The Future Laboratory team offer an end-of-week snapshot of the topics, issues, ideas and virals that we’re all talking about. This week, LS:N Global’s foresight analyst Marta Indeka shares her cheerful and not-so-cheerful awe-inspiring finds.
: The new Fondazione Prada exhibition, Everybody Talks About the Weather, gives me chills – for its beauty but also for its poignant message, stressing the vulnerability of Venice in the face of rising temperatures.
: My favourite AI use case of the week is @what.if_ai rewriting history. Generated with Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, the scenarios imagine a past in which Western imperial nations never came to power.
: DJ Kaytranada and rapper Aminé coming together for the Kaytraminé album is the kind of creative collaboration I want to see more of. Not a marketing coup, but genuine synergies between the artists paired with a sticky co-branded visual identity.
: The Awe Economy is gaining ground – 61% of consumers want brands to help them feel intense emotions and 68% prefer to spend time in places that spark their imagination, according to new data from Wunderman Thompson.
Quote of the week:
‘Trends have lost all meaning,’ argues Reddit’s head of global foresight Matt Klein about how brands are losing focus by giving too much weight to TikTok buzz and -cores