• 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)

Anab Jain

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Anab Jain (b. 1976, Ahmedabad, India) is a designer, filmmaker, futurist, and educator. She is the co-founder of Superflux,[1] 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[2] at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Early life and education

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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

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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

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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

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The studio has produced impactful futures work for clients like Google AI,[3] Cabinet Office UK,[4] Anthemis,[5] Suncorp,[6] Sony,[7] Samsung,[8] Gov. of UAE,[9] Museum of the Future, Dubai,[10] IKEA,[11] the UNDP,[12] and DeepMind.[13] 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

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For their 2011 film Song of the Machine,[14] 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.[15]

With an ambition to foreground the unintended consequences of nascent technologies, early self-initiated projects included Drone Aviary,[16] 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,[17] 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

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From 2018, the studio has integrated more-than-human perspectives into their work. Works like Refuge for Resurgence,[18] a multispecies banquet, and Invocation for Hope,[19] 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,[20] Ministry of Energy, UAE, leading to an investment of AED 600 billion[21]); “How do you live with an AI that questions wage slavery?” (Our Friends Electric,[22] Mozilla Foundation); “How might new human-AI relations change the future of work?“ (Stark Choices, Varkey Foundation),[23] and “If AI spoke for our rivers, what might they say?” (The Ecological Intelligence Agency[24], 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.[25]

Public Speaking

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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)[26]
  • “Calling for More-Than-Human Politics” at the Tentacular Festival (Madrid, 2019)
  • “More-Than-Human-Centred Design” at the IXDA Conference (Lyon, 2018)[27] 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)[28]
  • “Why we need to Imagine Different Futures” on the main stage at TED (Vancouver, 2017)[29]
  • “Design for the New Normal”, NEXT Conference (Berlin, 2012)[30]

Teaching

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Since 2016, Jain has been a Professor of Design Investigations[31] 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

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Exhibitions

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Press and Interviews

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  • 2024: “In Conversation with Anab Jain”[60]RSA Journal
  • 2023: “Designing the future: how Superflux is demystifying speculative design”[61]Design Week
  • 2023: “Superflux - A Space of Possibilities”[62]Nomad Magazine
  • 2022: "Positive Thinking: A solution to climate change inaction?"[63] – Anab Jain in conversation with Sangita Myska, BBC Radio 4
  • 2022: “Design for a less uncertain future, in conversation with Anab Jain”[64]Salone Internazionale del Mobile
  • 2022: "Superflux Debuts 'The Library' at Dubai's Museum of the Future"[65]STIRWorld
  • 2021: “A Future in Flux” – Interview in Icon Magazine
  • 2021: "the Intersection Explores a Possible Future Where Modern Tech Hits Breaking Point"[66]DesignBoom
  • 2021: "Superflux: Making Climate Change 'Tangible, Relatable and Specific"[67]Wallpaper Magazine
  • 2021: "Superflux Sets the Table for a More-than-Human Future at La Biennale di Venezia"[68]MOLD
  • 2021: "The Climate Issue as an Experience"[69]ORF
  • 2021: "Maybe for The Last Time: Vienna Biennale for Change 2021"[70]Der Standard
  • 2021: "Superflux: the duo inspiring change at Venice Biennale through hypothetical worlds"[71]Financial Times
  • 2021: "Superflux imagines multi-species banquet for Venice Architecture Biennale"[72]Dezeen
  • 2020: "Apocalypse never: why climate catastrophe won’t make us change"[73]The Correspondent
  • 2019: “On Critical Activism: An Interview with Anab Jain”[74]Journal Of Future Studies
  • 2016: “Superflux founder Anab Jain on using technology to turn the blind into super-seers”[75]The Standard

Publications

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Books

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

Book Chapters

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  • “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[76], Anab Jain, Jon Ardern and Tobias Revell, ed. by Juha van ’t Zelfde (Amsterdam: Valiz/Antennae Series, 2014)

