02 methods & tactics
methods & tactics
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Critical design has grown and developed over the time since its popularisation, and this has led to many new and diverging aspects and methods of practice. This section explores different practice definitions under the “critical design� umbrella, as well as the various techniques, methods and ways that critical design projects may take shape, with a focus on both seminal works and works that operate in a sociotechnological context.
flash
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“Speculative� is also a derivative from speculum (mirror) and speculari (to look in or by means of the mirror). The speculative, then, is evidently a relationship of mirroring.
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As Dunne and Raby notes, critical design includes a speculative tactic that is central to the discipline. Speculation allows designers to expand the sense of what is preferable beyond what is currently probable. Although Dunne and Raby do not make a clear distinction between critical and speculative design, other authors have drawn a few differences between the two. Matt Malpass suggests a “taxonomy” of critical practice, that includes disciplines under the umbrella term of “critical design”. In this taxonomy, critical practice is broken down into three types: associative design, speculative design and critical design. Speculative design takes the critical practice towards imaginative, possible scenarios, and its process as a “medium of intellectual inquiry” (Rawsthorn, 123). By practising in the discipline, designers look at alternative products, systems and worlds from another perspective, moving away from mass-market, commercial constraints. In moving away from this, speculative design anticipates future and alternative scenarios while provoking discussion and thought by asking “what if?” This also examines potential shifts and implications of these scenarios, and has potential for the stimulation of re-thinking visions of the future, prompting actions of individuals or even companies that take into consideration the scenarios presented in the design project.
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It is important that speculative design relates back to the individual as a constituent of the scenario presented to be able to provoke debate. Speculative design projects usually concentrate in two areas: the socio-scientific (biotechnology, scientific developments such as material technology, environmental and bodily modifications) and the socio-technological (robots, artificial intelligence and technologies that impact human-machine and human-human interaction). The projects covered in this publication place emphasis on the latter.
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“We believe that even nonviable alternatives, as long as they are imaginative, are valuable and serve as inspiration to imagine one’s own alternatives.
Speculative design can be a catalyst for this: it can inspire imagination and a feeling that, if not exactly anything, more is definitely possible. Dunne & Raby, Speculative Everything, p.161
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Speculative design in practice:
United Micro Kingdoms, explored at depth in Dunne and Raby’s book Speculative Everything, explores a combination of the Sternberg Solution Series and speculative design. The project began by looking at how nations are built, and if states could be designed. Based on a chart commonly used to illustrate political positions, the project reimagines England, now divided into four parts, and consists of the way the peoples of these states live. By focussing on transport as the consistent object of interest, Dunne and Raby combine political, social, and technological fields to create an alternative, future scenario.
Dunne & Raby
United Micro Kingdoms 2013
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Top: The United Micro Kingdom (UMK) flag. The flag represents the four micro-kingdoms that make up a future dytopian England. Each in its own political positions, they are : Digitarians, Bioliberals, Anarchoevolutionists, and Bioliberals.
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Above: Digitarians Digitarians are Authoritarian-Right, and depend on digital technology and its totalitarianism, using tracking, metrics, surveillance and information transparency. Not concerned with who is governing them as long as thing runs smoothly and people are presented with choice, the society in Digiland is organized solely by market forces. The main transportation of Digitarians is the digicar, similar to the electric self-drive cars today.
Bioliberals As its name suggests, the Bioliberals lean Libertarian-Left on the political spectrum. Bioliberals pursue biotechnology and new values, making sure they benefit in the long run. Unlike the Digitarians who see nature as resources for the taking, Bioliberals try to enhance it and look for ways to preserve natural resources. Biocars are organic in nature and are slow and messy, due to the energy provided by anaerobic digesters.
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Top: Anarcho-evolutionsists Anarcho-evolutionsists are Libertarian-right, and do not develop technologies; using existing ones, they adapt them to suit their needs. This is done through DIY-hacking, training and experimentation with their given resources. Theirs is a world without cars, so they rely on more primative modes of transportation, through geneticallymodified animals or more mechanical means like bicycles, where many of them move in tandem. Left: Communo-nuclearists Communo-nuclearists lean Authoritarian-Left, and are a no-growth experiment. They are nomads, living on a long, nuclear-powered mobile landscape, where it is naturalized, allowing the people to enjoy nature while moving in it. Depending on nuclear energy for survival, the communonuclearists have everything they need and want on board.
