Transmitted Futures: bytes not boxes — Solarpunk, Cofuturisms and other everyday tomorrows

Opening Reception: September 10, 2026 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

The Gary R. Libby University Gallery presents “Transmitted Futures: bytes not boxes — Solarpunk, Cofuturisms and other everyday tomorrows” curated by Flounder Lee, Visiting Professor of Studio Art at UF’s School of Art and Art History. Lee draws upon “many, sometimes conflicting, ways of imagining what comes next” to suggest that futures are always multiple, negotiated and made through everyday life. 

The exhibition brings together a range of visions for everyday life in possible futures: a coastline heard through headphones, two video game players cooperating through a first contact that has not yet happened, fictional organisms sprouting from a corner, a hovercraft with its storm shield raised, a deck of cards asking viewers to remember how things were done somewhere better, a trashcan resembling a reliquary, a greenhouse in an arid world and a time machine made from plywood and projections. Rather than presenting a single vision of the future, these works explore the many ways that the future might be imagined, constructed and experienced.

The exhibition features work from fifteen artists and collectives around the world. Rather than shipping finished physical objects, the artists transmitted their work as files, which were then transformed into physical works in Gainesville through processes including 3D printing, inkjet printing, projection, cutting and construction. Some files arrived ready to be printed or played, while others were developed through months of conversation that transformed a flat drawing into a full-color object that could be experienced in physical space.

Lee frames the exhibition through two ideas: Solarpunk and Cofuturisms. Solarpunk is a hopeful but practical strand of art and design that is less interested in simply imagining future worlds than in building them from technologies that already exist, emphasizing many small solutions rather than one sweeping answer. Cofuturisms is a broader term for art and writing that understands the future as something made collectively and incorporates perspectives including Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurisms.

“A file is not finished,” Lee said. “It is an instruction, and someone has to decide how large it is, what it is made from, what color it comes out. Those decisions get made in a particular place with particular tools, which is a reasonable description of how futures arrive anywhere.”

Artists and collectives represented in “Transmitted Futures” include Saks Afridi, Morehshin Allahyari, Nicole Dextras, Finbarr Fallon, Jason J Ferguson, Terence Hannum, Dustin Jacobus, Mirabelle Jones, Golan Levin and Shawn Sims, Maize Longboat, Ong Kian Peng, Kate Paxman, Saba Qizilbash, Solarpunk Surf Club and Taryn Walker.