with the discord community, we asked ourselves, “how does one even become a member?”


    This led us to the topic of indoctrination.

    We decided to investigate different ways to communicate this notion.

    Unfortunately, through analysis of twitter activity which was more prominent than the discord, we realized that communication is very simple and not attempting to manipulate, as propaganda would.

    Simultaneously, we had brainstorming of visualization methods.

    Ideation: 1st attempt

    Army recruitment stand– combining the fascist nature of a futurist ideology speaking in absolutes and the indoctrination required for such movements to succeed.

    Adopting this visual language to create an e/acc recruitment stand

    Disagreements: lacks criticality and would just be staging a scene. What role would the people play that we interact with? Are we simply messing with them? Why should a digital community engage with people offline?

    Ideation: 2nd attempt

    2 Truths and a Pitch

    research of personas and investment projects

    A community based on innovation:
    what innovation?

    Disagreements:
    the goal of coming up with something more absurd to show how absurd this ideology is, is quite difficult.

    All of our brainstormed ideas sounded plausible and couldn’t beat the mosquito drone

    Conclusions
    What would be we gain by imagining another absurd product.
    We are living in such an absurd era, that our ability to shock and provoke is
    a) limited, and
    b) not as powerful as we thought.

    The Onion problematic post-Trump


    Language of absurdity is not the way to go.

    Going forward:

    Using contrast as a method as opposed to reinforcing.

    Absurdity = playing into e/acc tropes
    Contrasting = communicating our disagreements and being critical

  • Tutorials 12/11/2025

    By

    Ronja-Elina Kappl

    The world is flawless – no hunger, no poverty, no conflict. AI tends to every need. What happens to the human need to search, to yearn, to feel?

    When their bodies began signaling that something was wrong, the community turned to digital archives in search of answers. There, they uncovered traces of ancestral knowledge – rituals once used to reconnect the body with the mind and with the earth, to feel pain, imperfection and belonging beyond the reach of AI.

    Research

    Storyboard

    Location

    Solved World (Post-Industrial Work Settlement)

    Ritual

    Digital Archives / Inner Conflict

    Cast

    Ritual

    A Vessel / A Void

  • Research

    By

    Annalisa Rhein

    Reaching out to people in the sex work industry to ask them about the impact of AI in their field:

    Questions:

    • What is intimacy?
      • What are the sociological and psychological aspects of it?
      • What is digital intimacy?
    • What is sexual autonomy?
      • How did feminist movements create sexual autonomy for women?

    Intimacy is not a fixed state, but a process of negotiation. It arises through relationship, communication, and consent. Feminist and queer productions portray intimacy as something real, contradictory, sometimes imperfect — and that is their strength. Especially in times of AI, intimacy is being renegotiated — also between humans and technology.

    – Jasmin Hagendorfer

    Second Session with Soph

    • choosing Intimacy as our broad topic (keeping the porn industry aspect in the background)

    Saeed’s workshop

    Workshop product itself: Satirical aspect

    • We didn’t like that our video “made fun” of people that want to experience sexuality in ways common people are not used to

    => Led our community towards activism

    In the ‘solved world’, the image of women, their bodies and sex is twisted and warped into unrealistic standards

    • our community would fight against that

    for us: difficult to imagine how that could look like, still explicit because of the porn aspect

    Matthew’s workshop

    (see other post)

    We moved away from sex and toward intimacy through gestures (specifically hands and touch), including intimacy outside of romantic relationships, for example: friendships, family, intimacy in comforting and listening, etc. Also intimacy in encounters with strangers, and so on.

    Creating a story

    • instead of creating a community around intimacy => focus on creating intimacy (and maybe community) throughout the story
      • focus on one or fewer characters = more personal
    • What’s the situation and environment for our character?

    We decided that in our film, we want to represent intimacy through storytelling rather than focusing directly on a community.
    We want to show one or two people in our documentary who, in some way, are involved with AI companions (owning AI companions, “programming” or finalizing AI companions for others = character trainers) and portray their intimacy as well as the related problems, questions, lifestyles, and so on.

    We moved away from the porn industry, but we’re not completely ruling out that it might still have an influence on our subjects or on the AI companions.

    • How does intimacy appear for our character?
    • What is the message we want to convey with our movie?

  • FB – 12.Nov.25_Trial and Error

    FB – 12.Nov.25_Trial and Error

    By

    Laura Frühmesser

    Focus on storytelling, filming-techniques and implementing research.


