AE-18
Carolyn Olaguivel
Many design styles from the past have resurfaced in recent years, but why? Why are we innately victims of nostalgia and drawn towards works of the past? What sparks these trends and what deeper meanings do they send to our culture? AE-18 tries to answer these questions through an exploration of how humans perceive the past, present, and future. The project showcases a lost future, i.e. a future from the past that has been cancelled, in which the space age never ended and humanity didn’t just make it to the moon but also to Mars. It creates the world of this lost future through a computer terminal from the past. The user can interact with this terminal, using it as the humans of the past would have, and browse through news articles, radio stations, and clothing items. Given the terminal’s difficult navigation system, it is accompanied by a physical instruction manual explaining its operation. By navigating through this project, the user is immersed in this lost future and can decide if this future is better or worse than ours and why. The user is challenged to think about the outcome of our future as the choice lies in our hands.