Category Archives: Futurist

Recently, we sat down with Austin Rotter to discuss why good content has to be futurist and forward-thinking. Austin is a digital marketing strategist with over a decade of experience helping brands and entrepreneurs thrive in media relations and online branding.

Hi, Austin. Were glad to have you with us today. As you might imagine, Im quite excited to unfold this topic with you. Please tell us why you think content marketing needs an overhaul.

Austin Rotter: The main reason is that the landscape has evolved dramatically over the years. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, we know many small businesses sprouted up online, and many closed their doors permanently. As an aftereffect, consumer behaviors altered a lot, affecting marketing strategies and tactics in tandem.

Now, roughly two years into the pandemic, the way people consume content has completely changed. The way brands produce content has evolved alongside, but the marketing sector hasnt been able to keep up the pace.

You hit the nail on the head there. How do you think the landscape has changed?

Austin Rotter: There are a few reasons for this. First, the way we interact with content has changed. We now have much more control over when, where, and how we want to consume some information. We can block adverts, skip TV commercials, unsubscribe from emails, download and customize the content, and much more.

The way brands produce content has also changed significantly. With the rise of social media and self-publishing platforms, anyone can be a publisher. That means theres much more noise out there, and its harder for brands to cut through the clutter.

Finally, I think the way we define content marketing has changed. Initially, it was more inclined towards creating and distributing information to attract and retain customers. Now, its gravitating towards creating and distributing content that drives conversions and sales. In this regard, many emerging brands go overboard with their claims, so thats not going to be a sustainable model in the long run.

What can we do to make our content more interactive?

Austin Rotter: One of the most crucial aspects is to ensure that our content is mobile-friendly. If youre expecting an enormous viewership that converts, this element is integral. Besides this, brands need to share information that directly answers their prospects concerns, not reams of pointless text, which they must sift through to get to what theyre looking for. When I say this, infographics, how-to guides, carousels, and videos can all prove to be a seed of success.

How can a business ascertain if its customers are happy, angry, or even hostile in response to its content?

Austin Rotter: Numbers play a pivotal role in determining the success of your content. There are a number of engagement metrics businesses can keep track of to assess how engaged their audience is. The most critical metrics include the time users spend on a page or website, their scroll depth, and social shares. If theres a sharp drop-off in any of these numbers, it could be an indication that the audience is not happy with the content.

Do you believe that harnessing technology to power content marketing is a viable strategy?

Austin Rotter: It definitely is! Technology can help you jump on the bandwagon and ensure that your content is always up-to-date. It can also help you automate many tedious processes, such as data collection and analysis.

Lastly, what would you advise folks who still rely on mass-produced content?

Austin Rotter: You direly need to rethink your strategy! Mass-produced content is no longer effective. People nowadays are looking for more personalized and targeted content. Try to understand what they want to learn about and what challenges theyre facing. Provide them with solutions that match their emotional needs. Thanks!

Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to share your incredible insights with us, Austin. Ideally, it will help businesses realize why their content needs to be both futurist and forward-thinking.

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In Conversation With Austin Rotter - Why Good Content Has to Be Futurist and Forward-Thinking - The Ritz Herald

Exploring the Architecture of Star Wars: In a Galaxy Far Away, Using the Tangible for Futuristic Visualizations

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Depicting architectural visualizations of the future is no easy feat, so it makes much sense for designers to use aspects of our existing architecture as a foundation for these fictional worlds. Despite recent advancements in terms of animation technologies and CGI, there is still substantial use of existing architecture to provide tangible structural elements in film.

In terms of recycling architectural aesthetics, elements of the past and future are often integrated to create a hybridized style, an amalgamation of Retro, Dystopian, Modernist and Futuristic themes. From the resurgence of ancient pyramids and temples, to skylines reminiscent of the city of New York, visualizations vary depending on different notions of what our future may look like.

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Perhaps the most varied Sci-fi movies in terms of architectural visualization is the Star Wars saga. On George Lucass fictional desert planet of Tatooine, a location lacking natural resources, the architecture presents itself as unrefined, modest and unornamented. Ghorfas were predominantly featured in the film Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, from multiple locations in Southern Tunisia including the Ksar Hadada. Used as rooms to store grain, these simplistic earth forms have been transformed into high-density dwellings. Primitive forms in contrast with the high-tech.

In Episode II, Attack of the clones, contrary to the modest quarters on Tatooine is the architecture of the planet Naboo. With Utopian cities built by advanced civilizations, the city of Theed can be seen envisaged using the Plaza de Espaa in Seville, Spain. Designed by Architect Anibal Gonzalez for the 1929 World exhibition in Seville, it is built in the traditional revival style. The ornate pavilion, colonnade and fountains offer a magnificent setting for this prosperous metropolis.

The city of Coruscant, the capital of the old republic and the home of the Jedi temple, portrays a dense ecumenopolis. As a cosmopolitan city and galactic capital, visually it is as futuristic as conceivable. With a skyline based upon those of streamline Moderne New York and the contemporary cities of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, it depicts architecture of the future to be densely populated, a hive of activity dominated by urban sprawl.

Ancient themes still saturate visions of the future, the temple of the Jedi presents itself within the typology of a Mayan temple. Designed as both a stronghold and a place of worship, it presents cladding for extra defensive strength. With five spires, including the tranquillity spire, they offer similarities with the minarets at Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey.

Modelled upon the historic long room library of Trinity College, Dublin (1712-1732) is the Jedi archives. As one of the most impressive libraries in the world its not hard to see why there are echoes of influence between the library in the movie and that of real life. A very similar arched barrel vault runs the entire length of the room and a selection of busts and figures mirror those seen at Trinity College. It suggests the timeless nature of library design, how it can continue to evolve yet remain the same at its core. Traditional architectural elements that can be transferred into future visualizations.

