Experimental Futures Corporation

New culture for new futures

Based on Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, Experimental Futures Corporation is an operational NGO pursuing a strategy of sensemaking and organizational capacity development through experimental arts to develop community resilience, collaboration, inclusion, and productive expression.

Culture is the technology with the longest track record of promoting human resiliency and sits at the core of our work.

Building new capacities

Liliʻuokalani’s Piano: creating a virtual instrument built from the sounds of the last Queen of Hawaiʻi's koa piano, currently housed at Washington Place. Collaborating with composer Leilehua Lanzilotti, the project makes the sound and story of this unique instrument available to the Hawiian diaspora and others beyond the shores of Hawaiʻi.

Kaleookauila: developing new arts audience & community through live performance in a public park. Gathering people together in small groups several times each year to remember the utliity of everyday technologies and interact with the world through new/old technologies. Each performance is a celebration of the sounds of a specific place, the opportunity to listen and experience the place in new ways.

Free Improvisation Research Ensemble: beginning from a place of listening and empathy, participants in this regularly occurring free workshop gather experience with sensemaking in negotiation, individual responsibility, and mutual support. The workshop consists of two parts: 1) working together with sound, 2) exploring the archive of improvisation to identify useful tactics, methods, and strategies of collaboration.

Leadership

Gahlord Dewald, artist/founder: an internationally touring experimental and free jazz musician, he is based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.

Lelepoki King, board president: an arts advocate and consultant following a decades long career working for the American Bar Association, she is based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi

Ken Bogdanowicz, board member: based in Vermont, he is the creator of Soundtoys, a company that is the go-to resource for audio plug-ins the world over.

Elliott Sharp, board member: a composer who has received a Berlin Prize in Musical Composition and is a central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City.