Five and nine futures lab

The tech industry’s power lies in its ability to storytell and give shape to the future through creating visual language, vocabulary and archetypes. What can we learn from ancient ways of sense-making to complement strategic foresight work?

In this workshop, we’ll create and shape the visual language of the future we want to see, with a workshop designed to unlock thinking about your organization’s future in uncertain times.

This workshop has been run at TED, Unfinished, NEW INC and others.

Embodied Futures Lab is a transformative healing experience tailored for organizations, nonprofits, and communities dedicated to social change. We create space for grounding, clarity and ease by weaving somatic practices, yin yoga, sound meditation, and more. Through a trauma-informed lens, we facilitate open dialogue and imaginative exploration about the future.

Developed in partnership with One of Many Studio. This workshop has been run at re:publica Berlin, NEW INC, and other venues.

We’re experts at facilitating interactive and engaging sessions with groups of two and two hundred. Our facilitation methods support introverts and extroverts alike in unlocking your creative potential in unexpected ways — from traditional brainstorming to embodied meditation practices to art and making sessions. All in service of unlocking unexpected thinking in unexpected times.

Xiaowei R. Wang, PhD is an artist, writer, organizer and coder. They are the author of the book Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech In China's Countryside, a selection for the 2023 National Book Foundation Science and Literature Program and New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.

They are one of the stewards of Collective Action School (formerly known as Logic School), an organizing community for tech workers. They are a faculty member at ELISAVA’s Master in Design for Responsible AI and for 2023-2025, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center on Race and Digital Justice / UCLA Gender Studies.

Their multidisciplinary work over the past 15 years sits at the intersection of tech, social and environmental justice, and has been featured by the New York Times, BBC, CNN, VICE and elsewhere. Their previous individual and collaborative work has been exhibited at a number of venues, including Haus der Kulturen der Welt, MoMA New York, Taipei Design City Exhibition, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. They have taught workshops and given talks at Asian Art Museum, SF MOMA, TED, Taipei Design & City Exhibition 2014, IAM Weekend, The Conference, Unfinished Live, Cornell University, Harvard University, CtrlZ.AI Zine Fair Barcelona and more. Their writing has appeared in TANK, transmediale, The Nation and more.

As of 2023, they are working towards certification as a death doula and herbalist.

Dorothy R. Santos, PhD, is a Filipino American writer, artist, and scholar.

Her writing and creative interests include feminist media histories, critical medical anthropology, computational media, technology, race, and ethics. She received her doctoral degree in Film and Digital Media with a designated emphasis in Computational Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellow. She received her Master in Arts in Visual and Critical Studies from the California College of the Arts and holds Bachelor in Arts degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of San Francisco.

Her work has been exhibited at Ars Electronica, Rewire Festival, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the GLBT Historical Society. Her writing has appeared in art21, Art in America, Ars Technica, Hyperallergic, Rhizome, and Vice Motherboard. Her essay, “Materiality to Machines: Manufacturing the Organic and Hypotheses for Future Imaginings,” was published in “The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture.”

She is a co-founder of REFRESH, a politically-engaged art and curatorial collective and serves as the Executive Director for the Processing Foundation. In 2022, she received the Mozilla Creative Media Award for her interactive, docu-poetics work, “The Cyborg's Prosody.” She serves as an advisory board member for POWRPLNT, slash arts, and House of Alegria.

AX Mina is a futures thinker, creative consultant and coach. Her mission is building a more just, compassionate and sustainable world through better futures in work, technology and society.

A current Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication and Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future, Mina has written for publications like the Economist, the Atlantic, Hyperallergic and Nieman Journalism Lab, and has spoken in venues like the Aspen Institute, re:publica, and Harvard Law School. Her creative practice has been exhibited in spaces like the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image and the Brooklyn Museum.

At Harvard University, Mina was a 2016-17 research fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a 2016 Knight Visiting Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, where she studied online language barriers and their impact on journalism.

With over a decade of leadership experience in technology, media and the arts, she currently serves on the board of the News Product Alliance and Processing Foundation and helps produce innovative media projects, including as associate producer for the Oscar-nominated documentary Ascension.

Her newest book, the Hanmoji Handbook, is co-authored for MITeen Press about emoji and the Chinese language. She is a certified trauma-informed yin yoga teacher.