Jabba the Hutts palace, an exotic temple with rounded Brutalist forms and Byzantine influence presents a monumental yet unconventional approach to palace architecture in stone and steel. With influence from the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul and perhaps the neka Meteorological Observatory in Poland (1974) it combines both traditional and Modernist themes to create an innovative perception of futuristic palaces.

That is scarcely what I would call a palace, Artoo. It looks more like an iron foundry - C-3POto R2-D2 as they approach Jabba's Palace

Ron Herrons A Walking City, as part of the Archigram movement of the 1960s, bares striking resemblance to the All terrain armoured transport (AT-AT) walkers seen in the franchise. As an Avant-Garde and Neo-futuristic architectural movement that based much of its work upon the ideas of a dystopian future, it drew inspiration from technology to create a new reality with architecture that would be both mobile and dynamic. The Walking City (1964) vision proposed a city that could walk across both water and land; a nomadic city that would remain adaptable to its environment. The AT-AT also presents these adaptable qualities, at a height of 22.5 meters this incredibly intimidating war machine could face combat in an array of diverse planetary environments.

To depict the stark contrast between the republic and the galactic empire, the saga used heavy influence from Brutalism to represent the brutal nature of the empire itself. The austere and dehumanizing qualities of the heavy materials and forms in the Brutalist style create menacing overtones, setting the scene. The Death Star embodied much of these qualities with further influence form the idea of Suprematism, an abstract movement originally defined by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in the 1910s. This concentrated ideas of block colour and geometric forms floating in space, much like the space station suspended in space.

The future of architectural visualizations in Star Wars will continue to use influence from a diverse array of existing architectural sources to provide a feasible portrayal of the future, since the franchise does not have a unique architectural style. It has to narrate a broad area of the galaxy, with each planet with its own history climate and civilization; varied architecture for varied worlds. As a movie that is shot in our own world and not entirely animated/with virtual sets like Avatar, the producers have to use real locations whether they be historic sites, cities, desert dwellings or temples to create an enchanting depiction of the future. Hybridization of existing styles to remain compelling, plausible and most importantly of all striking, for cinematic effect.

This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: The Future of Architectural Visualizations, proudly presented by Enscape, the most intuitive real-time rendering and virtual reality plugin for Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, Archicad, and Vectorworks. Enscape plugs directly into your modeling software, giving you an integrated visualization and design workflow.

Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and projects. Learn more about our ArchDaily topics. As always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.

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Exploring the Architecture of Star Wars: In a Galaxy Far Away, Using the Tangible for Futuristic Visualizations - ArchDaily

Purpose-built as a ride-hail car, or a taxi cab to be specific, the Arrival Car has the footprint of a small vehicle, but the spacious legroom of a much larger automobile.

Created in partnership with Uber, the Arrival was designed to be the perfect car for ride-hailing. Unlike regular cars that were designed for ownership and just co-opted by Uber drivers, Arrival was built with the specific mindset of being a car meant for ride-hailing. This singular vision helped develop the cars overall design, as its focus shifted from pure desirability and performance to efficiency, comfort, reliability, and affordability. A taxi cab for the future, Arrival even replaces the iconic yellow cabs design with a modern, minimalist overhaul, trading in nostalgia for futurism a concept Uber knows too well.

Designer: ARRIVAL

The Arrival cars design language stands out for a bunch of reasons its prime one being its ability to wonderfully blend into the background. Most cars are designed to catch eyes, but the Arrival isnt about projecting desirability and oozing dynamics. Its sleek and simple on the eyes, using visual cues that make it camouflage on the road until you need to spot it. Unlike the yellow taxi that needs to be visible so you can holler and wave at it on the streets, Arrivals relationship with its rider is much more discreet. Book the car on an app and it arrives to you its a simplicity that allows the Arrival car to look as easy-on-the-eyes as it does. The car uses primitive boxy proportions and straight-ish lines that allow it to wonderfully merge into most blockish neighborhoods, while the use of silver/grey and black still make it look decidedly modern.

The Arrivals approach to design marks a major departure from how cars are usually designed because its prime focus is the cars interior, rather than its exterior. A typical vehicle will drive 12,000 kilometers (7500 miles) per year, whereas a cab will cover more than 4x that amount, driving almost 50,000 kilometers each year (31,000 miles). That statistic immediately calls for a focus on two things the cars performance, but more importantly, its comfort. Designed to have significantly more legroom, the Arrival Car prioritizes driver comfort, allowing them to drive for hours at an end without feeling the fatigue of navigating roads daily. In fact, its interiors were designed in consultation and collaboration with various Uber drivers, factoring in their inputs and suggestions. The passenger cabin is designed to be much more spacious too, allowing them to travel in the lap of luxury a user experience thats arguably most important to Uber.

Following the launch of Ubers Clean Air Plan in London two years ago, more than 135m has been raised to support drivers with the cost of switching to a fully electric vehicle. Ubers focus is now to encourage drivers to apply for EV Assistance under the Clean Air Plan.

The Arrival Car will join Arrivals previously announced commercial products, the Bus and Van, to provide cities with a multi-modal zero-emission transportation ecosystem that they require in order to meet their sustainability goals over the coming years, said the Arrival team in a press release. This integrated transportation ecosystem will create cleaner, more equitable mobility solutions for people living in cities that Arrival believes will have a radical impact on their health and opportunities.

Excerpt from:
This futuristic Uber cab was designed like a TARDIS - compact on the outside, spacious on the inside - Yanko Design

Canadas largest blockchain and cryptocurrency event returns to Toronto, Canada on August 9-10, 2022 as Untraceable presents the fourth annual Blockchain Futurist Conference

Blockchain Futurist Conference 2022 represents the return of the flagship conference that has over the years attracted some of cryptos most notable heavyweights. Previous speakers include Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Charles Hoskinson (Cardano), Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana), Zac Prince (Block-Fi), Robert Lessner (Compound), Brock Pierce (Crypto Pioneer), Elena Sinelnikova (CryptoChicks), and the late Larry King. This year will feature over 100 world-class speakers, with more than 60 sessions, panels, workshops and roundtables.

