Fab Lab celebrates its second WTF: MDEFest 2022

The Fab Lab architecture and design innovation center rethinks the way we live, work and play within cities; and with the Master’s in Design of Emerging Futures, explores future possibilities and pushes the boundaries of our social paradigms.

Through the final projects of the Master in Design of Emerging Futures, students create alternative presents and imagine the future as pluralistic, rather than as a single definitive path.

The Fab Lab, through these presentations and exhibitions, devised a formula with the festival format under the name MDEFest “What The Futures?”, with installations, parties, workshops and exhibitions that conclude the program and highlight the students’ final projects.

The second edition of “What The Futures?”, will take place from June 20 to 29 at various pop-up locations in the city of Barcelona. With this format, it allows students to further develop their hybrid profiles, continue their research and innovation plan and take their projects presented at the end of the first year to the next level. The first edition of the two-year program is scheduled for fall 2022.

Program

VIBOLI x SOFT Collaboration | June 21-25 | 13-17h

-VIBOLI (Virtual Botanical Library) is a provocation and exhibition that explores biodiversity the disconnections of the ecological world through a virtual reality experience-The VR installation is a collaboration with SOFT, where it explores and investigates how to connect the worlds of decentralized blockchain, digital arts, community and ecology education systems. The result is the construction of a virtual botanical library of various trees, its potential as a NFT to fund future reforestation efforts.

Re-source | June 22 | 18.30-21h

Can we imagine a future without waste? Can we design, manufacture and source with circularity? In this hands-on workshop, we will explore how food waste can be transformed into a resource, learn how to design for circularity through material life cycles, and get our hands dirty while making bioplastics and other biocomposites using food waste from local industries in Poble Nou.

My Trashy Life | June 23 | 19-20h

My Trashy Life is raising awareness about the amount of products we consume on a monthly basis. Visit the entrance of Macba to see me and my 3 months of waste “Tresures de oro” create a demonstration.

Gymkhana | June 24

Create new perspectives between generations with the help of alternative and accessible toys, participatory methods and conversations that include all voices, for the exploration of family structure and invisible realities. To empower such perspectives and realities through a Gymkhana through the city, where collaboration and conversations between children and adults are essential to achieve common goals in our communities.

Con-serve | June 24-25

Our cultures, relationships, tools and rituals are constantly changing. They evolve according to our resources, climates, economies, industries and pace of life. These crafts and customs unite us and can help us understand what is to come. We cannot imagine our future without understanding our past. We invite you to join us as we speculate on how to observe, conserve and preserve the traditions of the past to bring to life future rituals that will allow us to serve others and safeguard and strengthen relationships. This group exhibition aims to generate awareness of ancient customs that continue today, redefine our perceptions of conservation, and contemplate alternative future scenarios around food, craft, and tools.

Solar Brunch | June 26 | 12-18h

At the intersection of slow movement and low tech, we want to raise awareness and promote a resilient lifestyle. We want to open conversations about how to integrate ancient techniques into our current context.

This event will focus on ways to be less energy dependent and promote the use of solar energy in a fun way: solar cooked food, solar-powered music, solar fun! When the sun goes down, the music will continue to be powered by bicycle generators.

Symbiatypical | June 26 | 18-00h

During this celebratory exhibition, we invite you to join us as we reinterpret our relationships with our ecological systems. In the exhibition you will find designed artifacts, bioremediation experiments, symbiotic wearables, interactive art displays and audiovisuals that push us to rethink our parasitic role in the Anthropocene.

Sensory Reality | June 27-28 | 16-18h

We are heading towards a virtual reality. A non-inclusive reality, without physical contact or interaction with our environment. What if instead of creating tools to isolate us from the real world, we create to be more connected, to feel and perceive more of what surrounds us?

Sensory Reality aims to present some devices created for this purpose, showing how they work and collecting ideas and opinions on how they can be used in the future.

Hybrid ecologies | June 28 | 19-23h

Natural and technological ecosystems are closely related, as counterintuitive as it may seem at first. Investigating these overlapping areas through our senses, we venture into hybrid worlds of sound, visual and haptic. Between self-mutating algorithms and the recursive patterns of nature, we establish similarities and aim to provoke questions about a more sustainable and tangible vision of technology.

The hike | June 29 | 08-12h

A hike in the Collserola mountain to reconnect with nature, collect a series of treasures and participate in a collective musical experience at the top.

 

Download the full program here