Students in Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts Ash E. Smith’s Innovation Studio course this spring participated in the global initiative to build a massive open world 300 years in the future called “Planet JUNK.”
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts was one of 12 international schools on five continents participating this spring. Each of the schools is a hub that engages with the others within the world, using a shared core methodology.
The World Building Consortium is led by USC World Building Media Lab Director Alex McDowell, RDI. McDowell is an award-winning designer and storyteller. He was the production designer for “Minority Report,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Man of Steel,” and more. He is a member of the Carson Center’s Advisory Council.
The consortium is also supported by the Carson Center and Austral University in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Other participating schools include Netherlands Film Academy, Royal Danish Academy, Griffith University (Australia) and Strathmore University (Africa), among others.
Smith said world building is a useful skill for everyone in all disciplines, industries and age groups.
“To me, world building is a 21st century skill that everyone should have, no matter what discipline they work in, whether it’s mechanical engineering or a storytelling media student,” she said. “It can take different forms, but my approach to it is collaborative storytelling. It’s about doing really grounded research, even interviewing scientists or other experts, and then actually bringing a lot of this to life through design visualization. We use a mandala that has different partitons, so you can weave ideas through zones like economy or governance or resources.”
It's an important skill now, too, given the media landscape.
“A lot of production studios and companies are no longer just wanting to buy the one-off script,” Smith said. “They actually want to invest in a world where there is a lot of content that could be made. Think of how Marvel works, where they can do an episodic series, we can do a franchise, or we can do transmedia.”
But world building also has pragmatic uses.
“It can actually also be something that companies or non-profits or scientists can use to solve real-world problems,” Smith said. “Alex [McDowell], in his own work, partners with a town or city to reimagine or actually think about how can we solve this problem of drought or food or the supply chain. So it’s not just a methodology for entertainment or fiction, but I think it’s also something that can be used to think about design. It can be used by artists and scientists.”
Smith said world building is also more effective when it is interdisciplinary. She had more than just emerging media arts students in the class this spring.
“I also had some excellent art and design students, a mechanical engineer, a business major, a computer science major,” she said. “I think the best kind of storytelling projects come when you’re pulling from an interdisciplinary group of students that have different skills sets and are bringing different expertise.”
The course was also supported by Associate Professor of Art Stacy Asher, who attended the classes.
“She’s really interested in learning the process and how to think about using it in her own design courses and future projects,” Smith said. “She’s been there every week and really great in bringing her knowledge of graphic design, concept design, typologies and more.”
In Planet Junk, students began with this premise: What if there was a planet made of JUNK? Imagine a future world that is built on the detritus of our current civilization.
The starting point was a planet 15-20 generations from the present day called JUNK. It exists on the detritus of a civilization that had self-destructed in the early 2050s. The JUNK world evolved from this ruined civilization, and its population has adapted through generations with few, if any, of the resources familiar to us today.
The Carson Center students called their segment Neobrara, and they imagined a location near the present-day Memorial Stadium. Salt Creek was now a river running alongside the former stadium location.
“It’s a bit like Swiss Family Robinson, but instead of a deserted island, it’s Lincoln in 300 years,” said Hunter Rausch, a mechanical engineering student who was in the course. “The resources to rebuild with are the junk we leave behind today.”
Rausch, who was recently accepted into the U.S. Space Force in developmental engineering, said collaboration evolved throughout the process.
“It was amazing working with students from so many other disciplines. Each of us had a different frame of reference to view the world through and different skills to build the world with,” he said. “I think for a world build to be compelling and immersive, it has to be robust when viewed from any angle. A story told by an emerging media arts student about a farmer on a collection of farm islands was backed up by engineer input on how fluid dynamics and erosion works. My own project of a book written by a junk-era inventor was given depth by getting input on typography from a graphic design student.”
Rausch wanted to focus on infrastructure and technology in the project.
“I made models of a boat with steam propulsion, a biomimicry-inspired glider, bioplastic production, and others,” he said. “Then, I documented it all from the point of view of a junk-era character in a lab notebook made of laminated plastic bags.”
During the semester, he received feedback on the first draft of his final project from McDowell.
