Introducing Afrofuturist Lonny J Avi Brooks

My guest contributor for the Black Panther reviews is Dr. Lonny J. Avi Brooks.

Dr. Brooks is an Associate Professor in the department of communication at California State University, East Bay, where he has piloted the integration of futures thinking into the communication curriculum for the last fifteen years. Emerging in recent years as a leading voice of Afrofuturism 2.0, Brooks contributes prolifically to journals, conferences and anthologies on the subject, as well as serving as executive producer and co-creator, with Ahmed Best, of The Afrofuturist Podcast. e is the lead co-editor for a special issue of the Journal of Futures Studies: “When is Wakanda? Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity.”

Cover image for the special edition (uncredited)

He is lead organizer in Oakland and advisory board member for the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), co-founded by Reynaldo Anderson, a national and global movement dedicated to celebrating the Black imagination and design. Dr. Brooks serves as Creative Director for BSAM Futures, which aims to promote, publish, and teach forecasting with Afrocentric perspectives in mind, using gaming and facilitation for imaginative, action-oriented thinking.

Cover art for Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness, by John Jennings.

He also volunteers as a core member for outreach at Dynamicland.org, a pioneering non-profit dedicated to creating a more collaborative and dynamic computational medium for the long term. He has a passion for creating games to envision social justice futures including black and queer liberation from Afro-Rithms From The Future to United Queerdom, and Futurescope, he and his co-game designer Eli Kosminsky are committed to articulating emerging new future visions for traditionally underrepresented voices.

He is currently writing Imagining Queer Futures with  Afrofuturism@Futureland: Circulating Afro-Queer futuretypes of Work, Culture and Racial Identity.

“As a forecaster and Afrofuturist who imagines alternative futures from a Black Diaspora perspective, I think about long-term signals that will shape the next 10 to 100 years.”

Dr. Lonny J Avi Brooks

Welcome, Dr. Brooks!

Introducing Hugh Fisher

Hi there. Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your name, where are you from, how do you spend your time?

I’m Hugh Fisher (or Hugo if you’re French, Spanish, or Italian and rightly appalled by English spelling and pronunciation). I’ve lived most of my life in Canberra, Australia. I’ve been playing around with computer graphics for one purpose or another since the days of the Apple 2, and occasionally manage to get paid for doing so. Outside of that I draw, read a lot, and play tabletop roleplaying games. When I want to be a bit more active, I’m doing casual jogging, archery, or ultimate frisbee.

jm-00-hughpic

What are some of your favorite sci-fi interfaces (Other than in Johnny Mnemonic)? (And why?)

I’m a sucker for old school monochrome text and wireframes, so Alien and Aliens, Star Wars: A New Hope, and classic Battlestar Galactica. And not just the graphics, but also the physical keys, sliders, and joysticks—none of your shiny smooth glass. For color and animation, the BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Strangely, I’m also fond of the very modern full body gestural interfaces seen in Iron Man and Ender’s Game.

Why did you decide to review Johnny Mnemonic in particular?

Because I’m a William Gibson fan and interested in virtual reality. It’s a terrible film, but I’ve always liked the presentation of a futuristic VR Internet. More about this when we get into the film…

What was your biggest surprise when doing the review?

The number of different interfaces and devices was one—I had no idea how much work I’d inadvertently signed up for. I was also surprised to realise that an awful lot of the film makes no sense at all if you haven’t read everything by William Gibson.

What else are you working on?

I’m building up a toolkit of Python code for 3D graphics and the Microsoft Kinect for a couple of artistic/fun interactive projects. I’m also drawing science fictional sheep, and learning about the new edition of the Paranoia RPG.

Entrevista Maximiliano Pena

maximiliano

Hi there. Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your name, where are you from, how do you spend your time?

Hi! I´m Maximiliano Pena and right now I live in La Plata, Argentina. I graduated in Multimedia Design not so long ago, and I usually spent my time doing some freelance work as a web designer. Besides that I like to practice drawing, learning new stuff—currently I’m teaching myself Portuguese—and I like to work on some DIY electronic projects now and then too.

I’ve always thought that I ended up into interaction design thanks to my flying lessons, it always surprised me how the controls on the plane somehow were always available, always at reach but never getting in the way of the task you were doing.

What are some of your favorite sci-fi interfaces (Other than in Oblivion)? (And, of course, why?)

GOTG Continue reading

Introducing Heath Rezabek

MLIS—Librarian and Futurist.

rezabek-heath-01-tall-halfsize

Hi there. Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your name, where are you from, how do you spend your time?

I’m Heath Rezabek. I live in Austin, Texas, and have been an enthusiast of user interface design for many years. By career and calling I’m a librarian, and am a library services and technology grant manager by day. I have long been interested in how information is portrayed, symbolized, and accessed. I’m also writer of experimental speculative fiction, and have an interest in how the future is seen by creators and audiences. Interfaces play a key role in my fiction series, as well, from holographic to virtual world driven to all-out surrealist.

Screen Shot 2015-01-22 at 22.47.52

What are some of your favorite sci-fi interfaces (Other than in Oblivion)? (And, of course, why.)

Continue reading

Introducing Aleatha Singleton

Hi there. Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your name, where are you from, how do you spend your time?

Hi. I’m Aleatha Singleton, hailing from Houston, Texas. I’ve been a UX Designer for over 15 years. I enjoy solving problems and making things that are easy and fun to use whether they’re digital or analog.

aleatha

When I’m not at work, I like to read, study the Japanese culture, and teach myself new things such as designing and building furniture or making udon noodles from scratch.

I’ve always been a big fan of sci-fi interfaces and technology, especially when the concepts become reality. It’s always fun and exciting to see how ideas that seemed so impossible only a couple of decades ago are being prototyped and developed in labs around the world, such as holodecks, 3D volumetric interfaces, neural scanners, etc., etc.

In the future, I would like to be a part of cutting edge innovation and ideation—thinking about how technology could improve lives—and then build it and make it real.

What are some of your favorite sci-fi interfaces (Other than in Oblivion)? (And, of course, why?)

Continue reading

Introducing Clayton Beese

Now this this exciting. Scifiinterface.com’s first guest review begins this week! That’s right, someone took a look at the terrifying Contribute! page, and stepped up to the sci-fi plate! So with no further ado, let me introduce Clayton Beese, and share his answers to a few questions I posed to him.

Clayton Beese

Hi there. Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your name, where are you from, how do you spend your time?

Hi! I’m Clayton Beese, a User Experience designer from Overland Park, Kansas, and I’m someone who is drawn to the idea of storytelling as a very basic human activity. Outside of work I bike, I’m an amateur writer, I am usually the designated photographer on family trips, and I like taking random classes in things like rock climbing, blacksmithing, and Tai Chi to see what they’re like. Science fiction has always captured my interest because it asks questions about our needs as people, and what we want to see out of our future.

What are some of your favorite sci-fi interfaces (Other than in Wall-E)? (And why.)

ironMan_mkVII_HUD_01_jayse_hansen1 Continue reading