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Re-Imagining Outer Space

Workshop

2019
HEAD Genève
with Sitraka Rakotoniaina

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Re-Imagining Outer Space is a collaboration between artists and designers Joseph Popper and Sitraka Rakotoniaina with design students from HEAD University in Geneva. With guidance from Popper and Rakotoniaina, the students accomplished a range of design processes to imagine, prototype and produce their personal visions of human futures in outer space. The final results were short science fiction films describing speculative scenarios—from a Moon colony to a crewed spacecraft travelling toward Alpha Centauri.

The films centre on future space characters developed by the students, each interpreting possible motivations to go to space: such as survival, progress, profit or environmental concerns. The imagined scenarios were materialised in different media by building sets and making props at 1:1 scale. By producing their personal visions of outer space futures, the students were able to explore historic themes and contemporary motivations of spaceflight and present ideas in contrast to more normative narratives populating space exploration today. Through rapid prototyping and playful storytelling, they created engaging and meaningful reimaginings of outer space.

Trailer for Re-Imagining Outer Space