With a successful track record of attracting thousands of participants from over 40 countries around the world, Untraceables Blockchain Futurist Conference 2022 is a fusion of the Web3 world. This year the conference brings together Crypto, Metaverse, DeFi, GameFi, NFTs, DAOs, and more to create an immersive experience not to be missed.

The conference will once again take place at the Rebel Entertainment Complex and Cabana in Toronto, featuring state-of-the-art sound and lighting stage, VIP cabanas, an outdoor marketplace, and two levels of exhibitor booths. Designed as a fully interactive crypto experience, the conference features crypto-powered marketplaces, NFT Galleries, Crypto ATMs, and more.

In previous years, Untraceable has brought blockchain technology to life with first-of-its-kind activations, such as tracking fresh produce from farm-to-table using blockchain technology, crypto-enabled helicopter rides, and Live NFT Gaming Tournaments.

New this year the conference will include the ETHToronto Hackathon, a three-day hackathon competition that lets participants build the future by developing the next innovation in blockchain technology. Contestants can meet other developers, connect with hiring companies, attend speaker sessions and compete to present their builds on the Futurist mainstage.

Blockchain Futurist Conference is more than a conference, its a statement to the world that Canada remains a blockchain leader, said Untraceable Founder & CEO, Tracy Leparulo. Toronto is the birthplace of Ethereum, and since those early days we have witnessed this city grow into a vibrant hub for blockchain innovation. Im so happy to have had an opportunity to help foster this culture, and events like Blockchain Futurist Conference allow me and my team to continue to contribute to this amazing space and all the incredible things coming out of it!

Early-bird tickets for Blockchain Futurist Conference 2022 are on sale now. Interested in sponsoring or having your brand featured at the event? Contact the team at Untraceable Team. Learn about the future and join the Web3 movement with Blockchain Futurist Conference. The future is here.

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DisclaimerAll the information contained on our website is published in good faith and for general information purposes only. Any action the reader takes upon the information found on our website is strictly at their own risk.

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Blockchain Futurist Conference Returns to Toronto for the Fourth Year - BeInCrypto

Living with a miniaturized computer on your wrist can be a profound experience with connectivity, and with the best Apple Watch bands, your iWatch stays snug where its meant to be. The best will turn your Apple Watch into an accessory that enhances your aesthetic, and will style nicely with your wardrobe. These wristbands run the gamut of styles and materials: some are made with woven nylon, others use high-quality leathers, while still others use metals, silicone, or reinforced hard plastics.

The wristband you choose for your Apple Watch will live with you day in and day out, so make sure to choose an iWatch band that says you: that might be a wristband thats designed for your daily workouts, a rugged watch case and strap that will stand up to a physically demanding job, or a designer wristband that adds a pop of color to your outfit.

Best Overall: Apple Sport Loop Best Budget: SUPCASE Unicorn Beetle Pro Best Leather: Nomad Traditional Band Best Metal: EPULY Best Designer: Kate Spade New York

To compile our list of the best Apple Watch bands, we researched the best-selling and best-reviewed watch bands out there, looking for the standouts in a number of categories. Along the way we considered a few factors.

Comfort is all-important in a watch band thats meant to be worn all day. We looked for watch bands that dont include lots of little orifices that pull out hair, or textures that get sweaty and cause itching. We also looked for bands that use non-toxic materials, like nylon.

Style is an inextricable part of any accessory. We looked for watch bands that would fit well with lots of different personal aesthetics.

Build quality is important in any accessory thats meant to be worn daily. We looked to highlight watch bands that have the quality required to be there for you day after day.

Why It Made The Cut: Made of non-toxic woven nylon that comes in a range of colors, theis is an excellent breathable sports band for your Apple Watch.

Specs: Material: Nylon Compatible watch models: 42, 44, and 45 mm. Apple Watch models Wrist size: 5.7 to 8.7 inches

Pros: Breathable non-toxic nylon weave feels great on skin Lots of color options

Cons: Somewhat expensive for nylon

Naturally, when Apple makes a sports band for their product, they do it right. The Apple Sport Loop is an excellent woven nylon sports band. The nylon feels great on your wrist, its weave is breathable enough that it wont give you rashes, yet it also doesnt pinch hairs. The band uses a hook-and-loop fastener that holds on to keep your watch firmly on your wrist, even when you do sprints.

The Sport Loop comes in lots of colors, some of which are so bright theyll catch the eye with any outfit. Others come in discreet combinations that arent overbearingly loud. The loop comes in a regular size and an extra large size, and fits most models of Apple Watch with no trouble. Or if you prefer another device to keep tabs on your health metrics, these are the best fitness trackers.

Why It Made The Cut: With a double-tongue buckle, raised bezels to protect your watch screen, and high-quality shock absorption, this affordable case packs all the protection your Apple Watch needs.

Specs: Material: Plastic Compatible watch models: Apple Watch 7, Watch 6/SE, Watch 5, Watch 4 Wrist size: 6.7 to 9.25 inches

Pros: Excellent protection Affordable price

Cons: Not as good looking as some others

A budget Apple Watch case shouldnt only be affordable, but should protect your investment. The SUPCASE Unicorn Beetle Pro is one of the most rugged cases around, and it also comes for a fair price. The plastic case comes with a snap-on Watch screen protector with raised bezels that pairs with a scratch-proof plastic band. The band buckles with a two-tongue clasp that will keep your watch from flying away from you, even in the most extreme settings.

This is a great Apple Watch band for folks who work on construction sites, in the outdoors, for cooks, and anyone who wants to ensure they get the most value out of their Apple Watch investment. The bezels and shock resistance help keep the screen free of scratches and your watch in working order. SUPCASE also offers watch bands that are designed for other Apple Watch models with different dimensions.