“His feedback was great and addressed concrete immediate things I could be working on,” Rausch said. “But he also prompted some questions that shaped how the project developed.”
Rausch learned a new view on solving problems and said he will use the skills as he moves forward in his engineering career.
“I consider myself lucky to be a part of it and get to learn from so many other seriously talented people,” he said. “I will absolutely take the skills I have learned through this experience—problem solving through storytelling, interdisciplinary teamwork, and a story-driven approach to work—into my future career.”
Samantha Bendix, a graphic design student in the course, said she didn’t have many other opportunities to take world building, so she was interested in taking this course.
“When one of my professors approached me with the opportunity to take this class, I jumped at the chance to take it,” she said. “I’ve had a strong interest in environmental design for a while now, and this class seemed like a place I could get really in depth with my interests and see how far they could be pushed in unconventional ways.”
Bendix found the process of world building to be completely different from what she is used to in graphic design.
“I’m used to working independently on projects so jumping into an extremely collaboration-heavy project was a bit of a shock to me,” she said. “We alternated between working in small and big groups, which allowed us to work with a multitude of people and bounce ideas between groups. I met a few other students through the industry professional talks that were held through USC. It was interesting to hear what other schools were working on, but on the flip side, it was also hard because you don’t want their ideas to influence you and your own world build.”
Bendix worked with Cooper Rohde to create the Aquarics.
“In short, the Aquarics is composed of two interconnected systems, an aquastraunt and an aquaponium that cooperatively function to bring a community together using food in an efficient and environmentally friendly way,” she said. “I presented on the aquaponium portion, which is a production plant that uses aquarium fed aquaponics systems to grow its plants. We created the base of an immersive, episodic game in Unity that we would use to tell the story of the Aquarics.”
Bendix liked the creative freedom the project allowed.
“We were given so much room to create and run wild with our ideas,” she said. “I didn’t feel restricted at all in what I could create, and I really appreciate that.”
She’s honored to be part of the project.
“I got to meet and work with so many people coming from different backgrounds,” Bendix said. “It has opened my eyes to all the possibilities that are out there. After seeing what such a large group of people can accomplish together, especially remotely, when we all have a common goal has given me more hope for our future. I would highly encourage anyone who gets an opportunity like this to take it because you never know where it might take you.”
Smith said the students created a rich, complex world. Other projects explored health and medicine, economics and currency, and culture, among many other topics.
“We could create media content from this for years and years,” she said. “Hopefully students realize that they have this now as a kind of generative tool. Not only were they part of creating the largest world build ever across multiple campuses, but they will always be able to come back and take from this and to think about how these ideas might spur future projects. And most importantly, they’re learning this methodology, which can be applied to solving so many problems in the world and used across the arts and sciences in new and interesting ways, not just for amazing storytelling potential.”
Nacho Trossero is a Professor at Universidad Austral in Buenos Aires. He wanted his students to participate in Planet JUNK to get a more holistic perspective.
“I think world building will make them more complete persons,” Trossero said. “Junk Planet is an immersive experience that makes us think about the future and our present. Our students will build the world, and they will get inside of it. I want my students to work together and to create together and also remember Alex McDowell’s words: ‘Anything we can imagine, we can create.’”
Trossero teaches world building with Tere Bosch, who also teaches at the Universidad de Montevideo that also participated in the consortium.
Bosch said working with all of the universities in the consortium is challenging.
“On one hand, it’s a fascinating experience to see how flexible the methodology is, that it adapts itself to ‘the hand that uses it,’ to every discipline in the universities so different like the ones in Europe, Australia, Africa and America,” she said. “On the other hand, sometimes it’s difficult for us to all meet due to the time difference. Furthermore, every university has their own systems, and they are not always so flexible as to be able to teach the full subject. But other than that, this experience is incredible and highly recommended.”
The multi-school development of the world will continue to evolve, with ongoing student participation by individual choice.
“The cool thing is the project will continue,” Smith said. “And if students want to keep being part of it, it will keep expanding is the idea. So we will continue to grow.”
Bosch also hopes the consortium keeps growing.
“We hope that, in the future, new media can emerge due to the creative work done by the students and teachers,” she said. “And that Junk can keep generating a new culture to make the new generations aware for them to take control of their future (and present).”