If you happen to’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 inventive 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 in regards to 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 initiatives from the world’s main design and know-how faculties. 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 — in the future. 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 in regards to the future. Right here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: How lengthy has this been a undertaking for you?
Brendan McGetrick: Slightly 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 underneath development, however we have been nonetheless very a lot determining the idea of what the museum can be and constructing the workforce.
GamesBeat: You don’t get to do this sort of factor fairly often. It’s a singular 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 might have a variety of freedom to interpret. We spent a variety 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 once they’re within the museum. All of that was difficult, however in the absolute best approach.
GamesBeat: What did you select to concentrate on 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 on the subject of 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 approach to universalize it. We knew our viewers can be from all over the place. We wished to inform a narrative or current a imaginative and prescient of the longer term that was rooted in Dubai’s values and pursuits, but in addition spoke to a much wider expertise.
That was one of many most important guiding lights. One other one was simply the sort of expertise we wished to offer. We determined very early we wished to be an immersive expertise, the place you have been visiting future environments. It isn’t an exhibition in regards to the future as a lot as futures you may discover and really feel part of. We knew that may be our interpretation early on, so we labored towards making it as convincing as doable.
GamesBeat: What applied sciences turned essentially 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 conscious of motion. However ultimately it’s probably not 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 a variety of the strategies for attaining the museum are extra borrowed from movie, set design, issues like that, reasonably than issues like AR or VR, which can be futuristic, however don’t actually translate for a giant undertaking like ours that has hundreds of individuals every single day.
GamesBeat: Do you’ve got any stats which are attention-grabbing for giving folks extra perspective on this?
McGetrick: We’ve been offered out every single day since we opened, three years straight. We get one thing like 1.3 million guests a 12 months. A very 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 international locations. 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 the way 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 stay on Earth with out destroying it.
McGetrick: We’ve got a complete flooring about making use of sciences like AI and artificial biology to start repairing injury we’ve carried out 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 will likely be rather 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, optimistic approach, versus simply doing no matter we wish.
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 recreation 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 belongings you do–you accumulate badges in the event you efficiently do one of many video games. You must collaborate. You’re attempting to construct future proof expertise 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 a display screen. You’re utilizing your physique and being bodily. On the identical 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. We’ve got a really multisensory expertise. We put a variety of time and thought into the character of audio, the character of scent. We’ve got 5 or 6 totally different scents that we made particularly for the museum. A part of that’s simply to remind those 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 doable. 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 wished to maintain it very a lot within the bodily world.
GamesBeat: Would you evaluate it to one thing just like the Sphere in Las Vegas?
McGetrick: What we’ve got in frequent with the Sphere is that the constructing itself is fascinating to folks. It makes them very inquisitive about what’s occurring contained in the constructing. The Sphere is a sort of new normal for what is feasible in a mediated setting, a media-defined setting. For us, we attempt to be much less screen-based. We’re utilizing a variety of bodily objects, enjoying 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 in regards to the Sphere that I feel is nice, and we’re attempting to develop this additional, is that it’s collective. It’s an area for collective experiences. We’re attempting to make the journey by way of the museum extra collective, recognizing that individuals who come to museums now–it’s very not often a person. It’s a small group of buddies or household. They wish to have a collective expertise. In addition they generally wish to really feel like they’re in a giant group of individuals doing one thing. All this stuff are inspiring for us. We’re attempting to include them.
GamesBeat: Do you attempt to cowl totally different industries, like transportation or drugs?
McGetrick: Form of? Three of the flooring are thematic. One is about house. One is in regards to the setting and ecology. The opposite is about well being. Inside these we cowl a variety of totally different industries. Under that we’ve got a know-how showcase flooring. That flooring is thematic as nicely. We’ve got 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 enlargement taking place?
McGetrick: Not enlargement, however we’re within the means of redesigning all of the reveals. We’ll exchange them. That’s the evolution that should occur, and one of many challenges of the museum. Everybody’s all the time asking, “What else you got?” It’s thrilling now, as a result of we’re what we’ve carried out critically and excited about how we are able to do issues higher. What have we realized from our viewers? That kind of factor.
GamesBeat: I’m all the time writing about enjoyable new applied sciences. Gentle Area Lab is one I’ve seen lately, I don’t know in the event you’re conversant in them. Do you see issues like that coming alongside to alter museum know-how?
McGetrick: The ought to. Considered one of our insights is that the way in which 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 shocked to see how a lot folks don’t have interaction with that. When you’ve got an authentic medium or approach of presenting one thing, individuals are shocked by it. That’s sufficient to make them cease and ask, “What’s actually happening here?” Issues like Gentle Area are actually thrilling for us, as a result of they permit us to develop our methods of presentation.
The long run is unknown, undefined. Our massive problem, in a approach, isn’t to foretell the longer term, however to seek out methods to make folks care in regards to 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 depart 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 in regards to the future?
McGetrick: If something, what we’re attempting to do is determine issues which are professional issues now, however reasonably than turning these into some dystopian future – which a variety of TV and flicks and novels do – we’re attempting to say that local weather change is an actual factor. House is a contest. Navy competitors, financial competitors, these are actual issues which are rising. Our well being flooring is about info overload and know-how dependence. These are all actual challenges that might go a variety of other ways. Our museum exists to say that with the suitable interventions and the suitable values, these might grow to be optimistic issues. That’s the way in which we ought 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’ll’t do something. We’re attempting to offer warnings that empower. It is a warning, however this isn’t inevitable. We will go another way.
GamesBeat: I bear in mind Michio Kaku’s ebook on the longer term. There was an attention-grabbing passage the place he talked about how we’ve got to determine immortality first, after which we are able to determine house journey, as soon as we’re capable of stay lengthy sufficient to do it. It makes excellent sense.
McGetrick: He got here to the museum, really, and spoke there. Sure folks, sure cultures, they suppose and discuss lots in regards to the future. One of many issues we’re attempting to do is develop the variety of folks and the variety of cultures which are contributing to the dialog. Decoding what a future may very well be.
We get a variety of suggestions, and we take it severely. Our ambition was by no means to be predicting or forecasting the longer term. We’re exhibiting doable futures and stimulating dialog, issues like that. When folks include a special interpretation or expectation, we embrace that. We discuss that and see if we are able to harmonize this stuff.
GamesBeat: Did you’ve got a specific 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 sort 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 not less than experimental philosophy. That’s definitely the place we come from. We’ve spent all this time defining what we take into consideration the longer term and the sort 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 ideal response. The talks have been very well-attended. Plenty of attention-grabbing questions and conversations have come out of them. We’ve met a variety of attention-grabbing folks. For us it’s been nice, since you all the time hope for the perfect, however you by no means know the primary time you do one thing. It’s been gratifying for us and we’re pleased we did it.
