The Flow State Trailer
We co-produced a 2-minute trailer for the Future Vision XPRIZE, set in a floating city from the novel The Flow State

It all started when I was contacted by the author, Joshua Jay Castle. He studied Marine and Antarctic Science at the University of Tasmania and founded Blue Symbiosis, an initiative that repurposes aging offshore oil and gas platforms into seaweed farms. He was a student winner of the XPRIZE Carbon Removal in 2021 and is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University.

His novel, The Flow State, which took him five years to write, is set to be published. Because the story takes place in a floating city, he discovered Dogen City and reached out to us.

We submitted our project to the "Future Vision XPRIZE," an international competition requiring a trailer and treatment that depict a plausible, hopeful future for humanity driven by technology, rather than a pessimistic one. The grand prize provides funding to develop the concept into a feature-length film.

I am in charge of the creative direction for the environmental and architectural settings within the story.

Dogen City is a decentralized, modular floating city. The Flow State envisions what that city becomes several generations into the future—a world where the ocean is no longer a frontier, but a place where people live.

The results will be announced on September 25th. I am excited to see what happens.

THE FLOW STATE Credits:
Written and produced by Joshua Jay Castle
Animation by Atelier 452
Directed by Aiden Guo (Atelier 452)
Generative artists&Sound by John Wang (Atelier 452)
Executive Producer: Christopher Sibley
Creative Director: Yuki Tazaki (N-ARK)
Special Thanks: Yosuke Utsumi (XROAD)
Supported by The Hagey Family