COSMIC 1001: Engaging Future Speculation on Space Exploration with Generative AI

2026-05-12

AI Summary

This study proposes an interactive installation designed to foster public participatory imagination of the future of space exploration by blending historical facts with science fiction to construct discussable future narratives. Users define future scenarios grounded in real space events, and a generative AI system automatically produces multimodal “future news” comprising headlines, textual content, synthesized speech, and images. These artifacts converge within a “future tunnel” to form a dynamic, visual landscape of collective imagination. By integrating historical archives, user-driven speculative scenarios, and multimodal generative AI for the first time, this work establishes a shared speculative space that effectively expands the cognitive boundaries and depth of public discourse surrounding humanity’s spacefaring future.

Abstract

Cosmic 1001 is an interactive installation that transforms space exploration history into a speculative news experience. Participants first browse a news-based archive of major space events, then pose future-oriented questions or specify conditions such as year, celestial body, or mission name. In response, AI generates a future news item including a headline, article, narration, and visual media. These outputs are accumulated in the Future Tunnel, a shared visualization where individual stories form a collective landscape of possible futures. By combining historical space events with science fiction references, the installation explores a space between documentation and imagination, treating the future not as a fixed prediction but as a visible and discussable speculation.

Problem

• space exploration
• future speculation
• generative AI
• interactive installation
• collective imagination

Innovation

• generative AI
• speculative design
• interactive installation
• future forecasting
• space exploration