... because we humans can only work
for a future we can imagine.
NEW MULTIMEDIA PROJECT IMAGINES THE FUTURE OF MELBOURNE'S WEST
first published in Nexus:News from Victoria University, June 24 1996,re-published on this site with permission
The presenter of ABC Radio National's 'Australia Talks Back', Mr Sandy McCutcheon, recently launched a new collaborative multimedia project being developed at Victoria University which hopes to imagine the future of the region between Melbourne's Docklands and the Bellarine Peninsula.
Work on the project, titled 'Painting the future real', will culminate in the construction of a billboard-size composite image of a positive vision of a sustainable future for the region within the lifetime of a child born today.Project worker, Ms Merrill Findlay, said that the aim of the project was to enable the public to reflect on the region's past and present in order to imagine the collective goal of a better future.
"It is clear that with the many social, environmental and economic challenges currently confronting the region, there are many potential futures for Melbourne's metropolitan west," Ms Findlay said.
"What we hope to do with 'Painting the future real' is to assist the community to think positively and creatively about the future so that we can solve many of the social, economic and ecological problems we face in the present."
Over the next six months Ms Findlay, together with multimedia artist Mr Csaba Szamosy, illustrator, Ms Rebecca Kaye, and architect, Mr Richard Lee, will liaise with people in local communities and key thinkers around the wrold to develop a set of images and written texts about what the future might look like. They will be exploring the full range of political, social and environmental issues that concern people in the region today.
The final billboard-size image is expected to be completed by November and will be widely exhibited. The project will be documented on the World Wide Web and project images and texts may also be published as interactive CD ROM.
'Painting the future real' was initiated by Imagine The Future Inc in association with Victoria University, Habitat Melbourne Trust and the Australian Conservation Foundation. It is funded by the Australia Council and the Commonwealth Department of Transport and Regional Development and is sited on the University's St Albans Campus.
Return to About the project
[Page history: created and first published on www.ecoversity.org.au as part of Painting the future real (1995-97), the prototype for Redreaming the plain (1998-2002); taken off-line in 1998 and re-posted in its original form in July 2004 as a web archive. For more information contact redreaming@rmit.edu.au.]