Creating Technology for Social Change

Flux – possible futures of a gender-blurred society

As an artist in residence at the Open Doc Lab and a freelance filmmaker, I am currently working on an interactive documentary with the preliminary title ”Flux”, which explores gender identities and gender roles. ”Flux” will be an immersive web experience that will open a space to discuss alternative social structures for a society where gender roles are less prevalent. I believe that questioning and becoming aware of our thought patterns is at the core of change, and I hope that discussions evolving from ”Flux” can help this process. Personally I often discover that I have blind spots to the social structures that I am part of, until someone or something puts them into perspective.

flux - early concept sketch

We live in a society where people are still strongly categorized and discriminated against according to their gender. But at the same time it feels like we are living in a time of change where the boundaries of gender and sexuality are shifting, so I feel the time is right for creating a space to reflect upon where this could lead us. The intention is that the Flux won’t just be a one-off online experience, but will continue to grow and have an effect which spills out into the real world through exhibitions, discussions, cooperation with aligned NGO’s, clubbing events etc.

The interactive documentary ”Flux” will have a playful approach to it’s subject matter by immersing users in a gamified narrative experience that they themselves become part of. In short the each user takes the role as an ambassador from our world, who travels through a portal to an alternate universe called Flux. Flux resembles our world, but the society is governed by a different belief system. The user’s mission in Flux is to reflect back to our world and mediate a discussion of potential change. The Flux world is inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s science fiction book “The Left Hand of Darkness” from 1969.

The first iteration of the design document is completed and the project is ready for the next step. In my “Introduction to Civic Media” project I would like to create a strategy for building an engaged community, reaching an audience and creating impact in the real world in 3 steps.

1. Develop a theoretical strategy for community building and outreach of Flux
2. Start to implement and test the strategy on a basic level
3. Evaluate if the strategy seems to work and reassess the strategy