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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures

@wabisabifutures.bsky.social
142 followers 180 following 25 posts

Futurist, facilitator, artist, art therapist in training

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Reposted by Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures
Fiona Tribe @fionatribe.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
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Dan Lockton @danlockton.com · 23/06/2026
I feel like there could be a really interesting research-through design project around experiential—or metaphorical—qualitative understanding of wet bulb temps. What if instead of just a number for tomorrow's weather forecast, we had an interface giving us an actual experience of that temperature?
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Got the Melbourne winter blues? Bad case of the Mondays? I have just the thing! Next Monday I’m running Building Stories About the Future with LEGO - a fun, affordable night requiring zero prior knowledge - perfect for a cold night during cozzie livs. 🎟️ www.lanewaylearning.com/melbourne/cl...
5 people sit around a table covered in LEGO, cards, hand outs and drinks. They are all engrossed in building with LEGO. We can see the face of one woman, she is grinning broadly4 people are seated around a table covered in LEGO blocks. Hands are reaching in to select bricks, or are busy assembling them into a model. No faces can be seen.A person facing away from the camera is seated at a table covered in LEGO blocks. They are pointing to a LEGO model they have built. Next to them are cards which read 'the thing from the future'
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
I'm dusting off my LEGO kit for the much anticipated return of Building Stories About the Future with LEGO! Come along for a relaxed, playful, and budget friendly introduction to thinking about the future and we create some weird, wild, and wonderful visions of potential futures.
lanewaylearning.com
Building Stories about the Future in LEGO with Amanda - Laneway Learning Melbourne
The stories we tell ourselves about the future shape just about everything we do in the present.  In this session we will stretch our own thinking by using LEGO to build new and wonderful stories abou...
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Yoon Kim @yoonkim.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
“The character of *the reader* is a strange and curious one. While being entirely individual and with his or her own reactions, the reader is so intimately linked with the writer that the truth is that the reader *is* the writer.” — Clarice Lispector (Feb. 1968)
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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Pretty wild to be living in a time when humans are being forced to work in order to even be considered deserving of life or even to be considered human at all, while simultaneously human labor is being systematically eliminated from the concept of work.
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Reposted by Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures
Sasha Costanza-Chock @schock.cc · 28/05/2025
We really said "let's make survival contingent on employment" and then "let's eliminate employment" in the same breath
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Reposted by Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures
Margaret Killjoy @margaret.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
This book came out today and I have a story in it and you should get the book
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Simon Brew @simonbrew.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
My plans for a major retail emporium are being threatend by wholesalers who won't let me steal the stock.
A headline from The Times, with Nick Clegg saying that requiring permission from copyright holders to train AI on their word would 'kill' the AI industry. Boo fecking hoo.
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Every now and then I forget what timeline I am in and reality reads as absurdity
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Meredith @meredithsnextday.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
I wrote an e-book called Experiri which is a collection of articles about creative process and what it is to live a creative life. Or to try to. You can buy it and download it at my online shop (and support my writing in the process). #creativity www.meredithlewis.com.au/shop/p/exper...
meredithlewis.com.au
Experiri — Meredith Lewis
An e-zine featuring articles about creative process and what it is to live a creative life.
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Meredith @meredithsnextday.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
I'm going to be one of the facilitators for The Adaptation Game at St Kilda Library on 24 May. Come along! How prepared are you for climate change in your local community? More information here: library.portphillip.vic.gov.au/whats-on/gam...
library.portphillip.vic.gov.au
Games Day | Port Phillip Library Service
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Meredith @meredithsnextday.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
I wrote an e-book called Near and Far, which is a collage of interviews I did with experts about the role of the arts and creativity in interdisciplinary collaborations. #art #creativity You can buy it here: www.meredithlewis.com.au/shop/p/near-...
meredithlewis.com.au
Near and Far — Meredith Lewis
Near and Far looks at how arts workers (or other creatives), their practices, content and ideas impact collaborations. How can they enrich, challenge, and affect the projects and teams they work with?...
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eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
“In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment.” -Maxine Hong Kingston (from the book she wrote from scratch after her home burnt down and she lost all her drafts in the Oakland forest fires of 1991)
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Cheryl Doig @futuresaunty.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
Check out the resource I have created exploring intergenerational fairness and future generations. Intergenerational Ambition shares information and links from an Aotearoa New Zealand perspective. It is a free download. #intergenerational #futuregenerations bit.ly/intergenerat...
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Ethel Baraona Pohl @ethelbaraona.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Gloria Anzaldúa, always and ever.
Photo of a text that says:

When I write I hover.