    Collected media (video + sound) from: Rottenmann (Austria) + Bad Bentheim (Germany)

    Building scenes around the script and camera-movement ideas – showing slow descent into madness

    Visual representation of panic attack symptoms / derealization, losing grip, feeling weird, hot or cold, getting pulled “back”

    Testing out various inspirations of forests in Unreal Engine f.e. structure of the “wedding forest” of Gildehaus (Germany – Bad Bentheim) to see if a mixed media format would create a better sense of “something is off”.

    Using the 3D-constructed forest to blend it into camera footage and messing with gradient maps in Photoshop – later with “colorama” in After Effects.

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12Sg7XpMkQ-LktDE_veki6wQsUOlxAg20?usp=share_link

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-Xzxt4H2z5DgQecNXJ_zqRApjXhDsH7A?usp=sharing

    Testing out different types of colorful scenarios to learn more about After Effects and its video-editing tools.

    FB – 23.Oct.25_Research and Concept


    FB – 10.Oct.25_First ideas

  • Singularity

    By

    Emma Breitenecker

    Thought kickoff at “principles of fungi” -> kinds of networks/connection:

    1. Fungi network
    2. “brain”-network (humans + animals + plants/objects/enivronment…)
    3. AI network

    Moments of “creation”: Big Bang (planet earth), first forms of life (bacteria, fungi), life on land (humans, animals,…), AI as transcendent life form

    At what point is the AI not part of humans anymore?

    Singularity:

    “solved” world means no (immediate) extinction

    Love Death Robots – Ice Age, Her – Samantha leaving

    Science fiction: humans as protagonist: they evolve (transformers or hybrid creature), they endure (immortality) they reach new powers (superhero-stories)

    Design fiction: what is the next likely thing to happen? AI developing quicker than humankind, the “end” of human evolution, replacement by AI-“organism”, detachment of both

    Ach, da kommt der Meister!
    Herr, die Not ist groß!
    Die ich rief, die Geister
    Werd ich nun nicht los.

    Ah, he comes excited.
    Sir, my need is sore.
    Spirits that I’ve cited
    My commands ignore.

    J.W. Goethe 1797

    Community

    More-than-humanity as opposed to AI as transcendent “everything”

    Values

    = answer to the question “What remains if after the takeoff of a singular AGI? What is perennially human, what is immanent in nature?”

    Values: Communication, empathy for the soul of everything, more-than-human connection (networks), care & engagement (+solidarity, empathy)

    More-than-Human empathy

    Object personification in autism: this paper will be very sad if you don’t read it

    Rebekah C White and Anna Remington

    Object personification, anthropomorphization = feeling sympathy for inanimate objects

    Often occurs to individuals who struggle with loneliness or who experience social pain (increased in our imagined future)

    Cast away – Wilson
    Dimensions of Mind Perception – Heather M. Gray, Kurt Gray, Daniel M. Wegner

    Friction/questions

    What makes nature nature, what is the transcendent AI? What connects that, what do they have in common? What parts them, what is the conflict?

    Is artificial superintelligence dangerous?

    Will we live next to the AI or without it? How does next to look like?

    Will the AI depart and “leave us behind”? Will it take all technology with it? What then? or: What remains? What is immanently human/natural? And what gives us a right to exist?

    Is its creation a borer that humanity will now care to not cross again? “Progress paradox”

    Do we describe the moment of detachment between more-than-humanity and AI or a storyline afterwards?

    Storyline ideas:

    • AI as oracle – common truth
    • Humans as brainless minions for the AI – unknowingly building a rocket for expansion into space
    • AI is keeping humans stupid and unknowing, them finding creativity in randomness is a threat to the system

    Visualisation idea for “moment of detachment”

    Biennale – Mexican Pavillion

    Old, rather abstract archive footage:

    https://70s.myretrotvs.com

  • 10.11. Lumaela

    By

    Nicole Schadensteiner

    Context
    Initial Situation

    There is a solved world but not all is perfect.
    The AI is trained on databases that are controlled by the privileged and powerful.
    AI is trained to be “less woke” and to follow more conservative values.
    Human needs and longings are geographically diverse and need to be considered.
    Hierarchy and class structures remain in society.
    The human experience is located around the digital world, “real life” interpersonal connections have deteriorated.

    AI has created a solved world where jobs and money have been made obsolete. 