Why It Made The Cut: Made with Horween leather that develops a patina as you wear it and stitched with linen, this strap imparts enduring style.

Specs: Material: Horween leather, linen thread, stainless steel Compatible watch models: All Wrist size: 5.9 to 8.26 inches

Pros: Beautiful Horween leather that ages well Rugged look Made in the USA

Cons: Not meant to get wet or submerged

For those who want traditional luxury goods paired with a dose of modern connectivity, the Nomad Traditional Band brings high-quality leather to your Apple smartwatch. Using American Horween leather stitched with linen thread and outfitted with stainless-steel hardware, this is a watch that looks great out of the box, but only gets better. Horween leather develops a wonderful mottled patina with use, so that as you grow to love your watchband it grows with you.

The Nomad is a watch strap that invokes wranglers on the ranch, leather furniture in studies, and classic Americana luxury goods. The watch straps only drawback comes from its lack of waterproofing. As is the case with all leather goods, this watch strap is better off kept out of the dish bucket or shower. It will wear down if soaked through. However, if you take proper care of it, this watch strap will age with you.

Why It Made The Cut: Made of stainless steel, this classic metal watch band makes for a great accent to your Apple Watch.

Specs: Material: Stainless steel Compatible watch models: 45, 44, and 42 mm. Apple Watch models Wrist size: 7 to 9 inches

Pros: Sturdy stainless steel is good for daily use Lots of colors to choose from Relatively inexpensive

Cons: Stainless steel loses its finish with time

Looking for a classic metal watch band for your new Apple Watch? The links in the EPULY stainless-steel watch band are sure to impress. For an impressively affordable price, this watchband comes in a variety of colors: from lustrous silver, to forest green, or pink. Its a watch band that invokes automatic winding watches from days past.

While the stainless steel is rugged enough to be nearly immune to denting, its finish is not. Youll likely see the color burnish off the edges of your watch strap with time as it rubs on countertops and tables. On models that have been finished with a color, these burnished areas will scrape down to raw steel, on silver models this burnishing may only present as a reduction in luster. Still, this burnishing isnt a dealbreaker for such an affordable watch accessory all in all, EPULY is a budget-friendly watch strap that delivers a solid product.

Why It Made The Cut: This printed silicone Apple Watch strap is a great choice for the fashion-conscious Apple Watch user.

Specs: Material: Silicone Compatible watch models: 38 and 40 mm Apple Watches Wrist size: Undisclosed

Pros: Bright pop of flair Suitable for the office Interchangeable

Cons: Might not be as comfortable as some of the sports-focused options

Sometimes a watch should be treated as more of a fashion accessory than a tool. With this printed Apple Watch band from Kate Spade New York, convert your Apple Watch into a stylish fashion accessory that will provide a nice accent to your wardrobe. Made of silicone and outfitted with a polished metal clasp, this watch band is comfortable to wear all day but also wont slip off for Thursday night samba lessons.

We love the floral patterns and curves of these Kate Spade watch bands, and think theyd look right at home with your contemporary office casual look, while also dressing up well for Saturday night out. However you style it, Kate Spade Apple Watch bands provide a nice pop of color. We think theyre some of the best watch bands for those who have fashion on the brain.

Before you invest in a new band for your Apple Watch, theres a few things to consider.

Not every model of Apple Watch is the same. While some iWatch bands easily connect to any model of iWatch, others dont. Apple Watches are up to Generation 7 now, and many of the generations have different sizes. Apple uses millimeters to describe these sizes. Make sure that the Apple Watch band you select will pair well with your iWatch before you buy. Apple Watch sizes are broken down below:

Series 7: 41 or 45 mm SE, Series 6 to Series 4: 40 or 44 mm Series 3 to Series 0: 38 or 42 mm

Apple Watch bands come at all sorts of price points. Sometimes name-brand wristbands cost dramatically more than third-party bands that are made of the same materials. For example this 3-pack of nylon wristbands from DaQin costs significantly less than the official Apple nylon wrist band. Before you buy a name brand wrist band, consider if its value lives up to its name.

Since Apple Watch bands are generally easily interchangeable, it might be worth considering whether multiple bands for different occasions could be useful. Some people might benefit from having one wristband for the gym and another for date night. It can be fun to mix and match watch bands.

Since nylon reliably feels great on the skin. The Apple Sport Loop is the most comfortable wristband for all day use.

To find your wrist size, simply wrap a piece of paper around your wrist, then mark where the paper meets, lay the paper flat against a ruler, and measure the paper from the end to the mark. Most watch bands state the wrist size range that they are compatible with. Compare your wrist size to this number.

Whether your Apple Watch band will stretch greatly depends on the material its made of. Metal wristbands will not stretch. Silicone, on the other hand, may. A nylon weave shouldnt stretch much unless it contains elastic to make it stretchy. Leather shouldnt stretch.

Most Apple Watch bands are compatible with a number of specific Apple Watches. Some are universally compatible. Its worth taking a look at the specific size of your Apple Watch and comparing it to the compatibility numbers given by the company that makes the Watch band that you are interested in. Keep your Apple devices ready to go with the best MagSafe chargers.

Many people tend to wear their watch on their non-dominant hand. For a smartwatch this is more important than ever, as youll likely use your dominant hand to manipulate the apps. For righties, this means your left wrist is usually a good bet. However, in practice its important to wear your Apple Watch on whatever wrist feels comfortable.

When youre outfitting your Apple Watch with a new wristband, the wristband you choose can make your watch into something new. Multi-colored nylon and rustic leather create very different moods, but they also feel different. Thats why its important to select a wristband that will fit with your lifestyle. For a great rustic leather band that will develop a wonderful patina with use, consider the Nomad Traditional Band. The SUPCASE Unicorn Beetle is a great option for those looking for some affordable armor for their watch. The Apple Sport Loop on the other hand is a wonderful multicolored nylon band made by Apple, that will keep up on a marathon, and look good the whole while.