When I write I hover above myself and sometimes I zoom in and out. I am both me and not me, the eye that looks at things is my eye yet another's eye. When I write I am both most myself and least myself. When I write I escape my condition but the writing always takes me back to confront my condition because to write is to live in made up worlds. I write not just to
escape reality but to create a new reality. I write because it's my calling, my task to do in the world. I  write. It is a ritual, a habit, a propensity bred in my bones. It is what I do. I write because I like to think on paper. I write because I like to think, and to track my thoughts. I write because I want to leave a discernable mark on the world.
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Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
WOW. A teacher told me, "I gave one of my 2nd grade (dyslexic) students your nature poetry prompt. He is reluctant to write because of challenges with spelling, but I suspect he’s gifted. I told him just to write and we’d sort out the spelling later. This is what he wrote."
Mammoths and Ants

Look at the fragile mushrooms.
Look at the Black Widow.
Pause with me a moment,
and hear the cicadas humming.
Here is where I'm home,
among the mammoth Redwoods.
When I was lost, the ants absorbed me,
calling me to the smallness of Earth.
There I heard the Song of Silence.
Come with me through the minuscule.
Listen. The cicadas are humming.

—by a 2nd grader
with the help of a prompt
from The Magic Words
by Joseph Fasano
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 02/05/2025
Wrote this in February 2023 somehow about the problems that happen when people treat generative AI as a search engine. People trust what comes out of a search engine, and out of things that look like search engines, and the results can/will be/have been grim www.wheresyoured.at/degenerative...
What happens if Bing AI or Bard becomes so widespread that they become sources of information that consumers rely on? What happens if Bing AI tells somebody suffering from crippling depression that they have “not been a good user” at the wrong time? What happens if somebody relies on Bing for “advice” and that advice results in them doing something unethical or illegal? While these are problems one might have with ChatGPT itself, they become much more pronounced when the source of this information is a search engine, which is a product that hundreds of millions of people have been conditioned to trust and respect?And the reason that these risks are so significant is that both Microsoft and Google were desperate to show that they will never, ever stop growing. They did not slowly and methodically roll out these products with constant reminders of their fallibility - they branded and marketed them as the future, as the new way in which we request and process information. Microsoft and Google’s customers are victims of rich people playing with toys, hoping to find ways to please rich people that invest the money of other rich people.

