In this workshop, we will play a worldbuilding game fætures. Playing this tabletop card game, you are invited to creatively envision speculative worlds through modes of collective brainstorming and individual imagination. The game enables you to work independently but never in isolation from your team, and everyone at the table has the same power to shape the world. You may envision a utopia or confront it with devastation. As your world comes into being, your initial straightforward conceptualization will transform into a nuanced, intricate, forking tapestry marked by negotiations, tensions, and unforeseen combinations. You are encouraged to think, design, and world-build outside of the box and go off the beaten path. fætures is intended to aid designers, writers, creatives, educators, strategists, creatives and students brainstorm and ideate worlds and entanglements in speculative scenarios. fætures workshop is a part of XR/XF: Extended realities, Extended Feminisms series of events, performances and an exhibition supported by the Arts Initiative.

Seating is limited to 12 people. Sign up for the event here: https://forms.gle/B296Zx7A5FPxK6178


Workshop hosts:

Alina Nazmeeva is a media artist and educator. Currently she is the A. Alfred Taubman Fellow at University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Alina creates simulations and worlds that analyze the intra-actions of physical and digital spaces and objects, and their cultural, economic and political ramifications. Using XR, gaming engines, CGI software, machinima, and physical installations, their creative and research practice examines the oscillations and murmurs between virtual and concrete, cities and videogames, life and animation, organic and the engineered. Alina taught at Rhode Island School of Design and Boston Architecture College. Her work was exhibited at the UMich Liberty Annex Gallery, Venice Biennale of Architecture, Art on the Marquee in Boston and at Augment Seattle. Her writing has been published in PLAT, Media-N, CARTHA Magazine, Perspectives, VOICES(Towards other Institutions).


John David Wagner is a design thinker and architect working at the convergence of public space, environmental design, and human rights. Spanning from digital technologies to indigenous craft, John has engaged in design projects spanning from North America, Europe, and South Asia. John received an B.Arch from Virginia Polytechnic + State University, a Masters in Architecture, with Distinction, from Harvard Graduate School of Design, and served as Irving Innovation Fellow and Mittal Fellow at Harvard University where his work focused on architectural practice that challenges the politics of the spatial production in informal contexts. He has been published by the CCA Singapore, Durty Words! Piquent Press, and Open Letters Harvard GSD.