This post was created by a non-news editorial team at Recurrent Media, Futurisms owner. Futurism may receive a portion of sales on products linked within this post.

Originally posted here:
Best Apple Watch Bands of 2022 - Futurism

Russian space chief Dmitry Rogozin may have it out for his own space agency.

He was demoted from being Russias deputy prime minister to lead Roscosmos in 2018 and has since brought a very different tune to the countrys space efforts.

He never wanted this job, an anonymous NASA source told Ars Technicas Eric Berger. He was essentially demoted, and he has spent his time at Roscosmos trying to get back into Putins good graces. And so it has just been an extraordinarily different kind of leadership than weve seen before, to the detriment of everyone.

Rogozins behavior and communication style at Roscosmos have been so bizarre that at times experts have been divided on what hes even trying to say.

Thats been on full display in recent days, with Western media outlets including Bloomberg and Axios interpreting Rozozins latest outburst well inform our partners about the end of our work on the ISS with a years notice as a threat to pull out of the International Space Station entirely in response to sanctions against Russia.

That type of aggressive discourse in the space research community is unprecedented, even during the height of tensions with the Soviet Union.

Going back to the Cold War, there was an unwritten rule where [USSR space officials] and NASA would not criticize one another, the former NASA official told Ars. No matter how bad things got on Earth, the two space agencies would never share an ill word. Rather, they would continue to work together and let the politicians do the fighting.

Well, that changed dramatically with Rogozin, the source added, arguing that the Russian space boss was simply spending his time at Roscosmos trying to get back into Putins good graces.

The latest dustup comes from Rogozin going on Russian state TV to say that a decision about the ISS future has been taken already, were not obliged to talk about it publicly.

But on closer inspection, Rogozins strange edicts, which are often communicated over Twitter, can be ambiguous.

A closer reading of his most recent remarks, for instance, suggests that he might simply be saying that Roscosmos will be informing international partners of Russias eventual plans to leave the station with a years notice, as Berger points out, something Rogozin has implied in the past as well.

In short, its not a matter of if Russia will abandon the ISS, but when. And reading tea leaves in the form of the biased and muddled messages coming from Russian state media is likely a fools errand.

Besides, Roscosmos has a lot to lose. Leaving the ISS means the country will no longer have a permanent presence in space, at least for years to come. Russia also recently launched and docked a brand new segment to the ISS, a module which has been in the works for decades.

That sunk cost, Bergers NASA source said, means that even the leadership of Roscosmos still desperately wants and needs this activity to continue, because if they drop out of the ISS they lose their space program. We are literally talking about the death of the Russian civil space program.

Its nearly impossible to read between the lines and get a clear message from Rogozin. Bergers outlook?

What I have learned about covering Dmitry Rogozin for the last decade,he wrote, is that, by far, the best policy to adopt toward him is to ignore what he says publicly.

READ MORE: The Western space community should put Dmitry Rogozin on ignore [Ars Technica]

More on Rogozin: Former Astronaut Muzzled by NASA Unloads on Russia Again

See the rest here:
Former NASA Official Says Russian Space Head Is Trapped, Trying to Escape - Futurism

Think of her as Peggy Guggenheim in reverse. Laura Mattioli Rossi: an Italian, not an American, living in New York, not Venice, near Canal Street, not the Grand Canal. She established and runs a private foundation in New York, the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), which recalls the private, one-woman Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

Since 2013, Mattioli has exhibited Italian art of the Interwar and Postwar period in the SoHo loft building on Broome Street where she also lives. Guggenheim displayed Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists of the same period in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, where she lived. The two heiresses, raised by nannies some 50 years apart, also shared lonely childhoods.

Her fathers extensive collection of Italian Futurist art began in 1949, a birth date just before her own, 1950. When the collection was born, I was born, she said last month. The collection was my big, more successful sister famous and more beautiful, and more pleasing to my father.

Over an espresso and chocolates in the large, open kitchen inside the CIMA gallery above her loft, she casually mentions: My mother tried to kill me when I was six months old. She was unstable and thought, after a long postnatal depression, that I caused her suffering.

Until she was 12, hired help protected her from her mothers violent outbursts, as her father, Gianni Mattioli, a successful cotton merchant, traveled for business and escaped emotionally into the sanctuary of his art collection, kept in a second apartment on the Via Senato in Milan. The family apartment was furnished with the antiques and historic paintings that his bourgeois business guests preferred. His daughter considered the collection her good sister filled with good objects: They gave me fewer problems than people.

If Guggenheim, in her winged sunglasses and dangling Calder earrings, was flamboyant, Mattioli dresses quietly, like the academic she is. She wears wire-rimmed glasses, and during a recent visit, her only splash of color was a hand-knit scarf tucked under a cabled burgundy cardigan. With a masters in art and a Ph.D. on the history of collecting, she taught for 15 years, and still has a studious air. When, at 23, she married Giovanni Rossi, an art conservator, she said, I left with only the shirt on my back my parents didnt give me a penny. (Mattioli and Rossi divorced in 2008.)

In 1983, she unexpectedly inherited the collection, which had been promised to an emerging museum in Brera. But the museum was never built, and the Futurist collection, which grew when her father bought another famous collection in 1949, stayed in his ownership. He died in 1977, and her mother, in a surprising deathbed decision, bequeathed the entire collection to her daughter. Mattioli became the bride of the collection.

The collection had a biography of its own. Her father had left high school at 14 to support his penurious mother and work as a delivery boy in a cotton trading company. He found his own way in the 1920s, via Milanese galleries, into an exciting world of avant-garde artists who wanted to change the world. The impoverished aficionado, so malnourished he developed rickets, could afford just a few artworks. Only after ascending in the company did the situation change, especially when he married the daughter of the boss of a competing cotton trading company. The executive knew of his daughters instability and arranged the marriage: It was a deal I couldnt refuse, Gianni Mattioli wrote to his brother. Angela Maria Boneschi adored her tall, handsome, solicitous husband.