The result will be genuine human suffering as a result of dressing a fallible, experimental intelligence up as an authoritative source of information. People will be inspired to harm themselves or others, all while their ideas and likenesses are counterfeited and monetized, all so that wealthy executives can tell the world - and Wall Street - that their companies are “innovative.”
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David Milner @davemilbo.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Ten years ago this would have been called something like "A Better World is Possible". Even the optimistic book titles are getting bleaker.
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Meredith @meredithsnextday.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
I visited this lovely and gently thought-provoking event earlier. It was an oasis of calm in a frenetic day.
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
How does a tree experience time? What would you ask it? Visit MPavilion Parkville tomorrow 11:30-2 to connect with a tree and send it a postcard. You can also: - write a poem about the changing seasons - leave your mark on our human sundial - feel into a felt calendar - share what time means to you
A little red mailbox full of postcards written to treesA long wooden table holds a large branch, a mailbox, markers and clipboards, with a poster above asking "How does a tree experience time?"A black piece of felt is covered with a pattern of brightly coloured shapesA concrete surface shows the outlines of a dozen people's shadows drawn in multicoloured chalk. The angle of the shadows fans out from a circle marked on the ground with blue tape.
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Look at your calendar. How do you feel? At Felt Time today we had some great chats with people exploring the shapes and structures that felt best for them. How tight should the pieces fit together? How much open space is needed? When do we value structure, and when do we prefer an organic approach?
Brightly coloured felt shapes on a black felt backing. There are straight line shapes at the top and bottom, and a cluster of different coloured blobs in the centre.
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Keen to play with time but short on time? We got you! Drop by MPavilion Parkville this Tue-Thu and pick up a Felt Time zine. Leander and I have curated 4 pocket-sized take away activities. Time to spare? Explore 5 more invitations while you're there! events.unimelb.edu.au/MPavilion/ev...
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
"The Long Now is the recognition that the precise moment you're in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes." - Brian Eno, The Big Here and Long Now longnow.org/essays/big-h...
longnow.org
The Big Here and Long Now - By Brian Eno - The Long Now
It was 1978. I was new to New York. A rich acquaintance had invited me to a housewarming party, and, as my cabdriver wound his way down increasingly potholed and dingy streets, I began wondering whether he'd got the address right. Finally he stopped at the doorway of a gloomy, unwelcoming industrial building. Two winos were crumpled on the steps, oblivious. There was no other sign of life in the whole street.
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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
what makes humans great is that of all the species to ever live we invented subsistence farming and then immediately invented everything else we ever did in order to not have to do subsistence farming
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
How do you notice the change of season? Join Leander & I at MPavilion Parkville next Tue, Wed & Thu in exploring how we experience time. Tune in to the shifting seasons, write a poem, and leave your mark on our big ol' roll of paper. Full info: events.unimelb.edu.au/MPavilion/ev...
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
Now has no place in a narrative account except as a point of reference. In a narrative, the now that is being talked about has already happened. It puts past and future nows into relation. It is not a direct experience. Only the telling is happening now." - Daniel Stern
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
"Just as colonists saw their abstract time reckoning as more evolved than that of their subjects, their attempts at "civilizing" meant inculcating in those subjects the perception of time as money." - Jenny Odell, Saving Time
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
"Odors that are lying on the ground or on the sidewalk outside tell us – or dogs – about the past... And if there's a breeze coming up the street, that might bear the odor of someone who's coming around the corner. So it's telling us something about our near future." www.npr.org/sections/goa...
npr.org
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Would you like to play with your relationship with time? We've been busily designing and testing a range of arts-based invitations to help you explore your relationship with time, and we can't wait to share! Join us in MPavilion Parkville next week: events.unimelb.edu.au/MPavilion/ev...
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Fiona Tribe @fionatribe.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
It’s possible to wear both your intellect and your heart on your sleeve. To be simultaneously strategic and poetic.
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
"Our generation must walk the spiritual path that is available to us only in this time, with its own unique combination of wisdom and creation." - adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
"Supply chains were designed for just-in-time efficiency. How will tomorrow’s supply webs be designed for agility and resilience—rather than efficiency alone?" - Bob Johansen, Office Shock
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Next month, join Leander Kreltszheim and I as we explore ways to understand, notice, and be with time. You are welcome to drop in to this no-cost event at MPavilion Parkville. For more info: events.unimelb.edu.au/MPavilion/ev...
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
Have learned to appreciate misspellings and bad sentence construction in student essays as a fingerprint of the human thinking that went into writing it. Which is nice but also kind of messed up tbh
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Fiona Tribe @fionatribe.bsky.social · 22/09/2023
I’ve been an elephant, in a room. And you should know it’s awkward for us, too.
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Maya C. Popa @mayacpopa.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
OMG, Frank Bidart:
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Fiona Tribe @fionatribe.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Redact your CV for dramatic effect.
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Prof Julia Steinberger 🌹🌱🌍 #ClimateAction #Fightfascism @jksteinberger.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity. TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄
NO CHATGPT Or other artificial stupidity: motivation
First, clarity on distinguishing AIs:
Non-generative: grammar aid, translation, dictionary, text-to-audio (e.g. Natural Reader): no problem
As long as you use the appropriate tools (least intensive in data and server energy use).
Why? Because you provide the content. Your brain is doing the most important work
Generative: ChatGPT & Co. 
You only supply the prompt, the AI supplies the content.
Why is this delegation of work problematic?
3 domains: ethical, environmental, intellectual engagement.

