Spec Archive
An ethnological growing
collection from the future.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This ideation tool empowers people to pull their imaginations out of the back of their drawers. Tested in the field of foresight and by one of the largest institutions of applied research in Germany. For innovation consultants, future labs, incubators, accelerators.
Where does this idea come from?
The archive embodies what I feel like every day, intuition and the play between chance and control. It feels like a natural corset, a garment I like to wear. It's a mind-game like oil and water can probably become one. I am always amazed at how long it took for my gut to develop into this idea and form of expression. The ingredients have always been there, curiosity and a tireless defiance of those who see purpose and service as the first logical approach to a good idea. But how to do service when my mind cannot move. I am accompanied by a certain relief that I do not have to realize at a wrinkled age that playfulness is not such a bad idea, the mother of all ideas. Thank you gut!
» the nudge into a conversation «
The Spec Archive is an ethnological collection from the future, a fictional collection of drawn artifacts without definition. An archive without meaning and a natural history museum for my synapses.
The archive is an expression of my curiosity towards the unknown and also desire for a certain aesthetic. It is neither a side dish nor a dessert. It is the aperitif. The nudge into a conversation.
It is through speculation that artifacts become the stuff of grand visions. Quite effortlessly, the question of all questions intrudes as soon as an artifact falls into hands like mine. What are you? And as a matter of course I converse with the object. Only strangely, it happens very quietly. When we were little children, we talked aloud to everything without thinking along with the others' thinking. Now we leave it at thinking along. Isn't it so? That's why I'm always happy when people are so much with themselves. They speak to think and the audience in the train or at work get their pleasurable share. But from a distance, social decorum has made us silent bedfellows. Nevertheless, man has an inhuman urge to see meaning in everything. And if we don't know one, we invent one. What fun!
And how can that same artifact help me provide an answer to my questions for the future? Imagination and dialogue! Whether for interpersonal issues or as a possible idea for a technical challenge. What we want to see in the artifacts and what they bring out in us is so versatile. A store full of questions and people. That's what it still needs.
» a tool that does not yellow «
I see interactions or textures in the world or let them arise in my head. It's an exciting moment. Like a big bang, artifacts of unknown origin arise. It is an ongoing rotation and tilting of different elements. In between, chance, intuition and control attract or repel each other. AR suddenly seems like old hat. One's imagination is an act, a tool that does not yellow, always there and light in the pack. As an archaeologist, I get to the bottom of the strange find that tries to concretize itself. I analyze and free it from the remaining dust as if there were no lunch break. Of course, for all the joy of play, there is also an expectation behind it - to outwit one's own mind. We all know the unreal feeling. There's someone sitting in your head with the same haircut as 40 years ago. But I want to grow, incessantly I want to rub up against my thought patterns. The crowning glory would probably be a bald head.
» for more courage to share the absolutely outlandish «
From the natural play instinct for nonsense something with purpose developed. Like others, I use objects to think along and communicate. For many it is the photo box, for others Instagram. I, on the other hand, imagine everyone carrying a small suitcase of whimsical objects. What wouldn't we experience and learn.
The Spec Archive is even more than a conversation tool. It empowers people to pull their imaginations out of the back of their drawers. It follows a certain dress code. I create a visual conflict of logic, a compatibility of opposites. Perhaps even an impossibility, united in one artifact. The recognizable and the strange combine in a way that allows us to think in both directions. There is something familiar about it, so that the human mind finds an entry point. At the same time it entices. A perhaps even unappetizing component may be, at which the human being bumps. In the end, the effect is the same that I experience when I design an artifact. It is an invitation to consider the unknown and to think further. And a free pass for more courage to share the absolutely outlandish. As if to say, it's not me who tells the nonsense. It is the artifact.
» to deal with all issues playfully «
Time and the associated transience occupy us all even if the future will reach us in different ways. The Spec Archive is a way to deal with all issues playfully. Because nothing can block and limit us more than the shameful silence and the prescribed seriousness towards serious topics.