HATCHed

What’s the future hold? Here are a few hints from the HATCH festival, held in Asheville April 15-19.

Gaming notions

Like the Grateful Dead? This August, Curious Sense is releasing a virtual, social-networking Deadhead game where players can scavenger hunt for VW Beetles in real life and post photos online for points.

But video games aren’t just for entertainment anymore. In the future, games will be used in a professional setting to overcome challenges like poverty and global inequality, according to Drew Jones, co-director of Climate Interactive. The company created a climate simulation game for the United Nations, used in official negotiations this past year. During heated sessions, U.N. “gamers” from all over the world explore different scenarios to see how climate change could play out over the next 50 years and what can be done about it.

Green-built and grown

If sustainability is your thing, how about organically growing the insulation for your walls, rather than synthetically creating it? Architects face the “use of nonrenewable resources and their limits and the ambitions of technology and its lack of limits,” said author and HATCH mentor Blaine Brownell in his discussion on Material Frontiers.

In other words, the future is wide open for sustainable building. From fungus as insulation, solar-harnessing windows, light-transmitting concrete to a power-generating floor, which powers the building through foot-traffic, tomorrow’s architects are looking way past the limits of yesterdays.

National viewpoints

Worried about the image of America in the eyes of the international community? In “Exporting Raymond,” a HATCH feature film, Everybody Loves Raymond creator Philip Rosenthal goes to Moscow to oversee the first pilot of his show in Russia. Despite a bumpy road with overly worked writers and sometimes far too serious actors, it turns out loopy in-laws are a cross-cultural phenomena to be laughed at the world over.

Fashionistas in Asheville

Fashion is not just for divas and designers anymore. Dubbed “Beyond Apparel, A Career in Fashion,” HATCH Fashion 2011 peaked with a Grove Arcade fashion show, which drew an impressive crowd. The event featured clothing designers, a stylist, a shoe designer and a jeweler.

“Fashion is a tangible thing, you can reach out and touch it,” said Sonia Hendrix, HATCH Fashion discipline leader for this year. “HATCH Fashion this year was about giving a voice to the regular person, making them feel a part of the fashion industry,” said Hendrix, who is now building the site Ashevillefashion.com.

Green RV rolling

Mike Marriner, co-founder of the Roadtrip Nation Movement, started his successful business with a dream, a green RV and whole lot of free Cliff bars. He told HATCH participants that empowering students to reach out to successful American leaders raises hope for the future and decreases dropout rates all across the country. Through the HATCH connection, the Roadtrip Nation education plan will launch this fall at Asheville’s own Randolph Learning Center.

HATCH for youth

This year, HATCH reached out to Asheville middle-school students, who worked all week to map the city according to sights, sounds and gestures. Working with local poet Graham Hackett, the HATCHlings put their “I am” insights into poems. Here’s an excerpt from 14-year-old Harriette Reade: “Unique, like black in a lake of only white swans. Contradictable, like an argument between the moon and the sun. Truthful, like a book — I mean, where else could the truth be?”

Looking for the real scoop on the late-night VIP after-parties and celebrity gossip from the Hollywood insiders? Sorry; that’s off the record. See you next year, Asheville.