Introducing ourselves
Published on May 13, 2023 by M
Hello!
Dylan and M from Encoder Rat Decoder Rat here. We've assembled the Queer Futures Collective (QFC), for our upcoming project. QFC is a community of creative queer futurists spanning Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis and a variety of media, from fiber art to generative design.
Dylan and M from Encoder Rat Decoder Rat here. We've assembled the Queer Futures Collective (QFC), for our upcoming project. QFC is a community of creative queer futurists spanning Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis and a variety of media, from fiber art to generative design.
We’ve invited them to share what in today's world leaves them aching for something different and take you along to explore the alternatives. For one night at the Orfelia, a combination of visual art, performance, and participatory activities will catalyze “club-goers” to reflect on how we actually feel when presented with our utopian desires. We want to foster what feels just beyond our reach today, futures that are few and far between in the media. And just like the technologies we develop and use, there’s even fewer with a queer lens.
Since Dylan and I will be securing most of the funding, we should introduce ourselves, too!
Since Dylan and I will be securing most of the funding, we should introduce ourselves, too!
We're a skilled multidisciplinary designer and developer duo with professional and independent experience in technology, design, futuring, and queerness. Half-jokingly, we call our vision the rat techno future: a radical, inclusive lens drawing from design justice, mutual aid, thoughtful technology and designing for transition. As a team, we have over decade of combined event planning experience. We’ve thrown everything from concerts to hackathons to artist panels. We’re highly technical and find ourselves at ease when it comes to new technologies.
In 2020-21, we developed the interactive generative art project, “Gender Generator” for the MIT’s CAST Symposium: Unfolding Intelligence. If there’s one thing we are passionate about in technology, it’s envisioning queer futures. Learn more at https://rat.computer/.
We hope that you will join us in funding the Orfelia so that we can engage the Midwestern queer community: artists, developers, writers, partygoers, organizers, mutual aid participants, and those aren’t yet any of the above since they’ve never seen themselves in depictions of what’s next or possible.
We hope that you will join us in funding the Orfelia so that we can engage the Midwestern queer community: artists, developers, writers, partygoers, organizers, mutual aid participants, and those aren’t yet any of the above since they’ve never seen themselves in depictions of what’s next or possible.
Envisioning the future is too important to be left to those in power. Join us! We'll see you on the dancefloor.