Necessary Tomorrows – The Education of Ursula

Cianna Dawn, Brett Gaylor & Malka Older / Mike Wozniewski / Canada

The Education of Ursula is an interactive exhibit where guests collaborate with artificial intelligence (AI) to create objects from hopeful futures. Through a game that generates images, guests build a database of radically different possible futures, while also coming up close and personal with the peril and promise of AI.

Ursula aims to build your Futures Literacy—the capacity to imagine preferable futures. She (or perhaps it) embodies the goal of Necessary Tomorrows – a multi-platform documentary project which merges science fiction and speculative fact. By rendering Ursula as a conversational A.I. agent who can talk and play with you, this version of Necessary Tomorrows aims to build your futures literacy through play and experience. Ursula wants you to experience a fragment of multiple radically different futures. She uses Design Fiction and Speculative Design, which render worldbuilding as designed objects rather than words. As you make your images, you’ll discover that you are training this AI, an experience both intriguing and unsettling. You’ll see how Ursula learns from you, has goals for you, and ultimately manipulates you, reflecting the dual nature of contemporary AI: exciting yet scary, beautiful yet horrific, much like the future itself.

Necessary Tomorrows - The Education of Ursula

Cianna Dawn

User Experience Designer

Biography

Cianna Dawn's work at Hololabs has focused on globally recognized IP owned by Universal Studios, as well as working on groundbreaking AR multiplayer art installations, “Afroquatics” and “Glowshrooms”, at the 2024 Winter Arts Festival in Victoria BC.

Brett Gaylor

Director

Biography

Brett Gaylor is an interactive media producer and researcher. His works The Internet of Everything, Rip! A Remix Manifesto, Discriminator, OK Google and Do Not Track help everyday people critically engage with the Internet. Brett has received the International Documentary Association award, a Peabody Award, the Prix Gemaux, and three Webbys.

Malka Older

Writer

Biography

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. Her novella The Mimicking of Known Successes came out in March 2023. She has a doctorate in the sociology of organizations from Sciences Po (Paris) and is a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University, where she teaches humanitarian aid and predictive fiction.

Stuart Candy

Futurist

Biography

Stuart Candy is a Fellow of the World Futures Studies Federation, the Museum of Tomorrow, and The Long Now Foundation. With Kiki Benzon, Associate Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California Cinematic Arts, the pair directs Situation Lab, the experiential and immersive design initiative which creates the card game The Thing From The Future.

Mike Wozniewski

Producer

Biography

Mike started Hololabs in 2011 and has led AR, VR and location based experiences with the National Film Board of Canada, the Society for Arts & Technology, Kid Koala, and the Vancouver Olympics. He led the game development team for Universal Studios Mario Kart: Koopa’s Challenge, Floor Kids for Nintendo Switch and Phantasms, in production with support from the Canada Media Fund. Hololabs is intrigued by the possibilities of using AI agents and generative tools, while also wanting to make sure they’re applied intentionally and with the right human care in the loop.