Future Festivals — Degrown Partying & Algorithmic Diversity

Getting together, throwing some hands in the air, singing along, out of tune, laughing, rubbing elbows — festivals have not only witnessed cultures transform but embodied such transformations. This makes imagining 'future festivals' a rather challenging ask: what are the defining factors of today's major cultural events? How will we adapt to worsening environmental, energetic, political, and economic conditions?

One axiom remains: there will always be cause for convening and celebrating for as long as groups of more than one humans exist. And this is an attempt to envision how.

Com­ing as a series of ani­mat­ed vignettes, this project is the small, vis­i­ble tip of a giant ice­berg of research, work­shops, and con­sul­ta­tions that have tak­en place with an inter­na­tion­al team of fes­ti­val work­ers and cul­tur­al experts. Sup­port­ed by the Cana­da Arts Coun­cil, Future Fes­ti­vals is a plat­form that gath­ers MUTEK (Mon­tre­al, CA), imag­i­ne­NA­TIVE (Toron­to, CA), Mois Mul­ti (Que­bec City, CA), MUTEK Mex­i­co (Mex­i­co City, MX), New Forms (Van­cou­ver, CA), NEW NOW (Essen, DE), and Send+Receive (Win­nipeg, CA). The whole 18-month cycle of work has been cov­ered in depth by our friends over at HOLO, while yours tru­ly, N O R M A L S, has been digest­ing this research into future land­scapes.

This project takes root in the research group's core themes — sus­tain­abil­i­ty, equi­ty, and tech­nol­o­gy — and show­cas­es a future fes­ti­val that acts as a bru­tal patch­work of visions, each embody­ing these themes in provoca­tive extrap­o­la­tions. We designed new infra­struc­ture, and imag­ined how sav­ing ener­gy would be para­mount by, for instance, low­er­ing not only the elec­tri­cal but also com­pu­ta­tion­al cost of the fes­ti­val, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from per­ma­com­put­ing and low-tech. In this future fes­ti­val, you will find stage speak­ers /​ mics that have become giant acoustic mega­phones. "Diver­si­ty Opti­miza­tion Gates" — a com­plex sys­tem of gate­ways, sen­sors, wait­ing lines, and quizzes — are meant, just as the name sug­gests, to max­i­mize the audience's diver­si­ty. The audi­ence, as well as the instal­la­tions, is meant to pro­vide its own ener­getic con­tri­bu­tions, as seen in a self-sus­tain­ing VR bicy­cle activ­i­ty. Loy­al fes­ti­val-goers can get life­time pass­es, which are tat­tooed tick­ets, a par­tic­u­lar­ly nice ges­ture in a pre­car­i­ous econ­o­my. And our bar only serves Gyokuro, a fine Japan­ese tea that is best brewed at room tem­per­a­ture, around 50ºC.