Future Arts Interview: Recontextualizing “Nature as Queen” in a New Media World

Future Visions for Future Arts

Following the success of AUGMENT, Future Arts is planning their next steps. According to Bruk, the team is curious what audiences were reacting to and excited to send out surveys for feedback. These surveys provide an opportunity for Future Arts to hear from the community and figure out what worked well and what is still missing. Such information will help propel them into their next projects.

“New Nature Spawning” by Nadine Kolodziey. (Credit: Yuliya Bruk)

Balancing intention with feasibility remains a challenge for the Future Arts team, but they saw AUGMENT as an opportunity to experiment and test out different ideas that they may want to expand upon in the future. They piloted a volunteer program which may serve as a roadmap for a future youth program which will connect diverse high schoolers and young folx with technology workers. The goal is to foster organic conversation between communities that have historically not been accessible to each other. AUGMENT, for instance, was sponsored by Meta and their Open Arts program, and the relationship helped the team accomplish their goal of hosting their first showcase.

“A lot of the folks we work with [at Meta] used to work in Seattle’s arts landscape so they’re in there doing the work we’re doing from the outside…” explains Bruk. “We need to understand that the people on the other end, internally, are people like us that have gone [into big tech] to also try to break that system, and we need to give it more value than we do, and we need to build that trust with those systems.”

Garcia and the team also imagine a future where Future Arts has the resources to experiment with running immersive multisensory community spaces, possibly subscription-based, where audiences will have access to curated mixed reality experiences and be in the company of like-minded people from all different walks of life.

“I just think there’s so much we haven’t even started to think about how these [technologies] can be utilized as really wonderful tools,” says Garcia, “and artists are the ones to… push that.”

“New Nature Spawning” by Nadine Kolodziey. (Credit: Anna Czoski)

Future Arts is committed to moving the needle toward a society where art is accessible to all bodies and provides connective, uplifting experiences. AUGMENT proved that art can exist outside of private exclusive galleries and museums, and that with intentional design and diverse community support, anything is possible.

During AUGMENT, the team was moved by the blend of communities they were able to reach, and that reinforced their determination to create more opportunities to remind the world of its interconnectedness. Future Arts hopes to facilitate global change by laying the groundwork to reroute resources back into the grassroots arts community, as well as inspire the tech sector to realize their participation is necessary to help break down old oppressive systems and imagine new structures that offer healing to people and the earth.

“We’re all going forward together, and we’re not getting rid of tech, right? So let’s lean into it…” says Garcia. “Weaving in origin, Source, roots and process in everything we do is really important to [Future Arts], so that we don’t forget… [that] the creative process is our only secret weapon for a sustainable, happy future.”

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Interested in giving feedback to Future Arts? The post-show survey for AUGMENT just launched and will inform how Future Arts approaches their next showcase. Fill out the survey or follow them on Instagram.

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