Intro: The censored billboard
In 2018, artist Alisha Wormsley’s contribution to the rotating billboard project in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA simply read “There are black people in the future”. [1]
Controversy followed. The landlord of the building asked the project’s organisers to take the work down, effectively censoring it. Why? It made people uncomfortable. Putting aside that art isn’t meant to be comfortable, the billboard and subsequent censorship highlight a key issue - one of representation.
Science, technology and representation
There are black people in the future, in the present and in the past. So why do we rarely see black people depicted in science fiction? Not simply black Americans, but black, asian, and minority ethnicities outside America. And what’s the impact of a lack of representation of non-western cultures in the technology of the future?
Science fiction and science fact are easy bedfellows. One inspires the other in a game of catch-up. However, science fiction and digital technology tend to be viewed through western lenses. Learning to code for example, tends to mean learning English or using tools designed for use in English and by developers from western cultures.
Geography and culture shape our world
Could technology be missing out on different perspectives due to the focus on English and the west? Psychologists have found that geography, and therefore culture, shapes how we see the world: our reasoning, our behaviour, and our sense of self.
A study of remote Hokkaido and the rest of Japan show a frontier spirit similar psychologically to America. Residents are “more individualistic, prouder of success, more ambitious for personal growth, and less connected to the people around them.” [2]
Afrofuturism
So how could different cultures shape changes in our approach to technology? Here we look to science fiction. Afrofuturism is growing in popularity with Hollywood screening work from Nnedi Okorafor. In her trilogy Binti, Dr Okorafor puts Africa and women at the heart of space opera. Here, Binti’s culture plays a huge role in how she perceives the world around her, the alien conflict she’s drawn into and how she solves problems. Ancient tradition meets futuristic technology. [3]
Asiafuturism
Culture also plays a role in Aliette de Bodard’s epic space opera series including The tea master and the detective. Here asian cultures and practices are infused into the heart of technology like the mindships, named in English but stylistically South-east Asian. The gender-swapped Holmesian tale of the mindship ‘The Shadow’s Child’ playing Watson to the detective scholar Long Chau, makes for a jarringly different take on the future and the cultures that will dominate it. [4]
There are black people in the future
Intro: The censored billboard In 2018, artist Alisha Wormsley’s contribution to the rotating billboard project in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA simply read “There are black people in the future”. [1]
Controversy followed. The landlord of the building asked the project’s organisers to take the work down, effectively censoring it. Why? It made people uncomfortable. Putting aside that art isn’t meant to be comfortable, the billboard and subsequent censorship highlight a key issue - one of representation.
Science, technology and representation There are black people in the future, in the present and in the past. So why do we rarely see black people depicted in science fiction? Not simply black Americans, but black, asian, and minority ethnicities outside America. And what’s the impact of a lack of representation of non-western cultures in the technology of the future?
Science fiction and science fact are easy bedfellows. One inspires the other in a game of catch-up. However, science fiction and digital technology tend to be viewed through western lenses. Learning to code for example, tends to mean learning English or using tools designed for use in English and by developers from western cultures.
Geography and culture shape our world Could technology be missing out on different perspectives due to the focus on English and the west? Psychologists have found that geography, and therefore culture, shapes how we see the world: our reasoning, our behaviour, and our sense of self.
A study of remote Hokkaido and the rest of Japan show a frontier spirit similar psychologically to America. Residents are “more individualistic, prouder of success, more ambitious for personal growth, and less connected to the people around them.” [2]
Afrofuturism So how could different cultures shape changes in our approach to technology? Here we look to science fiction. Afrofuturism is growing in popularity with Hollywood screening work from Nnedi Okorafor. In her trilogy Binti, Dr Okorafor puts Africa and women at the heart of space opera. Here, Binti’s culture plays a huge role in how she perceives the world around her, the alien conflict she’s drawn into and how she solves problems. Ancient tradition meets futuristic technology. [3]
Asiafuturism Culture also plays a role in Aliette de Bodard’s epic space opera series including The tea master and the detective. Here asian cultures and practices are infused into the heart of technology like the mindships, named in English but stylistically South-east Asian. The gender-swapped Holmesian tale of the mindship ‘The Shadow’s Child’ playing Watson to the detective scholar Long Chau, makes for a jarringly different take on the future and the cultures that will dominate it. [4]
Links [1] A Developer Censored a ‘Divisive’ Art Billboard Saying ‘There Are Black People in the Future’—Then the Backlash Began https://news.artnet.com/art-world/billboard-censored-pittsburgh-1260494 [2] How east and west think in profoundly different ways http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170118-how-east-and-west-think-in-profoundly-different-ways [3] Binti https://www.amazon.co.uk/Binti-Nnedi-Okorafor-ebook/dp/B00Y7RWXHU? [4] The Tea Master and the Detective https://aliettedebodard.com/2018/03/27/the-tea-master-and-the-detective-ebook-edition-outside-n-america/
Ambient Humanfobia & James_Onsen - Phantasmal Nightmare https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Mist_Spectra/Aura_Obscura/ Daniel Birch - Fluid Dreams & Weightlessness https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Daniel_Birch/Ambient_Vol1/ Magna Ingress - Hiraeth https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Magna_Ingress/The_Endeavor/