ABOUT THE PROJECT
Afro-Rithms from the Future is a group game and card deck developed by Afrofuturist Podcast co-producers Ahmed Best and Lonny Brooks in collaboration with game designer Eli Kosminsky. Mixing strategies from many disciplines, Afro-Rithms challenges players to imagine worlds of greater and lesser equality, justice, and communality — among many other possible values and conditions — and to populate these worlds with new objects and ideas that may arise accordingly.
Fathomers is supporting Brooks, Best, and Kosminsky in the ongoing public play-testing and refinement of the game for eventual public release and distribution as a school curriculum tool. To date, the game has been presented at the Institute for the Future, in Palo Alto; Dynamicland, in Oakland; Black Speculative Arts Movement festivals in Oakland and Los Angeles, in Leimert Park; and at NeueHouse Hollywood. Actions to come include the commission of game card artwork, box art and design, and a formal launch through Kickstarter and Los Angeles-based youth education organizations.
Clockwise: “World-Building with the Afrofuturist Podcast,” produced by Fathomers at NeueHouse, 2019. (photo: Lance Williams) / Afro-Rithms from the Future playtest, Black Speculative Arts Movement festival in Leimert Park, 2019. (photo: Fathomers) / Physicist Clifford Johnson at “Science Speed Dating,” 2019. (photo: Lance Williams). At top of page: Afro-Rithms playtest in Leimert Park, 2019.
BIOS
The co-creators of the Afrofuturist Podcast, Ahmed Best and Lonny Brooks, helm an analog social network of futurists, tech entrepreneurs, game developers, artists, designers, writers, educators, scientists, engineers, and martial arts masters focused on forging a movement to democratize the future. Working in the spirit of the Black Radical Imaginary — with tools borrowed from forecasting methodology — the Afrofuturist Podcast Network (AFPCN) promotes community-building platforms for sharing knowledge, skills, and stories across disciplines. These platforms include the Afrofuturist Podcast, Black Speculative Arts Movement happenings, the ongoing development of Afro-Rithms from the Future, and group “World-Building” events, where the game is play-tested live. Through critical discourse, programming, and documentation, AFPCN aspires to co-produce a library of media that rebuilds our shared history through an Afrofuturist lens.
Ahmed Best is a senior fellow at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC; host of the Afrofuturist Podcast; CEO of BISN Media; and a writer, director, producer, actor, musician, and futurist. A founding member of the acid jazz group the Jazzhole, in New York, he starred in the Broadway musical Stomp and as the first CGI lead character in a motion picture, as Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequel trilogy: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith.
Best is an MFA graduate of the American Film Institute and has received honors including an Ovation Award, an LACC Award, a Stage Raw Award, and an ANNIE award. He is executive producer of Dinner at LOLA (Stop That Bangin Productions/BISN Media) andThe DL Chronicles (GLAAD Award winner for Best Miniseries), as well as creator, writer, and director of science-fiction comedy The Nebula.
Lonny J. Avi Brooks is an associate professor of strategic communication and media studies at California State University, East Bay, where he has piloted the integration of futures thinking into the communication curriculum for the last 15 years. He contributes prolifically to journals, conferences, and anthologies on subjects related to Afrofuturism and forecasting. Most recently, he published “Diverse Alternative Learning Visions 2026-2066: Transforming and Reframing the University as a Lifelong Social Design Lab,” co-written with colleague Ian Pollock, in Futures Thinking and Organizational Policy: Case Studies for Managing Rapid Change in Technology, Globalization, and Workforce Diversity. He is also lead co-editor of a Journal of Futures Studies special issue, titled “When Is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurism,” forthcoming in November 2019.
Brooks is co-executive producer and co-creator, with Ahmed Best, of the Afrofuturist Podcast; lead organizer and advisory board member for the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), in Oakland; and principal leader for BSAM Futures, which aims to publish comprehensive, inclusive and collaborative analyses of contemporary Afrocentric works. He also volunteers as a core member for outreach at Dynamicland.org, a pioneering non-profit dedicated to creating a more collaborative and dynamic computational medium for the long term.
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