Exploring Design Possibilities through Superfiction

Jon Ardern, Superflux

The cheap energy bubble bursts;Within 10 to 25 years we will hit peak oil production. This means: the system that controls the very fabric of our lives is about to go into turmoil as the cheap energy that we have come to rely on becomes in increasingly expensive. with repercussions in every aspect of our lives, including:

• A massive rise in the cost of produces and products as transportation costs rocket.

• Increased global political instability as fighting over the remaining resources becomes increasingly violent.

• A massive rise in the cost energy as the cost of production, currently predominantly carbon based, rockets.

We are fast approaching, some have argued past, a tipping point in global Co2 levels, where a chain of environmental processes cause an exponential increase in Co2 levels and its associated global heating, this means:

• Increasingly unstable weather patterns leading to a massive globe decrease in agricultural capacity.

• Rising sea levels further reducing human carrying capacity of the earth.

• Changing in the oceanic conveyers making larger areas inhospitably cold and others dry and arid.

Past the tipping point;

The end of life as we know it;The convergence of these and many other global issues will lead to a world where:

• global political structures break down as wars over resources increase.

• global trade breaks down, the cost of transportation rockets and the means of production drastically fall.

• massive global exoduses as large areas of land becomes unable to sustain human civilization.

The ‘Design’ Response:

"... for all its complexity, contemporary society is an artificial construct that can be moved off stage at a moments notice ..."

JG Ballard

ARK-INC sits...

... somewhere here.

The Premise:- These events will happen in one form or another, you can’t stop them, its

out of your hands.

- A disaster is not the event itself but the impact that the event has.

- By adjusting to the forthcoming events now your lifestyle will not change as the world does.

- ARK-INC. will help facilitate that adjustment now.

Post-collapse Reading

Disaster Tourism

Attention: Shem ***

Date 16/06/06

INVOICE NUMBER: 67890

TERMS: 30 Days

Description Quantity Unit Price Cost

ARK-INC. Radio,

FM, SW, Transmit and Data receive, model.

Your local FM station transmits on: _________

Note our Short Wave service is encrypted and

can only be received by this device - keep your

function keys safe as they are unique to this

device.

01 *** ***

ARK-INC Publications:

FROM ABSTRACT TO INTRINSIC, calculating

value shifts in the 21st century and beyond.

CHOOSING LIFE ARK-INC, the 12 steps and

beyond.

THE SIGNS OF OUR TIME, understanding events

and evidence.

DON’T DRINK FROM THE MAIN STREAM, tuning

into Ark Radio.

LEARNING TO LOVE THE CRASH, staying

positive in the face of adversity.

COLLAPSING SOCIETY, organising a community

from the bottom up.

06 *** ***

ARK-INC Holidays.

Two week ‘Future London’ trip.

01 *** ***

ARK-INC Holidays, framed photos.

Please note that any personal photos taken that

may reveal the identity of other members must be

kept private unless explicit permission from those

members has been given.

03 *** ***

Inventory Verification 01 *** ***

Collective, introductory services 01 *** ***

Introductory Personal Consultation 01 *** ***

Personal Paradigm Indexing and Value

Calculation Consultation

01 *** ***

Subtotal ***

Tax 17.50% ***

Please note as requested the abstract cost has been omitted from this invoice. .

The agreed fee has debited from your account. Total

***

Thank you for using ARK-INC. Your business is important to us please find enclosed with

your order a free water purification canteen complements of ARK-INC

Sincerely yours,

Jon Ardern

ARK-INC. representative for area north fifty one, east west zero.

T +44 (0) 7779 340 115

Jon@ark-inc.info

www.ark-inc.info

products & services

Invoice

Ark Radio Short Wave

h"p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3UP8MwJpQ

The short wave transmission from Ark Radio:

“...we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil ”

George W. Bush, State of the Union Address 2006

Ark 12 steps:

“We admitted that our life style had become unsustainable and ultimately destructive to ourselves and the earth upon which we depend.

We came to the realization that our collective actions had lead us to a global crisis that we were powerless over when standing alone.

Having seen the shadows of this fate, we came to believe that we could find another way. Freeing ourselves from the past, by finding faith in our collective common purpose.

We now endeavor to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our lifestyle.

In light of this, we admitted to ourselves and to the Ark collective the extent and nature of our wrongs.

We made a sober decision to be entirely ready to remove, with the help available to us, all detrimental aspects of our lifestyle.

Having made an inventory of the harm we have done, we now become willing, with the help of the Ark collective, to make amends to such harm.

We now make direct amends to such harm wherever possible, except when to do so would cause harm to ourselves or the Ark collective.

We continue to take a personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it.

Seeking through research and contemplation, to improve our conscious awareness of the earth, and the role of ourselves and the Ark collective upon it.

Seeking not only for the knowledge of a sustainable life but the means to carry it out.

We follow these steps & traditions for the sake of ourselves, the Ark collective and those who will follow in our footsteps.”

THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have

...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfz4-Dg4i4k

ARK.Inc Film

Ark Inc presented at the Royal College of Art, London

Ark.Inc as a ‘Superfiction’

A Superfiction is a visual or conceptual artwork which uses fiction and appropriation to mirror organisations, business structures, and/or the lives of invented individuals.

- Peter Hill, 1989

The project was also presented as a performance at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

http://www.phoenixproject.org.uk/

“The Phoenix Project is about how we are going to cope with the changes that are coming due to the depletion of the world's energy reserves and climate change. Unfortunately these changes will not be gradual enough to allow easy transition so some of us are going to have to make the changes ourselves without waiting for the government to do it for us.

The Utopia Experiment was established by Dr. Dylan Evans, a well-known psychologist and lecturer at the West Of England University to see how people could organise themselves into communal groups to cope with life in the future. He then quit the project, and some volunteers continued to build on it through the Phoenix Project.”

As part of the ongoing work around Ark.Inc, Jon spent some time at the Utopia Experiment / Phoenix Project in the slopes of Scotland.

Making bio-diesel at the Utopia Experiment / Phoneix Project

friendly bacon at the euptia experimant

Wrote a paper with Benedict Singleton that was presented at the Changing the Change Conference, Turin.

How do you:

Introduce critical thinking to a market driven world?

Combining commercial designs practices with critical design aspirations, in an attempt to get under the radar?

Using ‘traditional’ design methods such as personas to expand upon the superfiction.

A new website is on its way...

Example of responses to youtube videos and one page site:

Already receiving loads of requests and letters from people who want to join the Ark Collective. Wondering how to incorporate these requests, whilst communicating the idea of Ark as superfiction, and being ethical?

Some current questions: - How real & far do you take it?

- What are the ethical implications?

- What are the legal implications?

Distinctions:- “be realistic” = submit your ideals to the

consensus of assumptions about how the world works. “this is how it is”

- “be pragmatic” = understand the consensus reality and find ways to apply your ideals to it. “this is how I’m tying to change it”

Some of the things students working on similar themes need to consider

Challenge Assumptions

- Challenge your assumptions

- Challenge societies’ assumptions

- Bash your head on them

- Look around them and what’s there.

- Turn them upside down.

Jon Ardern: jon@ark-inc.info | www.ark-inc.info