A half-day forum at MoMA where commerce meets culture. Discover bold ideas and transformative insights from the world’s leading thinkers
Roy and Niuta Titus Theater
11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019
Commerce shapes the worlds we inhabit. Every brand, every product, every experience contributes to a larger narrative, weaving together identity, culture, and technology into something far greater than a storefront. At VISIONS Summit, we’ll explore how the most forward-thinking brands are building ecosystems of meaning, myth, and belonging.
Andrew Huang is a musician, video creator, and bestselling author who experiments with unique approaches to making music. He's best known for sharing his ideas and processes on YouTube, where he's amassed over 2 million subscribers. His other work includes scoring commercials, designing music software and hardware, and an eclectic discography spanning everything from rock to rap to electronic to classical.
For all our cloud backups and cultural institutions, it may be consumer brands—logos, packaging, and jingles—that offer the most enduring record of human life on Earth. In this keynote, Future Commerce co-founder Phillip Jackson explores provocative examples of humanity's greatest cultural preservers: consumer brands. From Panasonic to Westinghouse, time capsules aren’t just buried underground—they’re printed on soda cans, preserved in landfills, and encoded in marketing archives. What happens when corporations become the keepers of our culture?
When logos outlast languages, what stories will they tell?
While competitors theorize about innovation, Walmart has methodically constructed a new commercial reality through strategic investments in spatial computing, creator economies, and narrative-driven commerce. Their latest initiative, Walmart UNLIMITED, represents more than a technological advancement—it's a fundamental reimagining of how stories and play become the primary vehicles for commercial engagement. In an era where boundaries between digital and physical retail blur, Walmart's bold venture with Spatial is crafting new commercial geographies into networked states.
As these new territories of commerce emerge, we find ourselves at the threshold of a world where shopping transforms from transaction to immersion.
When the map of commerce is redrawn in virtual space, who will navigate the uncharted territories?
Meditation is not what you think it is. Practices like tulpamancy, where individuals create and interact with imagined companions, reveal how mental repetition can reshape perception and ontology. This is meditation, too. We may be on the cusp of a major shift in how meditation is understood in the commercial and professional space, as researchers and technologists are learning more about the depth and breadth of meditation practices.
This new era may have meditation enter the world not as a form of stress relief, but as a method for altering the structure of the mind itself.
From Pygmalion's Galatea to Jung's pots and pans to anime waifus, we have always blurred the boundary between animate and inanimate. This talk traces that lineage, from our imaginary friends to anime crushes, AI confidants, and the deep affection we feel for everything from our stuffed animals to our cars. By weaving myth, psychology, and technology together, animism is manifesting in contemporary life, making seemingly imaginary relationships feel every bit as real—and consequential—as flesh and blood.
What if branding isn’t the act of creating a world, but of making it navigable? Commerce leaves behind more than artifacts—it scripts the myths, metaphors, and memories of culture. In an age of accelerated meaning-making and cultural co-authorship, what does it mean to build a brand? Strategy Director Nikita Walia and Creative Director Elliot Vredenburg reframe branding as mapmaking—not as representation, but as a generative act.
Brands, they argue, are not static identities but evolving terrains: ecologies of meaning shaped in motion through friction, flux, and feedback. Drawing from systems thinking, semiotics, and design practice, they explore how strategy and design work together not to define a world, but to render it navigable. The result is not a blueprint, but a compass. Not an answer, but a wayfinding logic for navigating—and shaping—the commercial and cultural landscapes brands inhabit.
We live in a time where everyone is a content creator and legacy publishers continue to see their long and slow decline. With the democratization of media comes a lot of noise, but there are new players entering content feeds that are carving distinct spaces for themselves and their communities.
The future of media is being built today by independent proprietors who are crafting superformat ecosystems that reflect their own distinct areas of expertise and points of view. And these ecosystems have plenty of room to grow.
A panel of media moguls will share how they’re turning the art and science of media into a unique act of worldbuilding; one that combines the power of community and curation to create new value for audiences. They’ll discuss what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next in the next era of media.
Andrew Huang isn’t just a YouTube creator. He embodies what it means to be a worldbuilder in the modern age, mastering fictional, brand, and mimetic storytelling. His most seminal feat, Spacetime, broke new creative grounds for him personally while also revealing new, unavoidable truths about how we connect and build relationships with those we interact with through the internet. During a presentation and fireside chat with Future Commerce’s Phillip Jackson, Andrew will walk through the layered creative process of Spacetime, and how the project’s ripple effects relate to the way brands build myths, and worlds, online.
How does digital storytelling influence the way we present ourselves in the physical world?
When does our “virtual identity” dictate, even override, who we actually are?
To conclude a memorable day at the MoMA, Andrew will offer his thoughts on the creator economy, the impact of disinformation, and the growing influence of commerce in storytelling. He also will treat attendees to a special musical performance.
VISIONS brings eCommerce and marketing professionals together to explore the intersection of commerce, culture, and creativity
Get exclusive first looks at Future Commerce’s new ‘big ideas,’ the Future Commerce Word of Mouth Index, and curated art experiences
Before VISIONS begins, a small group of FC⁺ members will gather for a private experience inside Turning Points in Design, MoMA’s exhibit exploring how everyday objects become cultural milestones.
It’s quiet. Curated. Limited to 10 guests.
Available by invitation to Future Commerce⁺ members only.
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