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Speculative design in practice:
Auger-Loizeau
Happylife 2010 Happylife demonstrates the approach within speculative critical design that domesticates emerging science. The project questions the potential implications when a machine has better knowledge of a person’s emotional state than humans. By speculating a scenario of how this technology can be used at home and in everyday life, interactions and potential conflicts that occur around the science are presented, allowing the audience to question and contemplate on the value and application of technology such as this.
Happylife dial display, which shows the emotional state of all family members/house members.
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Scenario sketches of the Happylife display in the home setting.
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Through speculatio of design, thinking the complexities o production and con find new social re of practice, new
on on the possibility g through some of of the context of nsumption, you can ealities, new forms economic models. Matt Ward, Speculation is part of every designer’s practice, 2016 (from speculative.hr)
What makes a work of speculative design tick: Characteristics & tactics
Mitrovic and Suran point out that because speculative design constantly interacts with other related practices, fields and disciplines, it uses any method that is accessible and appropriate at the time. Jeffrey and Shaowen Bardzell also identified “general confusion” about critical design, citing a lack of “methodological direction”. The goals of critical design are laid out, but not how it can be achieved (3297). Although the speculative approach to design can be seen as an attitude or position rather than a traditionally defined methodology, there are distinctive characteristics to the approach that can determine a basic framework to the approach. The following characteristics explored are the ones widely used (but not confined to) the approach. 83
[ one ]
With speculative design, a fictional scenario is considered and is integral to the approach. Speculative practice relies on the speculation on possible futures and the design of an alternate present, both of which are set in fiction. These question the implications and concept of the implementation and use of new or current alternate technologies. This might be done in a manner where it draws on historical context (a “counter-factual”), or a “what-if?” approach, which is defined as more “forward-looking” by Dunne and Raby. For them, speculation allows for the designer to “unsettle the present rather than predict the future”. (Dunne & Raby, 88) By using speculation, future scenarios are generated that critically question the development, implementation and use of new technologies and their implications. Doing this allows for a rich narrative that can be applied to the speculative design projects.
Fictions used in speculative design are not to be confused with design fiction, which is another design approach that uses “diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change”, according to Bruce Sterling. This can also be understood as “artefacts form the future”. Mostly seen in science fiction movies and literature, Dunne and Raby believe that the difference between diegetic prototypes in design fiction and the fictions shown in speculative design is that the products in design fictions “are rarely critical of technological progress” and rarely question it (101).
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wild card scenario
today
time
scenario
PROBABLE: traditional design space PLAUSIBLE: alternative futures, linked with today’s world POSSIBLE: includes all extremely scientifically possible scenarios PREFERABLE: using speculative deisgn to debate and discuss what is the prefable future BEYOND CONE: fantasy WILD CARD SCENARIOS: low-probability and highimpact - to think about and discuss a wider set of possibilities
Tobias Revell’s Futures Cone, from Motrovi & Suran 86
plausible
probable
preferable
The Futures Cone illustrates different kinds of scenarios in which they may become possible futures. Drawing on the futures cone by Joseph Voros, this version by Tobias Revell takes into account the “wildcard� scenario, encouraging the obeserver to expand their considerations. It also includes the PPPP concept, also used by Dunne and Raby. 87
possible
Metahaven
Facestate 2010-2012
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Metahaven describes Facestate as “the ultimate combination of social media and government”, an installation of ID cards, tablets and recognition devices and standees. Metahaven are “interested in the ways in which Facebook and government, Facebook and employers, Facebook and friends, Facebook and enemies constitute a power arrangement, and the way in which this constellation might influence politics, currency, and the social contract.” In Facestate, Metahaven builds a fictional corporate government hybrid, inviting viewers to contemplate what the futures of the relationship between social networks and the state might be.
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This spread: standees, Facestate face recognition device, Facestate password/passport device
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Speculative design projects often require a narrative to suggest a premise for the work; this can stimulate discussion and critical thinking and situate the work in a context that allows the audience to understand and engage with the design. By leaving the scenario open-ended, it offers the audience possibilities of personal interpretation. They are often unusual and curious, and may include humour or satire, but yet close to the everyday experience. This can be further established by visualising through various mediums, such as film, photography, illustration and performance, prototypes, or through the name of the design itself, which describes the project’s premise.
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[ two]
Jaemin Paik
When We Live Till 150 2012
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Jaemin Park’s When We Live to 150 is a series of photographs, a publication, and a family tree that envisions how a family might live, given that the average life span of humans increases to 150. Her photographs capture a scene, giving only a glimpse of what family life might be like in that situation. This is an example of how a speculative design project might leave the narrative open-ended; the premise is established, but the storytelling is not linear, leaving room for interpretation, questions and discussion.
