Art Center’s Graduate Media Design program (MDP) announces two events that explore a resurgent interest in utopias and an emerging genre called “design fiction.” The first Made Up event—a panel discussion, AS IF: alternate realities—will be held today from 3 to 5 pm in the Wind Tunnel Gallery at South Campus.

The panel, hosted by MDP faculty member Tim Durfee, will feature researchers-in-residence Sascha Pohflepp, an artist and writer whose design fiction video installation, SUPERCALIFORNIA! was produced during his Made Up residency; Norman Klein, a cultural historian, critic, novelist and author of the database novel, The Imaginary Twentieth Century; and Julian Bleecker, a designer, technologist and researcher at the Design Strategic Projects studio at Nokia Design, as well as co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory. Works from the 2010 MDP’s summer research fellows and current students will be on display to complement and inspire the discussion.

Next Thursday, Sept. 22, at 7 pm, the MDP and Broadcast Cinema will screen Utopia in Four Movements, a live documentary performed by Sam Green with music by David Cerf.  Green is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker whose feature, The Weather Underground, was nominated for an Academy Award, broadcast nationally on PBS, and included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Cerf is a filmmaker, musician, sound artist and user interface designer at Apple who composed music for The Weather Underground. The screening, to be held at Hillside Campus in the Los Angeles Times Media Center, expands the Made Up project’s interest in utopias, dystopias and the fantastic.

Previous coverage of Made Up.