Selected Articles and Blogs

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  • 2023: “Radical Design for a World in Crisis”,[77] Noema Magazine
  • 2022: “To Doubt, To Question, To Say Enough”,[78] 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”,[79] an essay by Anab Jain and Hanna Sarsa, Architectural Review
  • 2020: “Experiments in Feral Futuring”,[80] an essay by Anab Jain and Alex Taylor, Public Books
  • 2020: “After Innovation, A Resurgence”,[81] Gesprach Journal
  • 2019: “Mitigation of Shock: Post Occupancy Anthropology”,[82] 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”,[83] 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”,[84] edited transcript of a talk delivered at the Tentacular Festival
  • 2019: “Stop Shouting Future, Start Doing It”,[85] Medium
  • 2018: “More than Human Centered Design”,[86] Ding Magazine (2018)
  • 2016: “Owning the Sky: An Invisible Architecture of Civilian Drones”,[87] an essay by Anab Jain and Jon Ardern, ARPA Journal
  • 2011: “Design Futurescaping”,[88] an essay by Anab Jain, Jon Ardern and Justin Pickard, Blowup: The Era of Objects
  • 2010: “The Power of 8: Encouraging Collaborative DIY Futures”,[89] 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
  1. ^ Superflux Website
  2. ^ Design Investigations, University of Applied Arts Vienna
  3. ^ Google AI Project via Superflux website
  4. ^ Cabinet Office UK Speculating on the Future of Rail
  5. ^ Anthemis website
  6. ^ Suncorp Mitigation of Shock via Superflux website
  7. ^ Sony Internet of Things Academy via Superflux website
  8. ^ Samsung Project Talos via Superflux website
  9. ^ Future Energy Lab via Superflux website
  10. ^ Superflux’s New Immersive Installation at Museum of the Future, Dubai
  11. ^ IKEA Ingka Group COP26 Exhibition
  12. ^ UNDP Reality Check via Superflux website
  13. ^ DeepMind Project via Superflux website
  14. ^ Song of the Machine via Superflux website,
  15. ^ "See the World in a New Light", The Guardian
  16. ^ Drone Aviary project, Superflux website
  17. ^ Mitigation of Shock project, Superflux website
  18. ^ Refuge for Resurgence project, Superflux website
  19. ^ Invocation for Hope project, Superflux website
  20. ^ The Future Energy Lab
  21. ^ UAE Energy Plan for 2050 to achieve balance between energy production and consumption
  22. ^ Our Friends Electric
  23. ^ Stark Choices
  24. ^ Ecological Intelligence Agency via Superflux website
  25. ^ "Dezeen Awards 2021", Dezeen
  26. ^ "Imagining What the Future Looks Like", SkollWF 2019
  27. ^ "More-Than-Human-Centred Design", Interaction Design Association
  28. ^ "A Sneak Preview of the Future", TED India
  29. ^ "Why We Need to Imagine Different Futures, TED Main Stage
  30. ^ "Design for the New Normal", Superflux
  31. ^ Design Investigations, University of Applied Arts Vienna
  32. ^ Current Royal Designers for Industry, RSA Website
  33. ^ "RSA announces nine 2022 Royal Designers for Industry", Design Week
  34. ^ Anab Jain bio, UAL
  35. ^ Dezeen Awards 2021, Dezeen Website
  36. ^ Artists + Machine Intelligence Research Awardees, Google Research
  37. ^ "EU Horizon 2020 Grant for Superflux and Partners", Superflux
  38. ^ Messages in a Bottle: A CreaTures Experiment, CreaTures Website
  39. ^ "Winners of Internet of Things Launchpad Unveiled!", Tech City UK
  40. ^ "Design Fiction: Superflux, 'Drone Aviary'", Wired
  41. ^ Anab Jain bio, TED website
  42. ^ "UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2005", Noema Lab
  43. ^ Yellow Chair Stories project, Superflux website
  44. ^ Journeys, a film by Vinayan Kodoth
  45. ^ FIFDH Awards
  46. ^ "Our Time on Earth", Barbican Centre
  47. ^ "Subject to Change", Droog Gallery
  48. ^ "Biennale Architettura 2021 - How Will We Live Together?", La Biennale di Venezia
  49. ^ "Vienna Biennale for Change 2021: Planet Love. Climate Care in the Digital Age", MAK
  50. ^ "Showing Styria What Will Be", Kunsthaus Graz
  51. ^ "2219: Futures Imagined", ArtScience Museum
  52. ^ "Waging Peace", Museum of Discovery
  53. ^ "Home Futures", Design Museum
  54. ^ "The Future Starts Here", V&A Museum
  55. ^ "Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine", Vitra Design Museum
  56. ^ "After the End of the World", Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
  57. ^ "All This Belongs to You", V&A Museum
  58. ^ "The Fab Mind", 21_21 Design Sight
  59. ^ "Talk to Me", MoMA
  60. ^ “In Conversation with Anab Jain”, RSA Journal
  61. ^ "Designing the future: how Superflux is demystifying speculative design", Design Week
  62. ^ "Superflux - A Space of Possibilities", Nomad Magazine
  63. ^ "Positive Thinking: A solution to climate change inaction?", BBC Radio 4
  64. ^ “Design for a less uncertain future, in conversation with Anab Jain”, Salone Internazionale del Mobile
  65. ^ "Superflux Debuts 'The Library' at Dubai's Museum of the Future", STIRWorld
  66. ^ " the Intersection Explores a Possible Future Where Modern Tech Hits Breaking Point", Design Boom
  67. ^ "Superflux: Making Climate Change 'Tangible, Relatable and Specific'", Wallpaper Magazine
  68. ^ "Superflux Sets the Table for a More-than-Human Future at La Biennale di Venezia", MOLD
  69. ^ "The Climate Issue as an Experience", ORF'
  70. ^ "Maybe for The Last Time: Vienna Biennale for Change 2021", Der Standard
  71. ^ "Superflux: the duo inspiring change at Venice Biennale through hypothetical worlds", Financial Times
  72. ^ "Superflux imagines multi-species banquet for Venice Architecture Biennale", Dezeen
  73. ^ "Apocalypse never: why climate catastrophe won’t make us change", The Correspondent
  74. ^ "On Critical Activism: An Interview with Anab Jain", Journal of Future Studies
  75. ^ “Superflux founder Anab Jain on using technology to turn the blind into super-seers”, The Standard
  76. ^ Dread: The Dizziness of Freedom
  77. ^ “Radical Design for a World in Crisis”, Noema Magazine
  78. ^ "To Doubt, To Question, To Say Enough", Civic Square
  79. ^ "In practice: Superflux on the Future Energy Lab", Architectural Review
  80. ^ “Experiments in Feral Futuring”, Public Books
  81. ^ "After Innovation, A Resurgence", Gesprach Journal
  82. ^ “Mitigation of Shock: Post Occupancy Anthropology”, The Business of Research
  83. ^ “Our Friends Electric: Reflections on Advocacy and Design Research for the Voice Enabled Internet”, CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  84. ^ "Calling for a More-than-Human Politics", Superflux Blog
  85. ^ “Stop Shouting Future, Start Doing It”, Medium
  86. ^ “More than Human Centered Design”. Ding Magazine Issue 2
  87. ^ “Owning the Sky: An Invisible Architecture of Civilian Drones”, ARPA Journal Issue 4
  88. ^ "Design Futurescaping", Blowup: The Era of Objects
  89. ^ “The Power of 8: Encouraging Collaborative DIY Futures”, Negotiating Futures - Design Fiction, Conference Proceedings Of The 6th Swiss Design Network Conference 2010