According to Laura Mattioli, when her family fled the bombardments in Milan to Lake Maggiore in 1943, her father witnessed Italys first Nazi massacre of Jews, left floating in the lake. Believing art could help make man less of a beast, he resolved to collect art for its civilizing value. (After the massacre, she said her father clandestinely arranged the safe passage for Jews into Switzerland.) He eventually opened his collection to the public on the Via Senato, with its Futurist and Metaphysical paintings, and a wall of Giorgio Morandis. In 1949, he lent many works to the Museum of Modern Arts show, Twentieth Century Italian Art.

My father wanted to tell the story of Italian art in the first half of the century, she said. For me, he set the example of opening his collection to the public and lending it to museums.

Because of export restrictions on art over 50 years old and other legal measures, the Italian Futurist collection cannot leave Italy as a whole or be broken up for sale. (She is allowed by law to export a limited number of works for exhibition.) In 1997, Laura Mattioli succeeded in arranging a long-term loan with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, freeing her to work as an independent scholar and curator.

In one stroke the Mattioli collection made the Peggy Guggenheim Collection the number one museum of Italian Futurism, said Philip Rylands, then the director of the Guggenheim in Venice, and now head of the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Fla.

Her fathers attitudes toward art and money helped shape her own. He had a liberated attitude toward money, and consciously used it for spiritual and cultural needs and the common good, she said. His social empathy came from the stinging poverty of his childhood. As part of its cultural outreach, CIMA funds scholars, mostly foreign, for research sojourns in New York.

For Mattioli, CIMA is a corrective. Italian Modernism had always been seen through a French lens, and her New York shows shed that perspective to better establish avant-garde Italian art as an independent rather than derivative movement. The first was Fortunato Depero, the Futurist artist who had become a father figure for her father, followed by a show on Medardo Rosso, the sculptor and photographer.

Im full of admiration for her campaign to raise the profile of 20th-century Italian art stressing its originality, and to do so with such rigorous scholarship, said Rylands, adding, The Depero and Rosso exhibitions brought attention to artists who generally arent sufficiently understood.

In SoHo, as in Milan, there are two apartments, her own and the tall, open, Minimalist loft gallery. On Fridays and Saturdays, visiting days for the public, guests are welcomed with an espresso, as in a home; scholars guide visitors on Friday tours.

The current show of social realism, Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917, embodies her fathers notion of art with a social message. The face of La Portinaia (The Concierge), a sculpture by Rosso, a contemporary of Rodin, expresses the anguish of protracted poverty. In Il Minatore (The Miner), Ambrogio Alciati painted a Caravaggio-esque deposition from the cross, the body of a miner being mourned by a widow after an accident in the mine. He reinvents chiaroscuro with brisk, wispy, contemporary brush strokes. A haunting, tightly focused portrait, Venditore di Cerini (Match Seller) by Antonio Mancini, depicts a mendicant boy peddling matches, with dashes of paint that John Singer Sargent would have applied to silk, here giving the effect of wistful sadness.

In her own loft downstairs, Mattioli collects the art of her time, like her father (and Peggy Guggenheim). Perfect visual pitch and daring seem to be the legacy she absorbed at home. Two startling sculptures by the New York sculptor Barry X Ball stand ten feet high, one a ghostly distortion of Michelangelos Rondanini Piet, carved in translucent onyx. Two faint and fragile pencil-and-watercolor drawings by Cy Twombly on torn paper hang over the gas-fed fireplace. Six early Morandis from what Mattioli calls his pudding period because of the thickly applied oils line a wall.

The furniture is Italian modern. Two Gio Ponti side tables stand beside the low-slung, midcentury Lady Armchair, in shaggy upholstery, by Marco Zanuso for Cassina. An inlaid Lombard-style desk and dresser from the familys Milan apartment line the entry hall.

Besides her taste and sense of social mission, the legacy she brought from her fathers collection was detachment. Since it was located outside her home, she came to feel the collection was something I could live with, but also without. In 2018, she gave the entire Futurist collection to her younger son, Jacopo Rossi, a Roman Catholic priest. She gave the collection in Switzerland to her other son, Giovannibattista Rossi, an Alpinist who lives there.

I dont know what the future of the Futurist collection could be, she said. But my son has more energy, and he will run it for the third generation.

Under the auspices of the Italian Foreign Ministry, the Futurist collection was sent last year in a diplomatic pouch for exhibition to the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The movement had greatly impacted the Russian Avant-Garde in the early 20th century. The collection returned to Italy just 10 days before the recent start of the war in Ukraine.

Had it still been in Russia after the start, We dont know what would have happened to the collection, she said. It is now headed to Milan on a five-year loan to the Museo del Novecento (Museum of the Twentieth Century), next to the cathedral.

Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917

Through June 18 at the Center for Italian Modern Art, 421 Broome Street, 4th floor, Manhattan. 646-370-3596; italianmodernart.org.

Excerpt from:
Laura Mattioli Is the Peggy Guggenheim of Soho - The New York Times

click to enlarge

Courtesy of the Arab American National Museum

Resembling a cross between a spaceship and an octopus, al-Falaq has 35-foot tentacles that extend throughout the floors of the museum, outfitted with 81 computer screens. Ali describes it as a museum within a museum.

The new art installation at Dearborn's Arab American National Museum, "al-Falaq," defies any easy explanation. Looking like a cross between a spaceship and an octopus, the sculpture's 35-foot tentacles twist across multiple floors of the museum, with computer screens in the place of suction cups. Its glowing "head" is suspended 20 feet above the ground in the museum's atrium.

It really has to be seen to be believed and to be fully understood.

Its creator, Alia Ali, recently gave a tour of the installation which she describes as a "museum within a museum" when it made its debut last month.

