Fantastic Futures is an online platform for the exchange of moments in time through recorded sounds, interviews and stories across cultures. It serves as a venue for collecting affective narratives that aspire towards a better future.

The project began as a collaborative group of individuals from Iraq and the United States. Fantastic Futures aimed to provide a platform in which citizens were empowered to represent themselves through the creation and distribution of their own media. Ultimately, the project would generate dialogue on collapsing the barriers of physical space that contribute to misunderstandings between cultures — through emphasizing the subversive value of sharing human experiences across political borders.



Three phases of the online interface were produced. The final one, shown here, created constellations from user-recorded sounds that could be displayed on a geographic map. The constellations served to play different sounds in unison, and in turn, draw parallels between the glimpses of life in different countries.




An earlier phase of the project was produced in partnership with The Noun Project. The final phase received the Rhizome Commission for New Work from the New Museum, and the online platform continues to operate with its support.


PROJECT TEAM


The design phase of Fantastic Futures was a collaboration between Huong Ngo, Or Zubalsky, Andrew Persoff, and Ali Salim Abood.