Monday night marked the opening of a new exhibition at Paris’s favourite digital arts centre, the Gaîté Lyrique. This historic venue – a former theatre – has been around for 150 years already. The exhibition “2062: back to the future” takes a look at what life might be like in 50 years, at its 200th anniversary.

After a nostalgic look at developments in technology since 1862, we are quickly taken to the realm of creative fantasy and imaginative technology. Artists also offer some astute commentary on life in 2012, as if seen from the future.

Cinematic projections by the Pleix collective feature a surreal mirrored image of an overpopulated beach, and another with traffic flowing through a series of hairpin bends. These giant tableaux are totally mesmerising and strangely beautiful despite the horrific reality of this vision of the “future”. A work by RBYN features a “robot trader”. This bases its short term stock market predictions on seismographic vibrations and readings from household equipment. There are works that deal with advertising, overconsumption, food, micro farming and technology… But this is primarily an interactive exhibition, which makes it all the more fun. Images of freaky looking hybrid animals squawk and bark as you approach, and a clock by David Guez zips forwards and back in time as you wave your arms in one direction or another. Once we had decided what we thought the future will hold (hoverboards, of course) it was our turn to send our future selves a message via the “transtemporal urn”.

There will be a series of concerts and futuristic events tying in with the exhibition, including a hypnosis cabin and – wait for it – a demonstration of a real hoverboard!  At the opening there was a special performance from a group of adorably wacko Japanese musicians. The Mable Ensemble seemed to be magically coaxing sound out of wooden matryoshka dolls with stethoscopes attached. The dolls contained theremins, electronic instruments which are played using hand movements. The effect was wonderfully weird…

We had a peek at the future, and it looked fun. Thanks, Gaîté Lyrique.

1st February – 25th March 2012

Text & photos: Camilla Garton