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New life expectancy of an average human being. There is now up to six generations of family members. The photographs and mockumentary in this project takes a look into a 75-year old woman Moyra and her family.
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[ three ]
As a design practice, speculative design does not offer a design solution, but rather to serve as a tool for the audience to reconsider their own beliefs and values. By involving the designer and the public to explore possible scientific and technological futures, speculative design projects offer communicative material that provokes the public to reflect and discuss the issues at hand. This can be done through the “bridging of imagination and materialization�, through crafting or the telling of stories through objects. While the audience participates in the work, they experience and understand the subject matter of the project through creating, or involvement in the project
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Pomme Van Hoof
Limb Lab 2014
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Limb Lab is a combination of two doctoral studies, one of prostheses and another of architecture, into one limb-making workshop. The subject matters of the two PhD research are combined by using architecture as inspiration for the construction of a prosthetic. It explores the relationship of humans and their limbs, how future prostheses could be and what goes behind the construction of that future prosthetic.
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Opposite page, left: details of a workshop participant’s future limb This page: Limb Lab technicians displaying the future limbs at the workshop
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Pomme Van Hoof
You Are Here: Intergalactic Travel Agency 2014 106
Similarly, You Are Here: Intergalactic Travel Agency gets the public engaged in conversation and speculation, getting them to use their imagination for a journey into the possible worlds in outer space. The project seeks to ask: “How will a space journey look like in our imagination?” The set up is a fictional office space that offers personalised advice on intergalactic space travel, which “humanizes” the space. At the end of the “journey”, the audience gets a printed receipt detailing the activities they have done; a souvenir from their “travels”.
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[ four ]
Although narratives give the audience a sense of premise, ambiguity and irrationality are ways in which a design can provoke questions and facilitate discussion. In speculative design, its purpose serves to create a feeling of uncertainty, and may compel people to join in the dialogue of the design, taking away an experience unique to them. Gaver, Beaver and Benford highlight three kinds of ambiguity: contextual ambiguity, ambiguity of information, and relational ambiguity, and Malpass proposes ambiguity of information as a way speculative design uses ambiguity (236). In this form, the design creates, or reflects uncertainties about information that are already noticeable to people.
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Dunne & Raby
Between Reality and the Impossible: Foragers 2010 110
This is reflected in Dunne and Raby’s Foragers. They present a scenario of overpopulation, food shortage and foraging, which are concepts that the public understands. While the proposed design and technologies might seem foreign, their applications are presented in images and film, which contextualises these ambiguous products.
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Foragers at work
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Various process and digesting devices
Applications of the devices in the project. These products, when shown on their own, don’t suggest much to their use; however with visualisations through film and photography, or even simple illustrations, the objects are conteextualized.
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Where do we go from here? With many issues such as aging, governance and politics, body modification and human emotions being explored, speculative design has potential to continue to present and engage with audiences, examining various social implications and perceptions of emerging technologies. With an eye out for the developments in technology, culture and politics, speculative design can be a tool for imagining futures about areas that we interact with everyday – one of which is social networks, which will explored further in the next few outcomes.
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Bardzell, Jeffrey, and Shaowen Bardzell. What is
Mitrovi, Ivica, and Oleg Suran. Speculative - Post-
“Critical” about Critical Design? Proceedings of the
Design Practice or New Utopia? The XXI International
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Exhibition of the Triennale di Milano, 2 April-12
Systems. Paris, France, pp. 3297-3306.
September 2016, Croatia.
Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. “Critical Design
Museum of Modern Art. “Conceptual Art“. Museum
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Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative
Rawsthorn, Alice. Hello World: Where Deisgn Meets
Everything. The MIT Press, 2013.
Life. The Overlook Press, 2013
Gaver, William, Jake Beaver and Steve Benford. 2003.
Remy, Tejo. “‘You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory’ Chest
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of Drawers“. Museum of Modern Art. https://www.
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ACM Press, 233-240. Remy, Tejo. “You Can’t Lay Down Your Memories“. Laranjo, Francisco. “Critical Graphic Design: Critical of
Victoria & Albert Museum. http://collections.vam.
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Victoria & Albert Museum. “Postmodernism”. Victoria & Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/
Malpass, Matt. “Between Wit and Reason: Defining
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Associative, Speculative, Critical Design in Practice.” Design and Culture, vol. 5, no. 3, 2013, pp. 333-356.
Ward, Matt. Interview by Ivica Mitrovi and Oleg Šuran. Speculative, 2016, http://speculative.hr/en/matt-ward/
Malpass, Matt. Critical Design in Context: History, Theory, and Practices. Bloomsbury, 2017.
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