Thread by @trevver

10 years ago tonight: the ending of @ZEDtoronto and the collapse of the @ByoLogyc future scenario. A(-?) 🧵... or more accurately:🧶

How strange it is to be nearing the end of 2022... one decayed-decade on from the synthetic biology cargo cult that was @ByoLogyc: a company from the future brought to life in the world of 2012.
#PersistencePotentialPerfection

For me, creating *actual real-world experiences* for *real human people* around dystopian-but-desirable future technology brands (@ByoLogyc being the most fully realized example) became award-winning research in Strategic Foresight @OCAD/@OCADU_SFI (Thanks @gregvan @CodeZebra)

BUTTTTTTTT like so many other domains, @ByoLogyc was just one (massive) part of a humungous 2012 #Toronto art/design project called @ZEDtoronto about... simulating the end of the world in the near-future. Using a synthetic viral pandemic. And a miracle vaccine solution.

If any of that🔺future scenario at @ByoLogyc (viral pandemic, to-good-to-be-true vaccine) sounds eerily familiar given everything circa-and-since 2020.... I guess that means we did OK scenario planning?

It goes without saying that @ByoLogyc's antivaccination community in-story (EXE would never have a Twitter account, LOL) was VERY different from today's. With all of our #futurish drug-peddling, I *totally* failed to anticipate uncanny everyday ferocity of IRL anti-vax rhetoric.

In most our @ByoLogyc events, 60-80% of people "took the pill" that offered them immunity from the #BRX Virus (and a myriad of other [even potential future] viruses), and it's hard to imagine that we'd see that same uptake (er, intake) today...

@ByoLogyc and @ZEDtoronto spanned 2012 in venues as diverse as @TorontoART @nuitblancheTO @WorldFutureSoc @autodesku @nxne @EGBrickWorks — audiences of thousands mingling through a real-world synthetic pandemic (both intended meanings), & purchasing their way to bespoke immunity.

The whole @ZEDtoronto thing was much, much more complex than it looked... and from audience / outside perspectives, it already felt plenty complex! The team that brought @ByoLogyc to life in 2012 was named @themissionbiz. We became a company after that, and now we're just people!

10 years on from our synthetic pandemic, and @ZEDtoronto... @elennamosoff is a myco-coach, rewilder, and adventurer... her life and work are a pretty cool manifestation of myth!

@Byronist remains a creative force of nature — first time I was in a theatre this year was his The Family Crow last weekend: a very unique one-bird show that got me thinking differently about murder ;) He's creative director with @morroandjasp too: warmest storytelling in town!

@fonograph — mad designer of many of the puzzles, quests, and techno-traumas central to the @ZEDtoronto experience — does *super* *serious* *shit* in the games industry, continuing his metamorphosis into a familyman while occasionally going all @ByoLogyc on his actual brain.

My wonderful sister Martha is apparently the only one of @themissionbiz cool enough to have actually already left Twitter. RIP @OliveSwift - @ByoLogyc remembers you.

The major baseload of the @ZEDtoronto project, if you looked at creative energy expended, was *actually* provided by a group of design and performance stars who grew an absolutely mad string of @themissionbiz notions from 2009 -> 2011 into actual cool immersive theatre in 2012!

It'll be really interesting to see which members of the so-called @ZEDtoronto ARMY remain in this dimension as taggable people, rather than having evolved off into some alter-narrative realm to live out an elaborate alternate reality... here goes!

@ShaneCameBack was in many ways the sixth co-creator of @ByoLogyc — he put in so many cycles building up that storyworld, AND THEN MOVED DIRECTLY INTO IT AS A LEAD PERFORMER. Only he and Martha knew the @ZEDtoronto experience at that creative level. Happy Anniversary, Mr. Kirkham

The visual identify of @ByoLogyc in both @ZEDtoronto and further appearances was realized with the passion and talent of @stolkramaker. The brand he helped us insert into 2012's Toronto was a balanced forecast of desire & dystopia that I see manifest *daily* across 2022's world.

I maintain a "militartistic" degree of respect for the performers that brought the @ByoLogyc team to life in 2012. The commitment of those folx to playing pervasive characters in real life AND online (pretty wild in 2012) on @ZEDtoronto blows me away to this day!!!

@Jeni_Walls @EmilySchooley @ShaneCameBack @AriLeask — I've probably missed other folx I have on Twitter already. Even the 4 of you brought more creative energy to @ZEDtoronto as Team @ByoLogyc in 2012 than some do across whole careers. BTW I already txted Chet Happy 10 ;)

I still wake up asking myself questions like "WHAT DID I ACTUALLY LEARN FROM ANY OF THIS?" You'd think after simulating a viral pandemic and associated corporate logjamming, the takeaways would be obvious.... but 10 years on, that's not the case.

Antivax is totally different IRL than we had pre-hearsed it, not to mention social distancing (absent from the @ZEDtoronto storyworld), and the ways in which public health figures have been the controversial figures of the COVID pandemic was absent from @Byologyc scenarios.

2022's headlines about vaccine development don't feel like they're 10 years different from 2012 — sure Operation Warp Speed and mRNA COVID vaccines accelerated a few trends from the @ByoLogyc playbook, which was neat, but mixed uptake and variants were new to our story.

The #synbio realm that was so much backstory to @ByoLogyc's innovations is closer than ever to "mainstream" re: capital infused / corps launched... but I am consistently amazed by lack of impact on "minutes lived" as Chet might have said. Not much difference between 2012 and now.

Did exorcising a dystopia with theatre in 2012 work? Were opinions changed on corporate ethics / emerging tech? Did anyone "do better" at COVID because they'd prehearsed pandemic with @ByoLogyc? I'd LOVE to hear your answers... 10 years post @ZEDtoronto, let's talk!