The Unknown Fields Division: Strange Times 0–180º Longitude

Liam Young and Kate Davies

Far from the metropolis lie the dislocated hinterlands and remote wildernesses that support the mechanisations of modern living. Diploma 6 – the 'Unknown Fields Division' – probes the fertile territory between nature, technology and culture to explore our contemporary condition through critical acts of speculation. We map the complex and contradictory realities of the present as a site of strange and extraordinary futures.

The Division is a nomadic design studio embarking on expeditions to explore these unreal and forgotten places, techno-landscapes, alien terrains and obsolete ecologies. The otherworldly sites we encounter afford us a distanced viewpoint from which to survey the consequences of emerging environmental and technological scenarios.

Last year we speculated on the reinvention of nature and spun aboriginal creation myths with the modern mining technologies of the Australian ‘Never-Never’. This year we continue to slip suggestively between tradition and science as we voyage to the edge of today, through the strange times of Alaska.

As winter solstice approaches we will head into the darkness of an eternal night. We will dance along the date line, our paths illuminated by twin electric skies, as we spend neon afternoons in the city and bask under the flickering Aurora in the wilds of the frozen tundra. We will stalk the arctic fox, marvel at the vast military outposts scanning the frontier and listen for the roar of ice road truckers snaking along the oil lifeline stretching south.

It is a cyclical landscape of natural and artificial time. Alaskan Inuits, informed by ancestral memories of their environment and its patterns, embrace the uncertainties of the future with a deep belief in their own adaptability. Meanwhile, environmental scientists attempt to assemble their observations into climate models in order to predict the future as precisely as possible. Caught between improvisation and premeditation these cultural relationships to landscape and time will define the future of the north and in turn our cities beyond.

Here in the darkness we will be explorers in time, deploying time-based media. Film, animation, storytelling, gaming and choreographic drawings will define dynamic spaces of motion and commotion, cycles and shifts, ebbs and flows. We will draw on the rich uncertainty of this territory, speculating on possible futures, rewriting histories and altering the present. Joining us in the Division will be fellow time-travellers from the worlds of technology, science and fiction, and together we will examine the Unknown Fields between cultivation and nature and spin cautionary tales of a new kind of wilderness.

Unit Staff

Liam Young studied architecture in Australia and now works in London as an independent designer, futurist and curator. He has taught design studios at schools across Europe and Australasia and he is a founder of the thinktank Tomorrows Thoughts Today which explores the consequences of fantastic, perverse and underrated urbanisms. Their projects are critical instruments for instigating debate about the cultural consequences of emerging biological and technological futures.

Kate Davies is a designer, writer and educator. She is co-founder of the multidisciplinary group LiquidFactory. Kate makes objects, narrative work, films and installations that deal with obscure territories of occupation. Her current work explores the psychology of extreme landscapes and the meaning of wilderness. Kate has taught at London Metropolitan, The Bartlett and Chelsea College of Art and regularly runs international design workshops.