By Katie Tam

Ani Liu, an artist whose work imagines the future, could not have imagined this present. 

Liu is a 2019–20 University Arts Fellows. She currently teaches Reality R&D: Designing Speculative Futures, a course cross-listed in Anthropology, Architecture, Visual Arts, and Science and Technology.

Part of the class involves doing what Liu calls “futuring” — designing and envisioning worlds which we hope for, worlds that shock us, and even worlds we fear. Liu and her students were interested in how technology affects intimacy months before COVID-19 upended traditional socialization, forcing everything from meetings to dates to classes onto the internet.