Speculative Design Workshop: The Era of Objects at V2_

Thursday September 29 22:14

Last week I was at V2_ in Rotterdam to participate in the event “Blowup: The Era of Objects”. It was a brief visit — too brief, of course — but well worth the time to help facilitate this workshop along with Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Anab Jain and curated by Michelle Kasprzak.

There was an EPUB produced for the event containing short essays by Bruce Sterling, Ilona Gaynor, Anab, Alex, myself and others in this: The Era of Objects

The event started with Alex, Anab and myself giving a rapid-fire presentation to lay out some of our own perspectives and work on the theme of “speculative design” — which is an area of design akin to design fiction.

Parenthetically I think it would be worth spending a little bit of time excavating some of the distinctions and contrasts between these various ways of doing design — speculative design, design fiction, critical design — if only to be more specific and open a dialogue about the utility and techniques of these ways of seeing the world a bit differently in order to create new perspectives, principles, points-of-view and the resultant outcomes.

The presentations were short — 20 slides I think was the requirement, done almost pecha kucha style with automatic slide changing after about 30 seconds a slide, so I think we violated pecha kucha trademark rules.

In any case, I cobbled together a perspective on speculative design/design fiction that blurred the boundaries between the two, but also got me started thinking about how the two are distinct.

To start, I outlined three perspectives on what the future is and how it is useful as a way of thinking about what come to be. This is crucial insofar as it’s super important to think from a slightly different angle on what could come to pass. The future isn’t always bigger, brighter, better, better battery life or taller, &c.

To reinforce this I shared several of my “graphs of the future” — some crude hand drawings I made that show various ways in which the future is depicted — linear, logarithmic, a three-dimensional “spread”, a bumpy road of hype curves, &c. This helps reinforce this idea that the future is a point-of-view, which is crafted and created by humans based on a set of ideologies — not in a mean, evil way, but just plainly for the sake of framing what is understood as possible or desirable. Oftentimes though these sorts of points-of-view embedded in graphs are ideological in the sense that they are taken as “law” handed down from somewhere. They’re just points-of-view, like politics and therefore entirely flexible and free to be altered, subverted, re-interpreted and re-graphed.

I then presented what I consider three principles for speculating while designing with fiction:

1) It’s okay to let the imagination wonder — science, technology, design, fact and fiction are all knotted up anyway. By this I mean that once you are working in the broad territory of design, one should not be concerned about steering away from the austere pragmatics of “reality” — one should vector to-and-fro into weird, unexpected territory and flex the realm of what is considered possible. At the same time, be prepared to find that small components of the larger design problem are what one is really after — not so much space-age, fantastical luggage for the future but, in fact — just adding wheels to luggage may be the most significant outcome of getting a “future of luggage” design brief.

2) Realize that stories (and storytelling) are more significant than specifications, feature sets and engineering. As an engineer, this is hard to say, but I believe it more and more every time I’m forced to communicate. The list of sucks. The story, where you can take someone along a path and communicate to them in a way that is engaging and compelling — even if ultimately the base-level of what you are saying is a set of features and the engineering involved — is *much better than just saying what the features are. Show the experience of the design concept in a small story/film/animation/comic book. The hard thing is that telling good stories if really, really difficult. It requires practice and failure and refinement and iteration. I mean — there really aren’t that many good story tellers in the world, but it’s worth aspiring to be at least a satisfactory design storyteller. (Also, parenthetically — I’ve grown weary of the mantra that designers are storytellers. Not because I don’t believe it but because I’d rather see evidence of it, even to the point of workshops and curricula and all that. Maybe I’m overlooking something..a few are; most of course make fast-looking tooth brushes and over plastic-y bits and bobs of landfill.)

3) Science fiction/speculation can do things that science fact/pragmatic reality cannot. It’s more robust to speculate than to cordon off.

Then for the remaining few slides I gave some examples of HOW to speculate with design. These are three approaches/techniques/creative idioms..pastiche, re-enactment/re-imagining, making little films.

1) Pastiche is something I’m quite curious about — a way of moving in and out of reality and fiction, such as turning the reality of the Apollo 11 lunar lander into the cornerstone of an imaginary “owner’s manual” — as if normal humans might own Apollo 11 lunar landers and need to service them in their driveways like normal vehicles rather than highly specialized, hand-built space vessels.

