Good morning, or rather good afternoon to most. It seems like it’s been a productive conversation.
I’ve pasted my introduction below as a starting point for this part of the conversation. The crux of the matter I’d like to discuss is whether we see critical design as an ongoing practice, or if we need to think of other practices to move forward with the stated objectives of much of critical design — prompting consideration and debate.
The last conversation seemed in part to be moving in this direction.
Are there boundaries to Critical Design? If so, what are they? Have we reached them? And what comes next?
Critical Design has received increased attention over the past decade and now is relatively common in many design exhibitions and throughout design journalism. It has developed as a practice and style and its purposes and affects have become more clear, with an ever greater emphasis on reframing the potentials of science and technology and striving towards public engagement. One question to ask then is if Critical Design has reached its apogee, and if so, then what comes next? Rather than reproducing Critical Design as we know it, what else might we do to develop alternatives within design and society? Is there, or should there be, a Post-Critical Design?
1. Are there limits to critical / speculative design?
2. At what point does critical / speculative design reduce to mere spectacle — reinforcing rather than questioning the status quo?
3. What other tactics and strategies for using design for public engagement are on the horizon? What comes after critical design?
And often-repeated response to my critical artefact work from several other designers is “I do that anyway” – making unusual or provocative objects to further their thinking within their practice and challenge others’ expectations. But there does seem to be a sense that Critical Design is a very strong form of such tactics. In this sense the term Critical Design has been a good way of distinguishing those practices where friction/provocation etc. is a primary practice. But I think the danger has been to downplay the role such tactics already play within every designers practice (albeit in, perhaps, a lesser form).
To return to your questions then, if we do need to differentiate this “strong” form of critique then there shouldn’t be any limits to the areas covered. But answering your second question might put some limits around the manner in which critical artefacts achieve this. I like the name used for the 2003 exhibition on Critical Design in Minneapolis: Strangely Familiar. I.e. there needs to be something familiar about what we are presenting, too strange and we risk alienating the viewer or user and making them discount the embodied ideas.
I take the liberty to transfer Ramias comment from last thread, it just seems to fit well into the topic. -Li
This (previous) thread seems to raise some interesting questions about which and how theories are developed! Alex comment raised a question about theory development within (and by) design. Of course, design does not only import theory, even if it does look to other fields for theories, there is an inevitable process of interpretation, adaptation, development (?), etc. Otherwise, the designer role would be reduced to 'giving form' to theories developed elsewhere and by others. (However, it is the case that the sciences have tended to regard design and technology as an ‘applied’ version of its own knowledge – design merely as an instance, practical demonstration, or ‘packaging’ for principles and discoveries made elsewhere.)
You pose an interesting question, Regina, "What does design have to offer to the fields it engages with?".
There are perhaps some interesting questions asked in the field of Critical Futures Studies: "The critical futures tradition questions the empiricist notion of 'trend as destiny' and unpacks the narrowly and negatively constructed 'probable future', thus opening up such questions as “Whose future is being predicted?' 'Whose science is being used to measure the trends?' and 'Who decides what is preferred?'" (Gidley)... questions that can be staged in dissentual processes with diverse publics in Participatory Futures Studies... Would it be useful to develop similarly critical questions for 'critical practice' of design operating in science?
Gidley, Jennifer, John Fien, Jodi-Anne Smith, Dana Thomsen, and Timothy Smith. “Participatory Futures Methods: Towards adaptability and resilience in climate-vulnerable communities.” Environmental Policy and Governance 19, no. 6 (2009): 427-440.
I'm sure there is scope for "CD as exhibition" to develop - retrospectives, curatorial themes that cut through the corpus in different ways, reviews in publications with more readers.
Then there are the forms of practice that we are chatting about, where methods and approaches from CD are reflexively applied to other settings (I'm not sure what variety of reflexivity this is Alex ;) ) which we are developing within this community, and sharing perspectives.
There seems to be a fair bit of approbation for the original CD. I wonder at what point we will feel a bit more relaxed refering to CD as just one of the many approaches we have drawn upon?
I think in might be worthwhile to explore a little what a post-criticality might be? Borrowing from the use in architectural discourse it could mean a leaving behind all theoretical positions in favour for at 'pragmatist' embrace of capitalist realties - "surfing the waves of capital" to paraphrase Rem Koolhaas. Or, are we to look for a post-post critical position to find something interesting?
