Draft:Anab Jain

• Comment: Note to other reviewers: for clarification sake, this is not the same as the Danish Art Group Superflex, the artist/design group. This draft for Anab Jain is affiliated with a different group named Superflux with a "u" not an "e") reads quite promotionally, and is also written like a resume, not like an encyclopedia entry. For example: "critical acclaim, dynamic, expertise, innovation, leading, more than, numerous, pioneer, renowned". Several sections are completely unsourced. Notability may well be there, however the draft is not acceptable in its current state. Some of the references are about Superflex (not Superflux which the subject of this draft is associated with; please read the citations carefully when checking them.) Creator blocked for self-promotion. Netherzone (talk) 17:48, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: Author blocked for promotional edits. SirMemeGod  17:45, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

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Anab Jain

Anab Jain (b. 1976, Ahmedabad, India) is a designer, filmmaker, futurist, and educator. She is the co-founder of Superflux, a research, design and futures practice known for its work in critical foresight, speculative design, and experiential futures. Since 2016, she has been a Professor of Design Investigations at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Early life and education

Jain was born and raised in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, amidst the dynamic postcolonial growth of the country. She studied Communication Design and Filmmaking at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and later moved to London with a DFiD Commonwealth Scholarship for Education where she gained a Master's degree in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art.

Career

Before moving to London, Jain worked as a filmmaker, moving between Ahmedabad and Mumbai to direct and produce documentary films. Following her Master's from the Royal College of Art, Jain began a career in foresight working on machine intelligence at Microsoft Research in Cambridge.

In 2009, Jain co-founded Superflux with Jon Ardern. The research, design and futures practice focuses on creating speculative and experiential futures, working with clients such as Google AI, DeepMind, Omidyar Network, the Cabinet Office, IKEA, the United Nations Development Program, and the Government of the UAE. Superflux was awarded the Dezeen Design Studio of the Year Award in 2021.

Jain's work has earned her international acclaim. She has received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts London, the Award of Excellence from ICSID, the UNESCO Digital Arts Award, and the Grand Prix at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, among other accolades from Apple Inc. and the UK Government’s Innovation Department.

Her projects have been exhibited at renowned institutions including MoMA New York, V&A Museum, Science Gallery Dublin, National Museum of China, Vitra Design Museum, and Tate Modern.

Superflux

Superflux was one of the first design studios to pioneer the practices of speculative design, critical foresight, design fiction and experiential futures in business. In 2009, the thought that design could help imagine hypothetical worlds and consequently be a critical strategy for businesses was preposterous, but it was in this space of possibility that Superflux willed itself into existence. Early after its founding, the studio emerged as a challenging voice to the status quo. It gained critical acclaim for work that navigates the knotty interconnectedness of the technological, political and cultural landscape, often working directly with scientists, business leaders, policymakers, and more.

Clients

The studio has produced impactful futures work for clients like Google AI, Cabinet Office UK, Anthemis, Suncorp, Sony, Samsung, Gov. of UAE, Museum of the Future, Dubai, IKEA, the UNDP, and DeepMind. Parsing uncertainties, weak signals and wide ranging trends, Superflux works with clients to imagine and build future worlds. Alongside their client-focused work, the studio houses an internal research and experimentation lab to explore novel ideas, methodologies, and self-initiated art work.

Early Work

For their 2011 film Song of the Machine, the studio partnered with neuroscientists developing optogenetic retinal prostheses to explore how user interactions could be made more practical and meaningful in the coming years. The subsequent film considered the personal and emotional complexities that might arise once this technology leaves the lab to interface with our daily lives.

With an ambition to foreground the unintended consequences of nascent technologies, early self-initiated projects included Drone Aviary, an investigation into drone technology's social, political and cultural potential as it entered civic space. This became a short film cautioning how increasingly sentient technologies could see the rise of a new kind of networked colonialism.

A pivot to more climate-focused work was born out of concerns Ardern and Jain shared about their then toddler and the future world he might inhabit. Not wanting to indulge in doomism, they started thinking-through-making, building food computers which led to the immersive installation Mitigation of Shock, a whole domestic apartment set 2050 set in the context of climate impacted food-insecurity. Since its first exhibition in 2017 at Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, the work has been translated to various scales and cultural contexts. By building an apartment that audiences could step into, touch and feel, the studio sought to make climate change less distant and formless but tangible and relatable. This was a turning point for the studio’s research into the power of embodied experience to impact future thinking.

Current Work

From 2018, the studio has integrated more-than-human perspectives into their work. Works like Refuge for Resurgence, a multispecies banquet, and Invocation for Hope, a resurgent forest born from the ashes of human destruction, de-centre the human to recognise our place in a larger ecology wherein we all play a part in mutual survival and care.

