TIME TRAVEL EXPERIMENT No. 1

A speculative storytelling game involving a system of symbols (laser printed on acrylic glass) and a specific narrative as a starting point

Year: 2019/2021
Photos: Elena Štrok

What separates the past from the future is simply a point of view. Both past and future being merely ideas, it is in the way we exercise them that they become true. The way humans perceive reality is through stories. We form an idea based on belief, and depending on the number of individuals that choose to engage in the given idea, it makes it more or less part of the collective reality.

This is how traditions were and still are born, the only difference being the context of reality and the system of values in a given time and space.

For a moment, we will put ourselves in the mindset of scientists in a future very far away. Those scientists find an archeological site that is for them a past, but from our current point of view, it is also a future, although a bit of a closer one. The workshop starts with this thesis and presents to the participants the 14 symbols that are found in the before mentioned archeological site. All the symbols are carved in acrylic glass, in pieces 4x4 cm.

Every participant takes one or two symbols and creates the story around the idea he/she thinks it used to represent for the civilization that used to inhabit the area. Further on, all the participants create one coherent theory, following which a model for this story is built. Are we able to create the future we desire to be a part of, by recreating an idea of the past from a future far away? This is the main thought investigated.

The result of the workshop is a booklet and the model, be it physical or virtual, representing the findings of scientists/workshop participants. The workshop has been held four times so far as part of various artistic manifestations.