-Tau
an entry point into thinking about your introduction is to view the objective of CD as a prompt to debate and consideration a discursive move to epistemological legitimation. This, then makes me wonder what it might be to view CD, SD (or whatever) as an ontological practice. I'm reminded here of Barry et. al. point about interdisciplinary engagements where ethnographers working in ICT innovation settings effect a change in the organisational imagination where their products are seen as situated socio-cultural-technical objects. So, using my how questions from the previous thread, how is ontology one in, for want of better terms, critical and speculative design practice. This also ties up with your view on the construction of publics - i.e. what objects, actors, things emerge out of design practice.
So, when I used the phrase post-critical design it was not to signal a move to a more pragmatic ends. Rather to consider whether critical design should be though of as an ongoing and developing practice or a term that labels something quite specific.
and, in response to your question about what comes after CD - one answer is engagements between design and sts where the explicit techniques of future visions/fictions are replaced with more sustained and nuanced perspectives on practice and the social.
Tobie: the kind of reflexivity where I get to wear your glasses ;-)
Lie, probably not the best descriptions but I was trying to get at is some of the work done by my and your colleagues where CD/SD intersects with developments in participatory design and STS.
This then still makes me think we might want to begin to speak of things other than critical design, particularly when they do intersect with PD and STS (as the work of many on this list does).
Sorry if I am repeating things said earlier.
But the notion of sustained practice and engagement with the social suggests we are exploring new methods of CD/SD. This is precisely what interests me. For example, how do we support participation in speculation? I'm not sure of the answer to that question, but it is one of the questions that is currently driving a lot of my research.
I still think CD has some potential to be an exemplary practice of how more traditional, language-based research practice and design practice can be combined. It can be observed and analyzed as a special case of design practice (not a substantially different practice, compared to everyday design). I think the process of combining the initial ideas CD derived from with previous critical approaches might not be finished yet. Design researchers might still need to digest CD and its successors, and translate some more of their material practice into language.
Good morning Carl,
Re Q3 and 2: isn't CD/SD going beyond public engagement in some instances anyway? Some argue it feeds back into scientific research practice or policy, and there are a number of collaborations were scientists, for instance, felt that being part of a C/SD project resulted in them seeing their own work differently (although, admittedly, their priority is mostly to communicate to the public). That way, it's moving away from what I understand you mean with 'spectacle'. Caveat, of course: Scientists and policy makers are part of the public too..
"how do we support participation in speculation?" - there's lots of participation methods stuff, Rowe and Frewer have a good overview:
Rowe, G., & Frewer, L. J. (2005). A Typology of Public Engagement Mechanisms. Science Technology Human Values, 30(2), 251-290.
I expect we would not be very excited by much of this though. As Alex and Lie are discussing, it's perhaps something more "sustained and nuanced" that design is looking for, rather then specific methods?
Yes, it seems like in some instances it is going beyond what we often think of as public engagement programs. The idea of designers as partners with scientists, do critical design (or perhaps critical science?) together is an exciting prospect.
My understanding is that this is how the Material Beliefs project was structured. Tobie, is that correct?
Prefixes ("post-", "post-post-", etc.) and amendments ('critical') to design can end in the absurd, but the act of naming can also important signal shifts in the discourse. I appreciate that you raised the point, Tau! For example, the current ‘post-critical’ discussion in architecture is a largely American movement against a previous generation of ‘critical architecture’ (an oedipal complex?). But taking and naming this position asks us to look closer (and notice that the post-critical architects merely continue the previous formal and aesthetic preoccupations though substituting a new set of f.ex. pragmatist, vitalist, materialist, etc., theories and terms for the previous structuralist and linguistic theories).
It becomes easy to dismiss the whole discussion when dismissing terms – “the latest theory is that theory doesn't matter" (New York Times). But we might recognize all of these terms as part of a growing discourse within design, done by designers. For me, the power of 'critical practice' as a kind of 'criticality from within' is an important shift towards designers articulating and theorizing themselves - typically, it has been professionals from outside practice (historians, philosophers, sociologists, etc.) who did critique of design and designers. Instead, in the work of 'thinking (design) practitioners' and 'practicing (design) theorists', that theory and practice are continually put at stake and in a variety of ways, as we continually query our practice, our discipline and the larger socio-political and institutional contexts in which we operate.