Recent work has shifted from cautionary tales to projects of active hope with work geared toward nurturing imagination and inspiring collective action. Continued points of interest and areas of expertise for the studio include the near-and-long-term future impact of disruptive and emergent technologies (including AI and Artificial General Intelligence), culture wars, more-than-human futures and the climate crisis.

Often guided by questions, the studio have asked “How would we breathe in a world where governments took no action to combat climate change?” (The Future Energy Lab, Ministry of Energy, UAE, leading to an investment of AED 600 billion); “How do you live with an AI that questions wage slavery?” (Our Friends Electric, Mozilla Foundation); “How might new human-AI relations change the future of work?“ (Stark Choices, Varkey Foundation), and “If AI spoke for our rivers, what might they say?” (The Ecological Intelligence Agency, Policy Lab).

For its contribution to speculative and futures design with a committed social mission, Superflux received the Dezeen Design Studio of the Year Award in 2021.

Public Speaking

Jain has delivered keynotes and talks at numerous international forums, including TED, Skoll World Forum, Human Rights Watch Ideas Festival, MIT Media Lab, MoMA’s design summit 'Knotty Objects', NEXT, LIFT, SIGGRAPH, Global Design Forum, EPIC, Design Engaged, and FutureEverything.

Notable talks and lectures include:

• “Rewilding Our Imaginations” at The Conference (Malmö, 2024)
• “Imagining What the Future Looks Like” at the Skoll World Forum (Oxford, 2019)
• “Calling for More-Than-Human Politics” at the Tentacular Festival (Madrid, 2019)
• “More-Than-Human-Centred Design” at the IXDA Conference (Lyon, 2018) where Anab presented to human-centred design practitioners what was then a novel concept of moving toward a more-than-human perspective, an idea which has since gained traction with designers, businesses and cultural organisations.
• “A Sneak Preview of the Future” at TED India (2018)
• “Why we need to Imagine Different Futures” on the main stage at TED (Vancouver, 2017)
• “Design for the New Normal”, NEXT Conference (Berlin, 2012)

Teaching

Since 2016, Jain has been a Professor of Design Investigations at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In this role, she is responsible for leading and shaping young people with an ecological and speculative design-led methodology.

Awards and Recognition

• 2022: Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) Award and Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Fellowship in Speculative Design
• 2022: Honorary Doctorate at the University of the Arts London
• 2021: Dezeen Design Studio of the Year Winner for her work at Superflux
• 2020: Google Arts Artists + Machine Intelligence (AMI) Award
• 2020: Horizon 2020 European Union Grant Winner for her Superflux project, CreaTures: Creative Practices for Transformational Futures project
• 2014: Innovate UK Internet of Things Launchpad Winner
• 2013: Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Award Winner for the Superflux project Drone Aviary
• 2009: TED Fellowship
• 2005: UNESCO Digital Arts Award 3rd prize for her project, Yellow Chair Stories
• 2005: Grand Prix at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights for the film Journeys, for which she was a producer
• 2005: Michael Moore Award for Best Documentary for Journeys, for which she was a producer
• 2005: Innovation Award at the Chicago Documentary Festival for Journeys, for which she was a producer
• 2005: Royal College of Art Design for Our Future Selves Award Winner

Exhibitions

• 2022: "Our Time on Earth", Refuge for Resurgence (The Barbican Centre, London)
• 2022: "Subject to Change", Refuge for Resurgence and the Intersection (Droog Gallery, Amsterdam)
• 2021: "Biennale Architettura 2021 - How Will We Live Together?", Refuge For Resurgence (Venice Biennale)
• 2021: "Vienna Biennale for Change 2021 - Planet Love: Climate Care in the Digital Age", Invocation for Hope (Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna)
• 2021: "Showing Styria: What Will Be - Towards a Plurality of Futures", Mitigation of Shock (Kunsthaus Graz)
• 2020: "What is Nature?", Mitigation of Shock (Museum Sinclair-House, Saarland)
• 2019: "2219: Futures Imagined", Mitigation of Shock (ArtScience Museum, Singapore)
• 2019: "Waging Peace", Trigger Warning (Museum Of Discovery, Adelaide)
• 2018: "Home Futures", Our Friends Electric (Design Museum, London)
• 2018: "The Future Starts Here", Everything Connects To Everything (V&A Museum, London)
• 2017: "Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine", Drone Aviary and Uninvited Guests (Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein)
• 2017: "After the End of the World", Mitigation of Shock (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona)
• 2015: "All This Belongs to You", Drone Aviary (V&A Museum, London)
• 2015: "The Fab Mind", Drone Aviary (21_21 Design Sight, Tokyo)
• 2011: "Talk to Me", 5th Dimensional Camera (MoMA, New York City)