(Caveat: generative is probably ok for computer programming, where it can be useful and save time. Not relevant to this class.)
1) AI and ethics
Mass theft of all and everything
«learning» on books, articles, blogs, social media, images, music, cultural production, without  permission of authors/creators, and leading to their mass joblessness. Profits are not reditributed to originators. 
Permanent destruction of the mental health of underpaid precarious tech workers in the Global South (Kenya, Philippines …):
«correction» to avoid production of violent and pedophile contents etc, tech workers are obliged to watch and correct super violent contents for days on end, leading to extreme psychological suffering and trauma, from which recovery is doubtful. No or little compensation (certainly not at the level of the suffering inflicted). 
In short, an industry built on theft of real human creation and sacrifice of real human health, profiting a few megafortunes. 
2) AI and (un)sustainability

Massive consumption of electricity, water, server capacity for generative AI. 
Outcome: keep fossil fuel companies in business, using up new renewable capacity, without any satisfaction of basic human needs.
Massive misappropriation of the finance necessary for climate and ecological action (renewable generation, efficiency and retrofit for buildings, public transit, infrastructures for cycling etc) towards AI industry. 
Overall: undermine climate action, reinforce fossil industry, waste resources necessary for human development. 
3) AI and intellectual engagement

First, what learning is (or should be) about:
The goal should not (only) be the reproduction of «correct» knowledge,
But mainly personal engagement and experience of thinking about topics of interest. Personal engagement = using one’s own brain. 
The most important activity for learning and intellectual engagement is the experience of making one’s own mistakes, by trial and error, corrections based on new ideas, starting over again. Learning to recognise nuances, knowledge gaps, better explanations 
This kind of learning is possible only through using your own brain, not AI. 
Also, Ais are not «intelligent». At all. 
They simply reproduce pre-existing patterns. They «bullshit», invent false references, false facts, false data, simply because those sound plausible. VERY DANGEROUS. 
If you learn how to NOT use AI, and how to research facts and data on your own, this will serve you and your communities for the rest of your life.
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ya ya yanina @yanina.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Self-sabotage is a great strategy when your own self doesn't have the balls to say no to things you don't really want to do in the first place. Take the wheel, self, sabotage away.
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Rabbit @lochinvar.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Also the miracle of tongs made without tongs.
We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called
"technology" at all. As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers — as if steel saucepans with copper bottoms and fleece vests spun from recycled glass grew on trees, and we just picked them when they were ripe...
One way to illustrate that most technologies are, in fact, pretty "hi," is to ask yourself of any manmade object, Do I know how to make one?
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Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
A List of Things Banned by Schools 🧵
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Tim Maughan @timmaughan.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
“maybe you can take a job from someone who is vastly more qualified for it then you just by having far less ethical standards about labor while also basically cheating” is the gleaming future of opportunity offered to you by this billionaire
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Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
The evolution of doge from a cute internet meme to a fascist icon is basically the plot of "The Waldo Moment" episode of Black Mirror. Fascists don't just steal our freedom. They also steal the silly, fun pop culture moments that make life bearable. That's why joy is resistance too.
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Fiona Tribe @fionatribe.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
There is no empathy without imagination.
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Amanda Reeves | Wabi Sabi Futures @wabisabifutures.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Big blobfish energy
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Fiona Tribe @fionatribe.bsky.social · 30/03/2023
Healing isn’t a large heavy blanket thrown over flames. It’s a thousand tiny seeds, watered.
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Lane Becker @lanebecker.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
“Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi.” harpers.org/archive/1941...
harpers.org
Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson
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Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
For all the teachers returning to the classroom:
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😈Miss Hell Batkeeper😈 @mishellbaker.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
Being a person with deadly, incurable cancer who is nonetheless still alive for an indefinite timeframe gives me an interesting metaphor that helps me deal with things like large-scale corruption in government or commerce. Bear with me for a second while I try to explain.
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