Man who ‘built’ Minority Report to deliver thought-provoking lecture in Bristol

This year’s Bristol Vision Institute Richard Gregory Memorial Lecture will be given by multi-award-winning visionary designer and storyteller, Alex McDowell, on Thursday 28 November at the University of Bristol’s Wills Memorial Building.

Director of the World Building Media Lab at the University of Southern California, Alex has over 30 years’ experience as a film production designer, working with directors including Steven Spielberg, David Fincher and Anthony Minghella.

Alex uses emerging technologies to ‘build’ worlds, including the fictional world in Spielberg’s Minority Report, and will talk about story-telling and creating the future in his lecture: Reality Starts Here. Building Fictional Futures to Change the World.

In Alex’s own words: “We use stories to make sense of the world around us, to create a vision, stimulate our imagination, and touch our emotions. In this talk I will be showing how story-telling worlds place the human experience at the centre, framed in relation to time and space, culture and infrastructure, art and science, governance and energy, population and environment. Our process is based on the reality that the future starts now, and disruptive narratives are designed to stimulate and challenge.  World Building taps into the innate ability of the creative collective to tell new stories that make sense of the rapidly changing world around us.” 

The annual lecture is held in memory of Professor Richard Gregory, the inspiration behind Bristol Vision Institute (BVI). Professor David Bull, Director of BVI, said: “It is a great coup to welcome someone with such extraordinary talent as Alex to Bristol. His work has had considerable influence on inter-disciplinary creative design and story-telling, and as a film production designer, his vision of fictional worlds has truly shaped our collective imagination of the future.

“It is Alex’s ability to view the world differently, and to take others on that journey, that makes him a true visionary. He is therefore the perfect choice to deliver this lecture on behalf of the Bristol Vision Institute and in memory of another great visionary, Professor Richard Gregory.

“We are grateful to Bristol+Bath Creative R+D who have supported the event and hope to see members of the public, staff, students, young people in the Great Hall of the Wills Memorial Building for a voyage of discovery through futuristic worlds!”

Tickets are free and are available via Eventbrite. Book your place now.