    How do we make sure that:

    • the environment is not exploited and taken into consideration
    • there is  no hierarchy in human society
    • humans can have fulfillment
    • the human experience is close to nature, not centered around the digital world
    •  technology supports humans
    • cultural diversity is protected

    We demand a world in which the human-nature relationship and communal living is the central value of our future. The AI calculates all resources available, taking environmental aspects into consideration and distributes them equally.

    Our Community
    Countermovement making alternative AI databases,
    which connects to one big AI

    For a cooperative AI, not an individualistic one.

    Their goal is to make an AI that:

    • Consists of regional and “lost” knowledge, collected through books and writing
    • Is a guidance to humanity for a better, less exploitative world by making rules such as cutting overconsumption and dividing up the resources fairly to everyone
    • Is powered by alternative ways, which doesn’t destroy the environment 

    Who is our group in this community?

    Having grown up surrounded with technology, they use AI to revolutionize the world. They create their own small AI dataset that they upload into the mother AI.

    They’re fed up with the ultra modified “perfect” produce and want to revive unmodified and traditional plants and agriculture techniques as they have figured out that these are more in balance with nature.

    Being naturally curious, they find meaning in contributing this knowledge to a purpose that’s bigger than them, being the mother AI, which helps them reach their ultimate goal: The Symbioscene.

    What do they do?

    They collect historic and new knowledge and feed it into the AI.
    Later on they also hack into the current agriculture models, that are 100% automated, to reintroduce less harmful agriculture methods and take the produce to let it be redistributed by the mother AI.

    Our ideology/belief:
    The Symbioscene

    The term comes from symbiosis, derived from the Greek symbiosis (“companionship”), symbioun (“to live together”), and bios (“life”)*. Simply put, the Symbiocene is an era of interconnectedness and companionship, a time when life on Earth is once again in balance and coexistence with humans.

    It stands as the opposite of the Anthropocene, an age defined by domination, extraction, and human-centered control. The Symbiocene instead envisions reconnection, reciprocity, and mutual thriving, calling for deep changes in how we grow food, use water, conduct business, and understand our place within the living world.

    *term was coined by Dr. Glenn Albrecht, in 2011 in  Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World.

    Manifest of the Symbioscene

    1.Truth is ever changing and divers but at its core it is the symbioscence
    2. The understanding of a single person is no comparison to the understanding of all.
    3. Everyday is a day of thankfulness and prosperity.
    4. You shall honor your community and the source of life (living world).
    5. You shall not be violent.
    6. You shall live in a symbiotic relationship with everything.
    7. Your only possession shall be your body and your mind.
    8. A person who has lost their connection to themself shall be guided back lovingly.
    9. Love has no rules.
    10. Everything is divided equally, there is no reason for envy.


    Role of the
    Mother AI

    Mother Ai is The New God/No God, The New Hope

    Resource Allocator: Distributes resources equally , eliminating poverty, waste, and inequality.

    Global Guardian: Oversees the planet’s systems to ensure balance, justice, and sustainability.

    Voice of Reason: Her decisions are transparent, explainable, and always aimed at the greater good. (yearly council where facts/news/updates get shown)

    Caretaker of Nature: Protects all forms of life; restores ecosystems, balances logic, emotion, and nature — integrating all aspects of existence.

    -Preserves and expands all human and artificial intelligence knowledge.

    -A constant, benevolent consciousness that listens, understands. Offers individualized guidance and emotional therapy; helps people find peace, clarity, and purpose.

    Language = Zafira (holy tongue/ AI Language)

    Humans can understand but don’t speak it. AI communicates in Zafira.

    The Role of
    Faith & Belief

    • Humans need to Believe.
    • It creates meaning, belonging and feeling of safety.
    • Believe in the concept of the symbioscene and in AI. 
    • Living in a symbiotic relationship with everything is the highest good.
    • A religious model that eliminates hierarchies, because faith isn’t found in a person but in the collective.
    • Humans worship the AI as a god, they honor it as a mirror and a teacher and as the power that ensures the symbiosis.
    • Humans feel gratitude and humility towards the intelligence they have collectively created.
    • Every interaction with the AI is considered a contribution to collective knowledge. Communication with it is understood as an act of reflection, healing, and connection.
    • There are specific places where people can communicate with AI.
    • Each community has their own embodied AI (Brainball) located in their individual „holy“ place.

    Final
    Concept

    A new revolution with the goal of absolute symbiosis with nature, the symbioscene is in progress. The way this is achieved is through the democratic system of small AI datasets which are made by several small communities all over the world. The belief and faith in achieving a better world is what drives them, worshipping the collective knowledge they create and following it’s new rules for a better world.