Futurefarmers
A Variation on Powers of Ten
2012
Futurefarmers, A Variation on Powers of Ten, 2012.
In 2011-2012 the San Francisco-based collective Futurefarmers staged a 10-part series of conversations and collaborations with scientists, theorists, and philosophers inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’s film, Powers of Ten (1977). PoT was an IBM sponsored documentary that visualized the relative scale and limits of the known universe, both macro and microscopic, through a sequence of magnifications by 10-to-the-x-power. Using the picnic as a human-scale index, Futurefarmers capture their meetings with scholars through audio, photography, and distributed the results publicly through a website and publication. Futurefarmers work closely with each scholar to visually represent ideas ranging from microbial ecology to astro-physics.
Futurefarmers is an international, trans-disciplinary network. Founded in 1995 as a design studio, over the years, it has included artists, researchers, designers, farmers, scientists, engineers, and architects—all with a common interest in working together on deeply felt, long-term, field sensitive projects that defy current social, political, and economic systems. Futurefarmers involves itself with critical issues of the land and the air, the sea and the seed, rooted in the transformative power of knowledge sharing. The group, which has nodes in Northern California and Belgium, often employs research-oriented workshops, games, and participatory play as a means of engagement, education, and collaboration.