Ali was born in 1985 in Yemen to a Yemeni father and a Bosnian mother, both linguists who spoke seven languages between them, she says. In the 1990s, both of her ancestral homelands became ravaged by conflict, and in 1998, her family moved to Hamtramck in metro Detroit, since her grandfather got a job at Chrysler.

"During this time, I remember thinking of this word 'alien,' being an alien, and what does it mean to be have extraterrestrial powers ... of being of two cultures and speaking two languages," Ali says while looking up at her sculpture, adding, "only to later on find out that being an alien in this country legally only meant that I was subhuman."

Ali wound up getting a scholarship to study art and political science at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In 2014, a new civil war broke out in Yemen, and while Ali was studying for her masters in fine arts at the California Institute of Arts, dozens of Yemeni children were killed in a Saudi-led airstrike on Aug. 9, 2018.

Ali says she found herself shaken by the incident, and became transfixed by the conflict.

"After seeing all of this, I started looking at Google," she says. "I became quite obsessed with looking at Google. When you type in 'Yemen,' all I would see [was images] of suffering." But Ali says she was also unable to find out much about Yemen from looking at books, either, since its history was written by colonizers.

"When I started looking at books, I saw that the history wasn't the history that was written by us, because we come from an oral history," she says. "I saw how language was manipulated. I never saw it as a tool. Actually, I saw it as a weapon, how one person can change a story, choose to erase something, or choose to include something else, or choose to interpret."

Those experiences resulted in the launch of what Ali describes as her Yemeni Futurism body of work, which she says is inspired by Afrofuturism, a sci-fi-inspired art movement once described by Detroit-born arts curator Ingrid LaFleur as "a way of imagining possible futures through a Black cultural lens."

"What inspired this was rage, pure rage," Ali says, "to turn something that's toxic to me, toxic to my community, toxic to how we see each other, into something beautiful."

She says with her art, she wants to create a new narrative for Yemeni people.

"If all Yemenis kind of exist in this sort of dystopian present constantly, only to hold onto this beautiful nostalgia of only looking to the past, then therefore the only thing as you're going ... to look forward to is a dystopian future."

She adds, "Don't exist within the narrative that is set for you, because you only exist in a place of position of defending something, you will only be responding to someone else. Start an entirely new narrative completely."

She describes "al-Falaq" as "a monument for Yemenis, first and foremost." She also describes it as a bit of a critique of the Arab American National Museum; despite the fact that people of Yememi ancestry are one of the largest groups in metro Detroit's Arab-American population, the museum had few objects representing Yemen, she says.

Courtesy of the Arab American National Museum

Artist Alia Ali gives a tour of her new installation al-Falaq, which fills the atrium at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.

Ali says the sculpture's shape is inspired by spiders, considered sacred in Islam because they are said to have spun a web over the entrance of a cave where Muhammad was hiding, protecting him from enemies, as well as the elusive glass octopus, a rarely seen creature spotted in the depths of the Arabian Sea.

The outer space theme was also inspired by a 1997 news report that three men from Yemen had sued NASA, arguing that its Pathfinder spacecraft and Sojourner rover were trespassing on the planet that rightfully belonged to them. The ancient Sabaeans, who lived thousands of years ago in modern-day Yemen, worshiped the planets.

"We inherited the planet from our ancestors 3,000 years ago," they told the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Thawri.

The lawsuit was laughed off in the West. "It's a ridiculous claim," CNN reported NASA news chief Brian Welch saying after laughing. "Mars is a planet out in the solar system that is the property of all humanity, not two or three guys in Yemen." CNN ended its brief report with a joke: "There was no word on whether they had paid the appropriate inheritance taxes."

"People mocked and laughed, like, who are these primitive people?" Ali says. "In fact, they're heroes, because what does it mean to not only occupy our land, but now there's also an occupation of our myths and dreams?"

Dont exist within the narrative that is set for you ... Start an entirely new narrative completely.

The sculpture's 81 tablet screens, located across its tentacles, incorporate a number of references from Yemeni pop culture (the late singer Ofra Haza, a Yemenite-Jewish star known as "The Israeli Madonna," is featured) as well as Arabian folklore (including creatures like jinns, or genies, represented by a glitch effect on the screens).

Perhaps controversially, the screens also include images of Yemeni artifacts gleaned from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

"These are objects that still are considered looted," Ali says, saying that they were stolen from Yemen by British colonizers in the 20th century. "So this project also becomes about questioning the military-industrial complex, but also the museum-industrial complex, as it is sort of hand-in-hand with war."

The project was commissioned by the AANM, with support of the Mellon Foundation.

The project involved a large team of artists and fabricators to bring it to life, including an architectural consultant, an electrician, an animator, and an installation team. Installation took four days to complete, Ali says.

It will be on view for two years in the AANM, which reopened in January after being closed to the public for nearly two years due to the pandemic.

Ali says she hopes that the art installation will inspire other Yemeni people the way she has been inspired by her research into Yemeni culture.

"To me, this is a letter from our ancestors to the future," she says. "Because if I can feel 3,000 years ago, then surely we can imagine ourselves 3,000 years from now."

The Arab American National Museum is located at 13624 Michigan Ave., Dearborn; 313-429-2535;arabamericanmuseum.org.

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Continued here:
Yemeni artist Alia Ali forges blasts off with far-out, futuristic installation at the Arab American National Museum - Detroit Metro Times

NASA is still deciding on whether to take a Russian cosmonaut along for the ride on a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station later this year.

During a press conference about Crew-4, this weeks mission to the space station, SpaceNews editor Jeff Foust inquired if a decisionhad been made on whether a cosmonaut would round out the crew of five astronauts, given the tense geopolitical standoff between Russia and much of the rest of the world.

NASAs ISS manager Joel Montalbano replied that the agency will likely have an answer by mid to late June, according to Foust.

