Futurescaping, Dialogue with Orkan Telhan, is a conversation presented as a floating chapter between myself and Orkan Telhan—artist, designer, and researcher—whose practice moves between biological systems, computation, critical design, and culture. He co-founded Biorealize Inc., served as CIO at Ecovative, and currently serves as President of the Biodesign Challenge and Field CTO at Shelf.
The discussion moves across five loose territories: the philosophy of materiality; future thinking as an act of protecting imagination; design methodologies that center accountability over solutionism; the emergence of biodesign as a field and its tensions between studio practice, commercial scaling, and cultural impact; and the question of what happens to the human species if technologies like augmentation, prosthetics, and AI transform us beyond recognition.
ORKAN: The future is not the thing that has not yet happened. Future is more of a perspective—an optimistic perspective on the ability to act and change. So I believe in that. That is my Kool-aid. I still believe that you can do something.
AMIRA: I believe in possibility. I think anything can always happen. So you just go on doing what you’re doing, and if it’s purposeful and meant to be something bigger, that will happen.