When you’ve seen photographs of the Museum of the Future in Dubai, you’ll know that it’s one thing from out of this world.
Brendan McGetrick, the artistic director of Museum of the Future, got here to Austin, Texas, with a touring exhibit for the primary time lately to share the imaginative and prescient for the museum, which takes you on a journey to the way forward for 50 years from now. In an exhibit at SXSW 2025, the museum gave folks a style of its improvements in visible know-how. I spoke with him concerning the imaginative and prescient and what he expects to occur sooner or later.
Beforehand, he was founding director of International Grad Present, an annual exhibition of graduate tasks from the world’s main design and know-how colleges. In 2014, he curated Truthful Sufficient within the Russian pavilion on the Venice Structure Biennale. As a author, designer and curator, McGetrick’s work has appeared in publications around the globe.
Dubai Future Basis, the museum creator, hosted an immersive expertise in Austin. I hope to make it to the true museum — a seven-story cultural landmark in Dubai — at some point. It takes folks to the 12 months 2071 and presents the imaginative and prescient for the intersection of Center Japanese futurism and Western tech tradition. It paints an image on how desert improvements might inform local weather adaptation globally — very similar to the sci-fi epic Dune.
We had a wide-ranging dialog concerning the future. Right here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Brendan McGetrick is artistic director of the Museum of the Future.
GamesBeat: How lengthy has this been a venture for you?
Brendan McGetrick: Just a little greater than six years. I joined in January 2019.
GamesBeat: Was that earlier than it opened?
McGetrick: Sure, we opened in February 2022. I joined when the constructing was beneath development, however we have been nonetheless very a lot determining the idea of what the museum can be and constructing the group.
GamesBeat: You don’t get to do this type of factor fairly often. It’s a novel museum. What was that have like?
McGetrick: It was difficult, however an thrilling problem. We had to determine what a museum of the longer term even is. That’s thrilling since you don’t have any references to attract from, actually. You may have plenty of freedom to interpret. We spent plenty of time determining what we’d just like the expertise to be, what sort of future we’d prefer to current to folks, and the way we’d like folks to really feel after they’re within the museum. All of that was difficult, however in the very best approach.
Dubai’s Museum of the Future constructed an immersive expertise in Austin.
GamesBeat: What did you select to deal with to seek out your path?
McGetrick: Sure issues made it straightforward to seek out that path. As a result of it was an initiative of the Dubai authorities, we knew their coverage priorities and areas of engagement, significantly with regards to the longer term. That formed the alternatives we made across the topics we have been going to speak about, the views and the imaginative and prescient of the longer term the management of Dubai is working towards. We dramatized it, in a approach, and located a option to universalize it. We knew our viewers can be from in all places. We needed to inform a narrative or current a imaginative and prescient of the longer term that was rooted in Dubai’s values and pursuits, but additionally spoke to a wider expertise.
That was one of many principal guiding lights. One other one was simply the type of expertise we needed to offer. We determined very early we needed to be an immersive expertise, the place you have been visiting future environments. It isn’t an exhibition concerning the future as a lot as futures you’ll be able to discover and really feel part of. We knew that will be our interpretation early on, so we labored towards making it as convincing as attainable.
GamesBeat: What applied sciences grew to become probably the most helpful as you set this collectively?
McGetrick: After all we used all of the show applied sciences that you’d usually use: projection, spatial audio, issues which are attentive to motion. However ultimately it’s not likely technology-driven. It’s extra story-driven. We reference applied sciences like AI and artificial biology, issues we all know will form the longer term, and we current them in a approach that helps folks perceive their potential. However plenty of the strategies for attaining the museum are extra borrowed from movie, set design, issues like that, quite than issues like AR or VR, which can be futuristic, however don’t actually translate for a giant venture like ours that has 1000’s of individuals day-after-day.
The Museum of the Future expertise in Austin.
GamesBeat: Do you have got any stats which are attention-grabbing for giving folks extra perspective on this?
