Looking forward to presenting at the upcoming annual conference for the Society for Utopian Studies at UC Berkeley. This year's theme is "Disruption, Displacement, and Disorder" in the Bay Area, and I'll be presenting on my research into the Google Buses, the history of BART, and the push for self-driving cars.
Tag: dystopia
On April 11–12, I'll be participating in Utopia After the Human, the fifth symposium organized by the research network Imaginaries of the Future: Historicizing the Present. I'll be presenting work from my ongoing research on the ways that ideas of the Anthropocene circulate in visual media, focusing on dystopian imagery and environmental documentary.
At the end of the month I'll be participating in a lecture series at USF gathering artists, writers, and researchers around ideas of whether we are, in fact, in this thing called the Anthropocene, and if so, how do we cope?
I'll be doing a conference presentation of my "Postcards from the Future" project, on California, science fiction, utopia, and dystopia at the Abiding Cities conference at CUNY this November. I'll be part of a panel called "Viable Utopias" on November 14 at 12:30. Come and say hello!
My essay that appeared in Boom: A Journal of California's winter 13-14 issue is on Slate.com today as "California is the Future." The original text and photos have been enhanced with a map plotting the locations of future California, by my UCSC Digital Art & New Media colleague Wayne Marci. Check it out!
Touring around California you could be forgiven for thinking you’re living in the future, and not just because of the Silicon Valley wizardry that surrounds us all. We also have to thank Hollywood’s movie magic, which has turned the state into a backdrop for countless science fiction films presenting futures both terrible and wondrous. It’s not just that so many are filmed here—writers and filmmakers have been exploring the future through California sets for decades.
An excerpt from the piece I'm working on, along with some images from the first night I landed in LA. It was really too appropriate, considering I've got sci-fi dystopia and apocalypse on the brain. "Every American city boasts an official insignia and slogan. Some have municipal mascots, colors, songs, birds, trees, even rocks. But Los Angeles alone has adopted an official nightmare." - Mike Davis, City of Quartz
Kristin M. Miller 
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