Longevity: Now Available in Cans! A Performance Lecture Approach to Addressing Longevity Issues from A Responsible Innovation Perspective is the latest research article from Bassetti Foundation collaborators Jonathan and Angelo Hankins. The publication appears in Glocalism: Journal of Culture, Politics and innovation, and is the result of a call for papers focusing on longevity and globalization reported here.

As regular readers will know, longevity and the need to address societal issues from the perspective of all ages and age-groups has been a hot topic of interest for the Foundation this year (2024). In March, and coinciding with our involvement in the Milan Longevity Summit, The Bassetti Foundation, Fondazione Ravasio Garzanti and Meet Digital Culture Center released A Society for all Ages, the latest in a series of white papers (free to download here).

Recent years have also seen the Foundation engaged in promoting debate around the topic of longevity in educational settings, offering the Society for All Ages, Longevity-driven design Masters course at Milan Polytechnic and participating in the Interaction Design and Service Design Masters course at Milan Domus Academy. Alongside University level education, our collaboration with the International School in Utrecht (NL) adds a further context within which the development of the methodology described by Hankins and Hankins in their article was developed.

About the Article

The article describes the development of a theatre and design-based Performance Lecture whose goal is to develop reflexivity around the theme of longevity and innovation in secondary and university level students.

The authors’ approach involves the presentation of a fictional near-future product, a drink called Longevity. The drink contains nanobots that once ingested can be directed (with an app) to stimulate the body to produce differing amounts of adrenaline, allowing the user to raise or lower its production “in flow”.

During the (unannounced) presentation of this product, Jonathan describes how adrenaline levels can be manipulated not only to help regulate sleeping patterns, but also to allow the drinker to slow their metabolism down at night to such an extent that the body goes into a type of short-term hibernation. The long-term effects on health lead to a 30% longer life. Guaranteed!

The authors describe a series of two-person sketches that can be used in a classroom or theatre setting to give life to a fictional world in which their Longevity drink is a mass consumer product. Examples include a great-grandparent who wants to stop drinking Longevity and move towards a natural life (and death), and the crisis within the family that such a discussion produces: who will look after the great-grandchildren while their parents are working? In a further development, questions about justice and inclusion provoke a proposal for governments to finance mass use by putting the product into the tap water.

Hankins and Hankins describe how each sketch can be taken apart, allowing decision-making points within the design trajectory to be analyzed from a responsible innovation perspective. They explain that ‘theatre is an art form that aims at developing self-reflection and reflexivity in both audiences and participants, opening the door to reflective learning which, if combined with critical design and design fiction, offers an effective medium for addressing many dimensions of Responsible Innovation (RI)’.

Participants are encouraged to use self-prepared props to improvise conversations within this fake near-future world, a process that has been fundamental in the development of the reflexivity. The article contains a link to an introduction video, lesson plans, and photos and descriptions of all props used, so that any teacher can prepare a lesson, lecture or workshop in any situation. All of the articles referenced are also freely available online, offering academic and non-academic literature for the teacher as well as lots of examples of theatre ideas for use in science lessons.

Longevity: Now Available in Cans! A Performance Lecture Approach to Addressing Longevity Issues from A Responsible Innovation Perspective by Jonathan Hankins and Angelo Hankins is published in Glocalism, 2024, and is free to download here.