INTO THE UNKNOWN
'Welcome to the inside of your mind,' I whispered to myself as I entered the Barbican's brilliant science fiction exhibition Into the Unknown.
(My mind is, by the way, full of robots, alien worlds, brave explorers, mad scientists and space ships.)
There are only a few days to go, but if you can make it down to the show, you really should.
It's a hands-on, and eyes and ears-on, experience; there are plenty of exhibits to interract with and it's a cool mixture of the familiar (Star Wars) and the oblique (Dara Birnbaum's Wonder Woman remix).
There are shocks of colour and energy, of inspiration and wonder all over the place. Things to make you go "Woo!", things to make you go "Huh?" and then more things to make you just smile and think.
It's a wonderful exposition of how science fiction leaps into the imaginations of designers, artists and story-tellers, and how they transmit the insides of their minds to the rest of us.
The mixture of media - models, paintings, novels, super-8 films, cigarette cards, movie props and costumes - and the global range of the exhibits (Afro-futurism and Soviet era sci-fi are represented) go to show that science fiction in all its formats is responsible for bringing the future closer all the time.
And new worlds continue to be imagined and discovered; look out for the short film written by a neural network and have a ponder about the inside of the minds that are yet to come and the sci-fi and the world they'll one day create.
Our very own Louis Savy was one of the exhibition advisors and we are proud to have contributed to the show.
Into the Unknown will travel from the Barbican Centre to The Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens. A cultural space in the heart of Athens hosting exhibitions and performances in theatre, dance, music and the visual arts. OCC’s programme focuses on contemporary cultural expression, supporting Greek artists and cultivating international collaborations, as well as education through life-long learning.
Hope you get a chance to see it. LLAP
