A true revolution of technology is taking place in the stream of people’s everyday lives. The accumulation of new interactions between people and technology is creating a culture and shaping a new society. And that is how cultural and social innovations are initiated. At this year’s Ars Electronica Festival, which explores a new frontier created by “fusion” between the physical existence of the human world and physically-detached digital data, Future Catalysts (Hakuhodo and Ars Electronica) will set up the People Thinking Lab (a pop-up lab) to transform the festival site into a real-time experimental space, together with Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living (HILL), an unprecedentedly unique institute that specializes in people analysis. The concept of the lab is People as Radical Atoms.
Program 1: People Thinking—Method-Sharing
The advance of technology is transforming people into a form that can keep changing radically. When we look at people as radical atoms, we can sense the initiation of new emotions and perspectives. People’s emotions may seem impromptu at times, but by finding the desire that lies deep down in the emotion we can get one step closer to the core of the desired technology and design.
For example, we have been accumulating People’s Long Data for more than 20 years, which is a pile of data that shows the changes in people’s emotions and sense of value. We deciphered the change in people’s emotion by analyzing such dynamic data, which allowed us to observe the change in people’s sense of value. In contrast, with the expansion of networks by the use of SNS, we were able to find that “people are minimizing relationships with others in their conscience and awakening love of oneself more than that for others.”
We also have a method called Unasked Questions, which we use to sense hidden emotions by analyzing people’s reaction when uncommon questions, whether verbal or nonverbal, are thrown at them. For example, in the research to find when people give up on a “frame of mind”, such as believing that Santa Claus is going to give them a present, wanting to ride a roller coaster, being excited about a new product, etc., we were able to visualize the change in motivation and conscience by their age.
We also utilize this emotion-sensing to predict our future lives. In this program we will present HILL’s unique method that analyzed the emotions of People as Radical Atoms for over 35 years.
Program 2: Tomorrow’s View—Open Research Lab
Introduced by HILL this year, 100 Views of Your City is a bundle of future scenarios about the future city, which was predicted by analyzing the change in people’s sense of value. Even if the same technology is used as a function, a city might show a different view depending on the directions of people’s emotions when they are considered as Radical Atoms. For example, there are various possibilities for the future location of a grave, such as a real space in the local community, a virtual space, or not even a space but maybe embedded in the body of the bereaved, and all of these ideas are pictured in our subconscious. Based on 100 Views of Your City and using Shadowgram, developed by Ars Electronica, we will set up an Open Research Lab to write a new future scenario with the visitors to the festival.
Text: Takamasa Sakai (Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living), Kazuhiko Washio (Future Catalysts—Hakuhodo×Ars Electronica)