Press and Interviews

• 2024: “In Conversation with Anab Jain” – RSA Journal
• 2023: “Designing the future: how Superflux is demystifying speculative design” – Design Week
• 2023: “Superflux - A Space of Possibilities” – Nomad Magazine
• 2022: "Positive Thinking: A solution to climate change inaction?" – Anab Jain in conversation with Sangita Myska, BBC Radio 4
• 2022: “Design for a less uncertain future, in conversation with Anab Jain” – Salone Internazionale del Mobile
• 2022: "Superflux Debuts 'The Library' at Dubai's Museum of the Future" – STIRWorld
• 2021: “A Future in Flux” – Interview in Icon Magazine
• 2021: "the Intersection Explores a Possible Future Where Modern Tech Hits Breaking Point" – DesignBoom
• 2021: "Superflux: Making Climate Change 'Tangible, Relatable and Specific" – Wallpaper Magazine
• 2021: "Superflux Sets the Table for a More-than-Human Future at La Biennale di Venezia" – MOLD
• 2021: "The Climate Issue as an Experience" – ORF
• 2021: "Maybe for The Last Time: Vienna Biennale for Change 2021" – Der Standard
• 2021: "Superflux: the duo inspiring change at Venice Biennale through hypothetical worlds" – Financial Times
• 2021: "Superflux imagines multi-species banquet for Venice Architecture Biennale" – Dezeen
• 2020: "Apocalypse never: why climate catastrophe won’t make us change" – The Correspondent
• 2019: “On Critical Activism: An Interview with Anab Jain” – Journal Of Future Studies
• 2016: “Superflux founder Anab Jain on using technology to turn the blind into super-seers” – The Standard

Publications

Books

• After Abundance: A Speculation on Climate Change in the Alps, ed. by Anab Jain and Thomas Geisler (Basel: Birkhauser, 2017)

Book Chapters

• “Song of the Machine”, Beyond Design Ethnography, Anab Jain and Jon Ardern, ed. by Nicolas Nova (Berlin: Goofy Press, 2015)
• “Dynamic Genetics vs. Mann”, Dread: The Dizziness of Freedom, Anab Jain, Jon Ardern and Tobias Revell, ed. by Juha van ’t Zelfde (Amsterdam: Valiz/Antennae Series, 2014)

Selected Articles and Blogs

• 2023: “Radical Design for a World in Crisis”, Noema Magazine
• 2022: “To Doubt, To Question, To Say Enough”, Civic Square
• 2022: “A More-Than-Human Manifesto”, an essay by Anab Jain and Jon Ardern, RetroFuture Magazine
• 2022: “In practice: Superflux on the Future Energy Lab”, an essay by Anab Jain and Hanna Sarsa, Architectural Review
• 2020: “Experiments in Feral Futuring”, an essay by Anab Jain and Alex Taylor, Public Books
• 2020: “After Innovation, A Resurgence”, Gesprach Journal
• 2019: “Mitigation of Shock: Post Occupancy Anthropology”, an essay by Anab Jain, Jon Ardern, and Danielle Knight, The Business of Research
• 2019: “Our Friends Electric: Reflections on Advocacy and Design Research for the Voice Enabled Internet”, an essay by Jon Rogers, Loraine Clarke, Martin Skelly, Nick Taylor, Peter Thomas, Michelle Thorne, Solana Larsen, Katarzyna Odrozek, Julia Kloiber, Peter Bihr, Anab Jain, Jon Arden, and Max von Grafenstein, presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2019 (CH'19)
• 2019: “Calling for a More-than-Human Politics”, edited transcript of a talk delivered at the Tentacular Festival
• 2019: “Stop Shouting Future, Start Doing It”, Medium
• 2018: “More than Human Centered Design”, Ding Magazine (2018)
• 2016: “Owning the Sky: An Invisible Architecture of Civilian Drones”, an essay by Anab Jain and Jon Ardern, ARPA Journal
• 2011: “Design Futurescaping”, an essay by Anab Jain, Jon Ardern and Justin Pickard, Blowup: The Era of Objects
• 2010: “The Power of 8: Encouraging Collaborative DIY Futures”, an essay by Chris Hand, Anab Jain, Tessy Britton, Graham Burnett, Darryl Chen, Christopher Collett, Sanjiv Sharma, Charlie Tims and Liam Young, Negotiating Futures - Design Fiction, Conference Proceedings Of The 6th Swiss Design Network Conference 2010