To borrow from the architectural theorist Michael Hays, who characterizes "‘critical theory’ as ‘the constant imagination, search for, and construction of alternatives’"...
I must sign off from the now, but thank you all for a great day of stimulating discussion!
When CD or SD is deployed as tactics of public engagements, I'm wondering if that implies a change in the critical practice towards a more explicit political (and activist) stance forcing the designers to not only provide the means for debate (asking questions) but also affirm s/he's own position or stake in the situation or controversy that is addressed? And if so, does this in turn lead to new ethical questions about what conflicts, groups and causes can be addressed?
-Tau
The term 'culturally imaginaries' is new to me. And I have had to some quick & dirty 'by-the-keyboard research´(i.e googling). Before I can even speculate upon how it circulates.
Graham Dawson defines it as "those vast networks of interlinking discursive themes, images, motifs and narrative forms that are publicly available within a culture at any one time, and articulate its psychic and social dimensions." (Dawson 1994: 48).
But in regarding to the defintion of labeling "cultural imaginaries furnish public forms which both organize knowledge of the social world and give shape to fantasies….(Dawson 1994: 48).
just in response to Ramia's point about shifts in discourse, I see 'critical theory' as a historical artefact and part of the modernist imagination (and all that goes along with that). As such I don't see myself in that tradition nor do many post-marxist cultural and social theorists.
Also, I'm not comfortable with the notion that reflection is coming from 'within' - seems to me there are more hybrids operating across, within, outside and among various disciplinary commitments.
the positions that you mention might all get played out. A colleague did a design around research into linking neuronal cells to silicon. These cells came from sacraficed rats. The designers was not an activist, his design was a toy that linked to the cells from the home, "how might the home link to the lab". We wanted to show the design in at a public event called "bioplay" and all hell broke lose. It was felt that notions of play trivialised the original research (though we meant ludic play), which jeapordised the ethics approval of the work and put the secientist in danger. It all got very messy.
Tau, just wanted to pick up on what your saying about the 'standpoint' of the designer. Yes, and as Suchman argues in 'Located Accountabilities', designers methodological self-consciousness (as a form of reflexivity) is important and perhaps something missing from CD.
Bye Ramia. Thanks for that contribution! I agree that naming is very important, especially when we are not only engaged in practice but also in scholarship - naming allows us to be more discerning in our discussion and analysis and critique.
Regarding cultural imaginaries - yes, those definitions are good for capturing the idea of cultural imaginary.
As an example - a lot of the work I have done is in robotics. We have ideas about what robots are and should be. Many of these ideas come not from robotics science and engineering, but from literature, film, and design. It's notable that the MIT Sociable Robotics Lab now hires Holloywood prop designers to craft their robots.
So, one idea is that what CD/SD can do is to shift cultural imaginaries - to shift the images we use to imagine with.
There seems to be some agreement that public engagement is among the more interesting aspects of former CD for the future development. Maybe that has got to do with the UK context? At least in Germany, CD is not even known among all designers, not to mention a public beyond the disciplinary boundaries. There are, however, similar practices under different labels and with different intentions, but not such an intimate connection between critical design practice and public engagement. Could it be that there are better ways to engage the public, or other interesting aspects to investigate about critical design?
Tobie, so in that (in vitro?) context, my hypothesis from earlier about 'safety' (in an ethics context) through the distance afforded by speculation doesn't work... Interesting!
I found from analysing the production design of 'feasible(-ish)' science fiction films in a space psychology context (which could be compared to design fiction/speculative artefacts) that many particularly difficult, mundane or sensitive issues were played out with great delight and detail that wouldn't necessarily be easy to discuss in a real operational setting because of medi/research ethical concerns. I.e. manifesting something in a film or other format that the viewer can disassociate him/herself from could work, but that's of course a completely different level as life tissue, whether human or animal...
Sorry to do this, but I have to sign-off. I have to teach. And actually it's a class in which we are exploring speculative design approaches to urban agriculture.
Please continue on with the conversation - it's certainly not over yet. But for me, I have to go educate!
Thank you, Carl!
