Imagining futures

Building a collective visual imagination of what’s ahead

  • Client

    Fundación Telefónica

  • Year

    2024

  • Type of sector

    Technology

  • Type of work

    Installations, Digital

We all live with our hopes and fears about the future, but speaking and sharing them is another matter. This installation, which we designed in collaboration with Mediapro Exhibitions, as part of the new permanent exhibit at the Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Madrid, allows visitors to think out loud about what’s to come. 

2024 marked, among other things, the 100th anniversary of Telefónica - and this larger exhibit, named "Exponential—From Analogical to Digital” was built as a celebration of the telecommunications company’s centennial. After exploring the evolution of communication network technologies over the past 150 years, from the telephone to ChatGPT, highlighting the social paradigm shifts brought on by these technological inventions and innovations, the exhibit concludes with our installation. 
This final piece is designed to prompt a reflection on what lies ahead and to showcase the role of technology in shaping our future - we created a fully immersive experience with a 10-meter-wide screen, lights and sound, inviting visitors to join a collective imagining of what the future could look like.

Before entering the room dedicated to the installation with the large screen, visitors pass through an antechamber—a transition space where they can hear, but not yet see, the sounds emanating from the main room. Because we wanted to invite them to reflect on themselves and the present state of things, we placed a mirror, with the words "You are a step away from imagining the future", as a prelude for the next part. 

Upon entering the main room, surrounded by the long, curving screen, visitors are presented with six possible questions:

  • What kind of technologies will we use?
  • What will schools look like?
  • What will the workplace look like?
  • What will we be wearing?
  • How will we travel from one place to another?
  • What technologies will we use to better preserve our planet?


Visitors then choose one of these questions to address and, speaking into a microphone, articulate their response out loud, describing whatever that comes to mind when thinking about the future of this specific area. By removing the need to input text, and instead being entirely speech-based, we broke down a barrier to interaction that may have excluded certain demographics. 
Then, an AI-powered text-to-image generation tool converts the spoken words into a corresponding image. While the image is being generated, a brief animation plays on the screen, accompanied by a soundtrack to build a sensation of anticipation.
Once the image is ready, visitors can then choose to add it to a collective database of images - a growing archive of all the future visions imagined by previous visitors to the exhibit. As time goes by, we can't wait to see which of these fantasy images start to look more like reality.

Imagining futures

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