Watch out for the future this August: visions of the year 3000 (and beyond) are coming to a publically displayed screen near you. If you dare interact, there’s a good chance the next millennium will respond: augmented reality meets visual arts meets the future meets you!

Produced by Emergency Exit Arts, Remembering the Future was created in collaboration with inner city teenage Londoners. They offered their predictions for a thousand years from now to digital artists Hellicar&Lewis who promptly transposed them into characters and scenic backdrops. You won’t find Remembering the Future in swanky central London; instead, screens will be popping up in Enfield, Deptford, Harrow and Finchley – embedded into neighbourhoods where their young creators live.

Joel Gethin Lewis co-founded Hellicar&Lewis, the company that formulated the future, in 2008. Since then they’ve brought digital experiences to Greenpeace, Tate Modern and the National Trust, all the while staying true to their original idea: building a creative venture on an open source ethical code. We had a snappy exchange with Joel: we learned why open source can be a commercial decision, why everyone should learn how to code and why zombies worry him!

Run Riot: Before doing an MA at the RCA and working with United Visual Artists, you studied maths and computer science. How did a mathematician in the making become an artist?
Joel Gethin Lewis: I think Mathematics is the only truly universal beauty - the elegance of an equation or mathematical concept would be understandable by alien life. I also don’t believe in divisions between what people can be - we need more people that do a variety of things, all at once.
Run Riot: Why did you decide to make all you projects open source? Have you had a chance to witness some of them evolve in unexpected ways?
Joel Gethin Lewis: It started as an ethical stance, but it turned out that it was a great commercial decision - being open about what we can do helps win us work. There are lots of digital snake oil salesmen out there!
Run Riot: What was your experience of working with young Londoners? Did any of their ideas surprise or concern you? How much of their interpretation of the present did you see in their vision of the future?
Joel Gethin Lewis: It was great - we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of environmental issues that came up. Zombies also figured highly which was of more concern! There was a certain amount of flying cars and the like, but one of the largest issues that came up was robotisation and AI.
Run Riot: Remembering the Future is staying clear of zone 1 locations - what does this decentralisation bring to the installation?
Joel Gethin Lewis: The original purpose of the Circulate project was to make three years of activities that united outer London boroughs - we hope that through our various group workshops between locations we’ve forged some connections that will continue even after the project was completed.
Run Riot: Can you tell us more about how you devised the audience experience for Remembering the Future?
Joel Gethin Lewis: We started thinking about how we would augment the streets of London with the creativity of the youth groups - we started by thinking of a mobile phone experience but realised that we wanted an experience that would bring people together rather than lock them into their screens. We knew we had access to a 3D sensor that would allow us to capture the skeletons of passers-by, so it was natural to ask the different youth groups how they and their peers and their environment would appear in the future.
Run Riot: Interaction and real-time feedback are vital to your practice; do audience responses and reactions have the potential to change or evolve your projects?
Joel Gethin Lewis: Completely! We feel that we make systems at Hellicar&Lewis using craft, design and technology - they don’t become complete until interacted with - creating the projects together, or live on site or by people using the code after the face for new purposes. We love getting input from the public because we love the surprises that they always bring.
Run Riot: There’s a growing consensus, at least in the tech community, that everyone should know how to code. Why should coding become a basic skill?
Joel Gethin Lewis: Coding is the key to understanding the computational nature of the universe. Coding is as important as writing or speaking or listening. It is the greatest multiplier of human potential ever.

Remembering the Future

The Albany: 12-15 August

Harrow Arts Centre: 21-23 August
Arts Depot: 27-30 August