As for all the others: this last session ends now, but here is one more thread were you can make a concluding statement of today's debate: https://www.designresearchnetwork.org/drn/content/feature-discussion%3A-...
I owe you all a big thank you for your effort and hope you too carry something away from today's debate.
Best,
Katharina.
Post-Critical
Good morning, or rather good afternoon to most. It seems like it’s been a productive conversation.
I’ve pasted my introduction below as a starting point for this part of the conversation. The crux of the matter I’d like to discuss is whether we see critical design as an ongoing practice, or if we need to think of other practices to move forward with the stated objectives of much of critical design — prompting consideration and debate.
The last conversation seemed in part to be moving in this direction.
Are there boundaries to Critical Design? If so, what are they? Have we reached them? And what comes next?
Critical Design has received increased attention over the past decade and now is relatively common in many design exhibitions and throughout design journalism. It has developed as a practice and style and its purposes and affects have become more clear, with an ever greater emphasis on reframing the potentials of science and technology and striving towards public engagement. One question to ask then is if Critical Design has reached its apogee, and if so, then what comes next? Rather than reproducing Critical Design as we know it, what else might we do to develop alternatives within design and society? Is there, or should there be, a Post-Critical Design?
1. Are there limits to critical / speculative design?
2. At what point does critical / speculative design reduce to mere spectacle — reinforcing rather than questioning the status quo?
3. What other tactics and strategies for using design for public engagement are on the horizon? What comes after critical design?
Some answers..
Hi Carl,
And often-repeated response to my critical artefact work from several other designers is “I do that anyway” – making unusual or provocative objects to further their thinking within their practice and challenge others’ expectations. But there does seem to be a sense that Critical Design is a very strong form of such tactics. In this sense the term Critical Design has been a good way of distinguishing those practices where friction/provocation etc. is a primary practice. But I think the danger has been to downplay the role such tactics already play within every designers practice (albeit in, perhaps, a lesser form).
To return to your questions then, if we do need to differentiate this “strong” form of critique then there shouldn’t be any limits to the areas covered. But answering your second question might put some limits around the manner in which critical artefacts achieve this. I like the name used for the 2003 exhibition on Critical Design in Minneapolis: Strangely Familiar. I.e. there needs to be something familiar about what we are presenting, too strange and we risk alienating the viewer or user and making them discount the embodied ideas.
Best regards,
Simon
______
http://www.simon-bowen.com/
RAMIAs comment from previos thread
I take the liberty to transfer Ramias comment from last thread, it just seems to fit well into the topic. -Li
This (previous) thread seems to raise some interesting questions about which and how theories are developed! Alex comment raised a question about theory development within (and by) design. Of course, design does not only import theory, even if it does look to other fields for theories, there is an inevitable process of interpretation, adaptation, development (?), etc. Otherwise, the designer role would be reduced to 'giving form' to theories developed elsewhere and by others. (However, it is the case that the sciences have tended to regard design and technology as an ‘applied’ version of its own knowledge – design merely as an instance, practical demonstration, or ‘packaging’ for principles and discoveries made elsewhere.)
You pose an interesting question, Regina, "What does design have to offer to the fields it engages with?".
There are perhaps some interesting questions asked in the field of Critical Futures Studies: "The critical futures tradition questions the empiricist notion of 'trend as destiny' and unpacks the narrowly and negatively constructed 'probable future', thus opening up such questions as “Whose future is being predicted?' 'Whose science is being used to measure the trends?' and 'Who decides what is preferred?'" (Gidley)... questions that can be staged in dissentual processes with diverse publics in Participatory Futures Studies... Would it be useful to develop similarly critical questions for 'critical practice' of design operating in science?
Gidley, Jennifer, John Fien, Jodi-Anne Smith, Dana Thomsen, and Timothy Smith. “Participatory Futures Methods: Towards adaptability and resilience in climate-vulnerable communities.” Environmental Policy and Governance 19, no. 6 (2009): 427-440.
hi Carl, I'm sure there is
hi Carl,
I'm sure there is scope for "CD as exhibition" to develop - retrospectives, curatorial themes that cut through the corpus in different ways, reviews in publications with more readers.
Then there are the forms of practice that we are chatting about, where methods and approaches from CD are reflexively applied to other settings (I'm not sure what variety of reflexivity this is Alex ;) ) which we are developing within this community, and sharing perspectives.