McGetrick: We’ve been offered out day-after-day since we opened, three years straight. We get one thing like 1.3 million guests a 12 months. A extremely attention-grabbing stat is that 30% of our guests have by no means been to a museum earlier than. The guests have come from one thing like 177 nations. It’s a brilliant broad viewers, culturally and experientially. Some individuals are futurists and specialists on the topic. Some include no expectations in any respect. One of many challenges is learn how to communicate to such a broad viewers in a approach that meaningfully touches them.
GamesBeat: I think about sustainability is a giant theme right here. Find out how to reside on Earth with out destroying it.
McGetrick: Now we have an entire flooring about making use of sciences like AI and artificial biology to start repairing harm we’ve accomplished to the pure world. Three of the exhibition flooring happen within the 12 months 2071. We’re already on a timeline assuming local weather change, assuming the consequences of local weather change, which is ecosystem collapse and mass extinction. If that’s the case, on the opposite aspect of that, how can we start making use of these applied sciences which are simply rising now, however can be far more superior in 50 years, to start repairing our relationship to the pure world? In a extra significant and wholesome approach, understanding that we are able to have an effect on nature, however we should always do it in a delicate, constructive approach, versus simply doing no matter we would like.
GamesBeat: Do you contact on one thing like gaming?
McGetrick: Considered one of our flooring is for youngsters, 10 and under. In that one we borrowed lots from sport experiences. Not from online game visuals or screen-based experiences – it’s all bodily issues – however we gamified it within the sense that you just select an avatar, and the stuff you do–you acquire badges when you efficiently do one of many video games. You need to collaborate. You’re making an attempt to construct future proof abilities of collaboration and creativity and communication. We tried to take what makes video games so compelling and attention-grabbing for folks, however then apply it to a bodily expertise, so that you just’re not simply sitting there taking a look at a display screen. You’re utilizing your physique and being bodily. On the similar time, you’re studying from what’s so attention-grabbing about gamified experiences.
GamesBeat: Do you take a look at gaming and extrapolate it to one thing like a metaverse, or the concept of digital life?
McGetrick: We don’t have a digital twin of the expertise, partly as a result of we really feel devoted to rewarding folks for being bodily there. Now we have a really multisensory expertise. We put plenty of time and thought into the character of audio, the character of scent. Now we have 5 or 6 totally different scents that we made particularly for the museum. A part of that’s simply to remind folks that even on this digitized age, ultimately your senses are the unique know-how, and we should always attempt to use them as a lot as attainable. None of that stuff interprets to a metaverse expertise. Possibly sooner or later we might discover it, however as we have been initially conceiving it, we needed to maintain it very a lot within the bodily world.
The Museum of the Future exhibit rendering.
GamesBeat: Would you examine it to one thing just like the Sphere in Las Vegas?
McGetrick: What we now have in widespread with the Sphere is that the constructing itself is charming to folks. It makes them very interested by what’s happening contained in the constructing. The Sphere is a type of new customary for what is feasible in a mediated atmosphere, a media-defined atmosphere. For us, we attempt to be much less screen-based. We’re utilizing plenty of bodily objects, taking part in with gentle and issues like that. I just like the Sphere within the sense that it pushes folks ahead to do new and attention-grabbing issues.
The opposite factor concerning the Sphere that I believe is nice, and we’re making an attempt to develop this additional, is that it’s collective. It’s an area for collective experiences. We’re making an attempt to make the journey by means of the museum extra collective, recognizing that individuals who come to museums now–it’s very hardly ever a person. It’s a small group of buddies or household. They wish to have a collective expertise. Additionally they generally wish to really feel like they’re in a giant group of individuals doing one thing. All these items are inspiring for us. We’re making an attempt to include them.
GamesBeat: Do you attempt to cowl totally different industries, like transportation or medication?
McGetrick: Sort of? Three of the flooring are thematic. One is about house. One is concerning the atmosphere and ecology. The opposite is about well being. Inside these we cowl various totally different industries. Under that we now have a know-how showcase flooring. That flooring is thematic as nicely. Now we have a transportation part, an city design part, an power part, issues like that. We will’t cowl the whole lot, however we attempt to cowl as a lot as we are able to.
GamesBeat: Is the museum full, or do you continue to have extra growth occurring?
