workshops

Rumtiden Idea Lab

Makanatsu Idea Skills Training Game

In the societies and the structures we've built, our creative brains are methodically deprived from the natural imagination and playfulness we see in our children. Through school, university and then our workplaces, we are taught how to sit still and listen, to know our place in the system - and to hold back our imagination. These structures are not easy to as we live in them, but playing Makanatsu put you in contact with your natural creativity and idea making skills. This is a game that release your sleeping super power; your imagination.
Makanatsu is a game for 3-15 players that re-invents how innovations are invented and a unique training tool for creativity. From 108 cards with carefully selected word, draw 4 cards and then within 3 minutes create a pitch for an innovation, a new disruptive business or something that benefits mankind. The short amount of time and the unique blend of words sets your brain in a state of “superconductivity” with no time for “ifs” and “buts”. When ending a game of Makanatsu the players will have exercised brains, free and ready to think new bold thoughts.

TED Talks

Innovation and creativity are the most over-used words of our time, often to describe nothing more than basic, necessary changes in a digital and globalised world. Are we in fact getting less creative and has imagination become the most poorly exploited natural resource on the planet? Is it possible to truly think different?
Håkan Lidbo is an artist and innovator from Stockholm. In this talk he presents new perspectives on innovation and creativity and how we could learn to imagine the future. Following a career in electronic music with more than 350 records released, Håkan Lidbo explores the intersections between interactive art, music, robotics, games, urban planning, philosophy and design fiction. He is also the founder of Rumtiden Idea Lab in Stockholm Sweden. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Lego Design Fiction Workshop

A workshop tool to create devices from possible futures, imagine them in their future context and explain to you fellow players what it is, how it works and why it will be important to people in that future.

Contrafactuals Workshop

A design workshop where you train your skills to imagine, not only possible futures, but also alternative possible nows. Change perspective on yourself and the problems you want to solve. By creating objects from possible futures or alternative nows, it's easier to make those futures more tangible.

Music Lab in Riyadh Saudi Arabia

Interactive music installations at MDL Beast Festival, Riyadh Saudi Arabia. Rumtiden hosted the Sensory Dome for 150.000 visitors.
By Håkan Lidbo, Max Björverud, Magnus Frenning, Servando Barreiro, Ludvig Elblaus and Cornelia Sojdelius.

Alterplex

This game is a training tool to improve your ability to see the future as a multi-dimensional, dynamic network of possible connections, of possible futures - not as a linear extrapolation from the past and present. The board is a screen with the polarisation film removed. But inside the frame of each piece is polarisation film so the can only see the squares of the board through their pieces. All other squares are invisible. Animations in 4 different directions on the board tells how the players may move. All animations follow a pattern so an experienced player can plan what square to move to and how to move from there, as well as forseeing how the opponent might move, or can not move. The players ability to see this pattern and predict the possible futures of the game determine their skills.
Alterplex was nominated to the European S+T+Arts Prize at Ars Electronica 2019.

Mega Chess

This is a game designed to train your ability to see and experience complexity. Today AI has beaten some of the best human brain in our most difficult disciplines; Chess (1996) and Go (2016), So how can we now challenge this new force that merge with our societies and our minds? Can we till prove that we still have brilliant minds? A chess game where each player have 24 normal chess teams. The pieces are normal chess pieces but here they explain with their design how they may move. The rules are exactly like in ordinary chess but in order to wine, you have to take your opponent ts 24 kings. This game takes many month to play and serves as a tool to think about human fallibility. We tend to simplify complex problems and conflicts (normal chess is an extremely simplified version of a war) because it's beyond our ability to take in. In Megachess we can see that this conflict will be very costly and take a long time and it’s impossible, within in our human limitation, to adress in a strategic way.

The Meta Game

This is a game designed to train your abilities to see things in many levels. Humans often fail to see problems from the right perspective - or in the right scale. A problem can often be a bigger reflection of the smaller problem. This is a game within a game where you train yourself to see meta levels.

Big Question Generator

3 interactive cubes that together generate and control a question, presented as text on a screen - and as music. This installation was a part of Future Innovator Summit at Ars Electronica, to inspire the visitors to think big and focus on creative questions rather than definitive answers.
By Håkan Lidbo.