Fantastic Futures

Fantastic Futures is a collective that began in 2010 as a group of artists, designers, students, doctors, and activists from Iraq and the U.S. This project developed from conversations about the importance of sharing stories and collectively envisioning the future. To that end, the group created an interactive sound archive (http://fantasticfutures.fm) through which they could collect and share sounds from different locations and collage them together to form chance-based compositions. The group’s practice includes methods of collective field recording techniques, interviewing and listening exercises. With support from Rhizome, Fantastic Futures created a movement-based performance for The New Museum to experiment with modes of attentive listening. In this event, audience members are blindfolded as performers move around the space playing sounds from the archive using minimal, low-tech megaphones. In the summer of 2013 they collaborated with scientist Jason Munshi-South to investigate the biodiversity of Queens Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and current changes around its use as a public space through a series of recordings that documented the biological concept of the urban to rural gradient. The residency, supported by iLAND, cultivated in a multi-channel sound installation and performance at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center.