McGetrick: Not growth, however we’re within the strategy of redesigning all of the displays. We’ll exchange them. That’s the evolution that should occur, and one of many challenges of the museum. Everybody’s at all times asking, “What else you got?” It’s thrilling now, as a result of we’re taking a look at what we’ve accomplished critically and desirous about how we are able to do issues higher. What have we discovered from our viewers? That form of factor.
GamesBeat: I’m at all times writing about enjoyable new applied sciences. Mild Discipline Lab is one I’ve seen lately, I don’t know when you’re conversant in them. Do you see issues like that coming alongside to alter museum know-how?
The Museum of the Future has a hanging design.
McGetrick: The ought to. Considered one of our insights is that the best way one thing is displayed impacts how a lot folks take a look at it. If it’s simply linear media on a giant display screen, we’ve been stunned to see how a lot folks don’t have interaction with that. When you have got an authentic medium or approach of presenting one thing, individuals are stunned by it. That’s sufficient to make them cease and ask, “What’s actually happening here?” Issues like Mild Discipline are actually thrilling for us, as a result of they permit us to broaden our methods of presentation.
The long run is unknown, undefined. Our large problem, in a approach, isn’t to foretell the longer term, however to seek out methods to make folks care concerning the future. For that we have to change issues up. Sure issues actually communicate to folks, whereas different issues communicate to them much less. How can we be good communicators and supply sufficient inspiration that individuals can then go away the museum and go about their lives and make their very own selections? That’s the principle level. The long run issues, and also you matter to the longer term. Please take into consideration what you wish to do.
GamesBeat: Do you are feeling that you just’re giving warnings to folks concerning the future?
McGetrick: If something, what we’re making an attempt to do is establish issues which are professional issues now, however quite than turning these into some dystopian future – which plenty of TV and flicks and novels do – we’re making an attempt to say that local weather change is an actual factor. Area is a contest. Army competitors, financial competitors, these are actual issues which are rising. Our well being flooring is about data overload and know-how dependence. These are all actual challenges that would go plenty of alternative ways. Our museum exists to say that with the best interventions and the best values, these might develop into constructive issues. That’s the best way we needs to be channeling our power and our creativeness.
We’re warning folks, in a approach, however not in a approach that’s meant to scare them. We all know from museum research and exhibition research that these issues are pacifying for folks. It doesn’t encourage them to do something. It simply makes them really feel like they will’t do something. We’re making an attempt to offer warnings that empower. It is a warning, however this isn’t inevitable. We will go otherwise.
GamesBeat: I bear in mind Michio Kaku’s e book on the longer term. There was an attention-grabbing passage the place he talked about how we now have to determine immortality first, after which we are able to work out house journey, as soon as we’re capable of reside lengthy sufficient to do it. It makes excellent sense.
McGetrick: He got here to the museum, truly, and spoke there. Sure folks, sure cultures, they assume and discuss lots concerning the future. One of many issues we’re making an attempt to do is broaden the variety of folks and the variety of cultures which are contributing to the dialog. Decoding what a future could possibly be.
We get plenty of suggestions, and we take it critically. Our ambition was by no means to be predicting or forecasting the longer term. We’re exhibiting attainable futures and stimulating dialog, issues like that. When folks include a special interpretation or expectation, we embrace that. We speak about that and see if we are able to harmonize these items.
GamesBeat: Did you have got a selected mission in coming right here to SXSW?
McGetrick: It’s our first activation outdoors of Dubai, outdoors of the museum. We thought this appeared just like the type of place that has the same spirit. It’s very multidisciplinary. It brings folks collectively from totally different fields and totally different cultures. It has an optimistic, or at the least experimental philosophy. That’s actually the place we come from. We’ve spent all this time defining what we take into consideration the longer term and the type of conversations we wish to have. Possibly now it’s attention-grabbing to start introducing these conversations and views outdoors. It’s been tremendous gratifying.
We’ve had an amazing response. The talks have been very well-attended. Lots of attention-grabbing questions and conversations have come out of them. We’ve met plenty of attention-grabbing folks. For us it’s been nice, since you at all times hope for the most effective, however you by no means know the primary time you do one thing. It’s been gratifying for us and we’re blissful we did it.
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