2) Re-enactment/re-imagining, in the particular example I offer of the Tom Sachs project/art-piece “Space Program” is a form of pastiche — replaying an event but altering it subtly to explore alternative futures/pasts.

3) Making little films. I find it extremely useful to make small visual stories that capture the essential characteristics of a design idea. Done quickly without too much preciousness is a great way to iterate on a concept. It forces one to work through many of the aspects of a design fiction/speculation that are very easy to overlook in a static sketch or even a discussion. You have to figure out a number of the important albeit subtle aspects of the design problem. It’s a form of design work, definitely — the film is not just the final communication of an idea; it is design work itself..at least it should be.

Finally, I concluded with two WHY statements..Why speculate with design? Why do design fiction? First, to imagine and see the world from a different perspective. And then of course — speculating and fictionalizing things allows one to imagine and see the world from a non-dominant point-of-view..run against the grain..do the unexpected to nudge things into the realm of new possibilities. Like Dick Fosbury or the guy who decided to bolt some wheels onto the bottom of his barely luggable luggage and thereby roll free around the world.

*shrug.

Following our presentations we entered into a bit of a talk-show style discussion and thence onto the workshop itself. We had three “briefs” for a rapid-iteration design session that was only meant to last about 40 minutes total. Very quick, but these are where interesting things happen. Here were the briefs:

1) The Netherlands. Everyone knows the dikes are going to break and the North Sea is going to begin to cover Holland’s land mass. Despite the best efforts of Dutch engineering prowess, there are “preppers” who want to be sure to be prepared. One is Ries Von Doren — a rich guy who has the resources to do what he wants. In this case, he consults with a design agency to create a disaster communications device because he knows the existing infrastructure (cell phones, emergency networks, etc.) are going to fail. How will he and his family stay in touch?

2) China. Aging population. Robots. How will the robots support the needs of the aged when the numbers reach into the many hundreds of millions?

3) The EU. Things really fall apart in a few months. Deutche Bank takes ownership of Greece. Tensions rise. Travel becomes highly restricted so that engineers from one country cannot get into other countries and so conversations and meetings related to setting and evolving technical standards and interoperability are not able to happen. Soon, systems that connect one country to the other fail to work properly — some countries evolve their internets, others are not able to and very quickly the internet fails to cross borders. The network becomes heavily balkanized. What arises out of this sequence of events? How do people communicate across geographical borders?

I made up the Balkanized Internet one so I listened in on that group. It was good fun. The outcomes were varied but I particularly latched onto this idea that existing infrastructures and systems might be used to facilitate communication — and it may in fact not be the visual internet as we are presently used to. For example, the quaint old RF radio would come back into use, with people using voice and perhaps rudimentary modulation to communicate data/text. DIY low-earth orbit satellite, even buoyed by helium/lighter-than-air systems to set up comms networks. Tapping on rail lines to send low-bandwidth morse-code signals across borders. Slow communication over long-wave. Things like this were all very interesting to imagine.

Why do I blog this? Merely to capture a few points on the week I spent mostly traveling with a few hours doing a workshop. Well worth it, though. I also want to think about a schema of these design approaches — speculative, fiction, critical — to help formalize the distinctions in a useful way.

Speculative Design: Blowup – The Era of Objects

Just a quick note to say — I’ll be at this event at V2__ in Rotterdam (V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam) Thursday September 29..so if you’re around, you should come. If you’re not — you should dial-in: ((This event will be streamed live at http://live.v2.nl))

Beyond the flying car: join top designers Julian Bleecker (Nokia, Near Future Laboratory), Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (Really Interesting Group), and Anab Jain (Superflux) in an exploration of speculative design.

We are rapidly entering (and perhaps even have already entered) an era where we are able to print 3D objects at our desks, make and share laser-cut gifts for friends, and use off-the-shelf tools to plug these creations into the web and have them send status updates on our behalf. We have some commonly-held visions of the future, but what could our very wildest dreams (and nightmares) look like, beyond the cliché of the flying car? What answers can we find in speculative design? Our expert guests will explore these questions in collaboration with the audience in a hands-on, “open think-tank” format.