Its a pivotal decision, as Crew-5 could mark the first time a Russian cosmonaut travels to the ISS on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon. But whether it will actually happen remains very unclear. Russias invasion of Ukraine has driven a deep wedge between its space agency and the West, with several major deep space missions being put on hold as a direct result.

Roscosmos and NASA have been collaborating on sending astronauts into space since the early 1990s. The first time a Russian cosmonaut traveled on board NASAs Space Shuttle was in 1994, as part of the Shuttle-Mir program, which was designed to enable longer stays on board the Mir, Russias space station.

The last time a Russian cosmonaut flew to the ISS onboard an American spacecraft was the STS-113 Space Shuttle mission to the ISS in 2002, almost two decades ago and less than a year prior to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Since ending the Space Shuttle program in 2011 after 135 missions spanning three decades, NASA had to rely almost exclusively on Russias Soyuz spacecraft to populate the US segment of the orbital outpost.

But thanks to its collaboration with SpaceX, NASA has established a reliable new way to do just that: the companys Crew Dragon, which has delivered astronauts to the ISS on four occasions so far.

Last year, the head RoscosmosDmitry Rogozinadmitted that SpaceX has already acquired enough experience for us to be able to put our cosmonauts on Crew Dragon, at an October press conference.

I believe we will be in a position to discuss candidates who may be flying to the space station on board the Crew Dragon Russian cosmonauts, and American astronauts who will be flying to the space station on Russian spacecraft, he added.

But his tone has changed considerably on several of occasions since then. The considerable sanctions aimed at Roscosmos over the Ukraine invasion enraged the outspoken space chief, even spurring him to seemingly threaten the US with a plummeting space station.

Where that leaves plans to send a Russian cosmonaut to the ISS on board a Crew Dragon remains to be seen. Despite the international mudflinging, ISS operations have remained largely unaffected by the crisis unfolding back on the ground, according to both NASA and Roscosmos.

Whether that means the two space agencies seat barter agreement is also unaffected is very much unclear at this point.

Ongoing ISS operations are one of the few remaining tethers that tie Russia to its former allies in the West,with decades of peaceful cooperation in space on the line.

But Montalbano is optimistic, anticipating that Russia will approve the seat barter agreement based on discussions with Russian counterparts, who are supportive of crew swaps, according to Foust.

More on the ISS: Russia Is About to Activate a Robot Arm on the Exterior of the Space Station

See more here:
NASA Deciding Whether Russian Cosmonaut Is Allowed on SpaceX Launch - Futurism

New documents have exposed a bizarre and futuristic array of tech explored by a shadowy US governmentunit.

The ideas were investigated by the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP).

The unit was funded by theDefense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and reportedly has roots in UFO research.

The Pentagon claims the AAWSAP has been shut downbut has provided little detail on its work until now.

The new revelations emerged from almost 1,600 pages of reports, contracts, presentations, briefings, and memos that the DIA released to Motherboard. They show that the program wasnt only interested in UFOs.

Motherboard has kindly shared the tranche of documents which gave us a chance to dig into the most outlandish projects.

In a 2009 document sent to the then-deputy secretary of defense, the DIA praised a report on invisibility cloaks:

Overall, this is a nice qualitative description of the rapidly moving field of invisibility and cloaking and can serve as a good starting point for someone interested in diving into the details of this new technology.

The report describes a cloaking devicethat hides both an object and the act of hiding itself:

Perfect cloaking devices are impossible because they require materials where the speed of light approaches infinity. Imperfect cloaking devices could be made. Such devices would implement suitable curved-space geometries.

The report predicts that making such a tool will rely more on theoretical research than on advances in new materials. Yet the biggest barrier envisioned isnt tech its imagination.

Stargates are already popular in science-fiction. The programhad designs on making them a reality.

The theoretical devices would provide a path through wormholes that connect universes, dimensions, and times.

A 2010 AAWSAP report imagines space travelers using wormhole-stargates near the Earths surface, in Earths orbit or anywhere else in the solar system. They would then pass through the stargate and come out the other side in remote spacetime within seconds, moving through the wormhole throat at speeds of 30 mph! and with no time dilation effects.

The explorers could travel through the stargates in small scout ships, which wouldnt need vast propellant mass ratios or extensive life support provisions.

Explorers could spend all day investigating the remote spacetime location and then return home through the stargate in time to have dinner with their families, the document anticipates. If explorers were to really push the envelope, they would design their stargate so they could return from their voyage in time to wave goodbye as as they see themselves depart on their journey.

The report says that designing a stargate from wormhole physics is a straightforward exercise and that it is very easy to build a time machine, given a traversable wormhole.

Unfortunately, time travel via wormhole was beyond the scope of this paper, the authors add forlornly.

Its often said that we know more about the moon than the seafloors of Earth yet weve barely scratched the surface of our nearest neighbor in space.

One of the AASWP projects aimed to dig a little deeper.

A 2010 document proposes reaching the moons center through a novel technique: nuclear explosions.

This would create a tunnel to the moons gravitational potential well, which could provide negative masses to create a propulsion system without limits.

Making a tunnel through the moon, provided there is a good supply of negative mass, could revolutionize interstellar space flight, wrote the reports author. A sequence of thermonuclear shape charges would be required to make such a tunnel technically feasible.

The document predicts that the number of thermonuclear explosives required would be quite reasonable, and certainly much less than the number of required fission explosives.

After the nuclear explosions crush the lunar rocks and the heat is removed, the tunnel wall would be made from ceramic material, as the water needed for concrete would be in short supply.

These ideas may be intriguing, but the AAWSAPs apparent failure to produce real systems suggests the program was a waste of money.

At least, thats how it appears to us civilians on Earth. But if the results are hiding under invisibility cloaks, in lunar tunnels, or down traversable wormholes, wed be none the wiser.

Read more from the original source:
Stargates, invisibility cloaks, and nuking the moon: The US military's wildest tech research - The Next Web