Addressing this contemporary issue will be Julian Bleecker: designer, researcher at the Design Strategic Projects studio at Nokia Design and co-founder of Near Future Laboratory; Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino: product designer, entrepreneur, and partner at Really Interesting Group (London); and Anab Jain: interaction designer, founder of Superflux, and recent TED Fellow.

Following a brief talk show with Julian, Alexandra, and Anab, the audience will have the unique opportunity to collaborate with our invited experts in an “open think-tank”: a guided speculative design session wherein we’ll address the product design challenges of the near and not-so-near future.

Continue reading Speculative Design: Blowup – The Era of Objects

Isla Lyddle End 2050

Isla Lyddle End Beach (Lyddle End 2050)

Isla Lyddle End Map (Lyddle End 2050)

For Russell’s speculative modelling provocation, I was sent a Hornby Jubilee Clock Tower. I quote Mr. Davies:

How about I get a load of Lyddle End properties and we try and build a version of what we think Lyddle End might be like in 2050? Everyone who wants one gets a little building and they have to alter it, mod it, change it, play with it, to reflect how they think the world will be in 42 years time. Then, we’ll put them all together, either physically or through the magic of photography, and see what it might tell us about our visions of the future. I can’t help thinking we might be able to build ourselves a rather intriguing speculative diorama.

After meeting Russell at Design Engaged and feeling a certain kinship around our shared interest in the old Canon A-1 and design provocation generally, I signed up to participate. My first draw was a wholly different, participatory kind of design process. One that allows speculation to involve not only thinking but making, crafting and without the usual constraints that might go into thinking about a future that’s only one product cycle out. Mid century fictional futures. Perfect. Very Design Fiction-y.

At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what the heck a Jubilee Clock Tower might be, so I asked Rhys, with whom it is my good fortune to sit adjacent to in the studio and who got a Hornbee Flower Shoppe, and he explained that these things are clocks constructed to celebrate the Golden or Diamond Jubilees of the British crown. It sat on my desk, got twirled about, mulled over, discussed, peppered up in various ways until basically I knew I’d have to do something least I fail in my mission.

Blinding insight befell. I saw a future for Lyddle End that revealed impending environmental challenges, that signaled the possibilities for vast, almost impossible to imagine cultural shifts and that was undergirded by a romantic notion I have with stalwart Britishness to make do despite overwhelming odds.

Isla Lyddle End lies on the far west of the British Archipelago. It is the largest of the western islands in what was once the continuous land mass known as Hornbyshire. Isla Lyddle End celebrates the Golden Jubilee of The Grand Iman of Britain HH Patel bin Windsor with a minaret clock tower, constructed of hard-pack, molded synthetic carbon nodules in full compliance with the Rock and Soil Conservation Act of 2038. Isla Lyddle End is only a 40 minute fan boat ride from Paddington Sea Station. Bring your Wellies! Isla Lyddle End is well-swamped twice a day, and near coastal areas submerge at the day’s first tide.

Britain in 2050 has a monarch of mixed cultural ancestry, is 98% sunk under rising seas, has traces of Spanish in its idiolect and recognizes Muslim culture in its public monuments.

Isla Lyddle End Clock Tower Minaret Sea Fort (Lyddle End 2050)

Thursday January 22 14:35

Thursday January 22 14:36

Thursday January 22 14:36

Wednesday January 21 19:21

It was a simple matter of Dremel’ng the top off of the original Jubilee Clock Tower, modeling a simple version of what I think the top of a Minaret in 2050 might look like, plastic-printing it and plopping it on top. Some photography late last night suggested that there need to be something besides sea and shore, so I put in some photos of the Maunsell Sea Forts for context. The British Archipelago map is actually an algorithmic rendering of “my” Southern California generated by GPS tracks. There’s a hunk of the westside (Venice Beach and Santa Monica), bits toward downtown and Hollywood/Silverlake/Los Feliz, little jaunts further south, and my coastal commute up the Pacific Coast Highway to the studio in Calabasas where I decided Isla Lyddle End should reside.

cf russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2008/11/lyddleend2050….
cf lyddleend2050.tumblr.com/

Thanks for the fun project Russell!
Continue reading Isla Lyddle End 2050