There seems to be a fair bit of approbation for the original CD. I wonder at what point we will feel a bit more relaxed refering to CD as just one of the many approaches we have drawn upon?
bests,
Tobie
What does post in post-critical mean?
Good morning Carl,
I think in might be worthwhile to explore a little what a post-criticality might be? Borrowing from the use in architectural discourse it could mean a leaving behind all theoretical positions in favour for at 'pragmatist' embrace of capitalist realties - "surfing the waves of capital" to paraphrase Rem Koolhaas. Or, are we to look for a post-post critical position to find something interesting?
-Tau
From epistemology to ontology
Hi Carl,
an entry point into thinking about your introduction is to view the objective of CD as a prompt to debate and consideration a discursive move to epistemological legitimation. This, then makes me wonder what it might be to view CD, SD (or whatever) as an ontological practice. I'm reminded here of Barry et. al. point about interdisciplinary engagements where ethnographers working in ICT innovation settings effect a change in the organisational imagination where their products are seen as situated socio-cultural-technical objects. So, using my how questions from the previous thread, how is ontology one in, for want of better terms, critical and speculative design practice. This also ties up with your view on the construction of publics - i.e. what objects, actors, things emerge out of design practice.
What does "post" mean
So, when I used the phrase post-critical design it was not to signal a move to a more pragmatic ends. Rather to consider whether critical design should be though of as an ongoing and developing practice or a term that labels something quite specific.
More bluntly
and, in response to your question about what comes after CD - one answer is engagements between design and sts where the explicit techniques of future visions/fictions are replaced with more sustained and nuanced perspectives on practice and the social.
Tobie: the kind of reflexivity where I get to wear your glasses ;-)
How Questions
The move to How questions is a nice move.
So, one way to approach that would be to ask the questions
How does debate occur?
or perhaps more provocatively
How does epistemological legitimation?
or the question that has been nagging me of late (which ties to Barry)
How do culturally imaginaries form and circulate?
Even more bluntly
Alex, I curiously ask if you give an example of what a sustained and nuanced perspectives on practice and the social might be?
Carl lots of literature
Carl lots of literature seems to want to make CD a label for something specific
How again
and also how is accountability constructed.
Even more bluntly than bluntly
Lie, probably not the best descriptions but I was trying to get at is some of the work done by my and your colleagues where CD/SD intersects with developments in participatory design and STS.
Lots of literature and Sustained Practice
Good point Tobie.
This then still makes me think we might want to begin to speak of things other than critical design, particularly when they do intersect with PD and STS (as the work of many on this list does).
Sorry if I am repeating things said earlier.
But the notion of sustained practice and engagement with the social suggests we are exploring new methods of CD/SD. This is precisely what interests me. For example, how do we support participation in speculation? I'm not sure of the answer to that question, but it is one of the questions that is currently driving a lot of my research.
More potential for research
I still think CD has some potential to be an exemplary practice of how more traditional, language-based research practice and design practice can be combined. It can be observed and analyzed as a special case of design practice (not a substantially different practice, compared to everyday design). I think the process of combining the initial ideas CD derived from with previous critical approaches might not be finished yet. Design researchers might still need to digest CD and its successors, and translate some more of their material practice into language.
Beyond Public Engagement
Good morning Carl,
Re Q3 and 2: isn't CD/SD going beyond public engagement in some instances anyway? Some argue it feeds back into scientific research practice or policy, and there are a number of collaborations were scientists, for instance, felt that being part of a C/SD project resulted in them seeing their own work differently (although, admittedly, their priority is mostly to communicate to the public). That way, it's moving away from what I understand you mean with 'spectacle'. Caveat, of course: Scientists and policy makers are part of the public too..
Public Apology
Sorry: Li, not 'Lie' ;-)
"how do we support
"how do we support participation in speculation?" - there's lots of participation methods stuff, Rowe and Frewer have a good overview:
Rowe, G., & Frewer, L. J. (2005). A Typology of Public Engagement Mechanisms. Science Technology Human Values, 30(2), 251-290.
I expect we would not be very excited by much of this though. As Alex and Lie are discussing, it's perhaps something more "sustained and nuanced" that design is looking for, rather then specific methods?
Beyond Public Engagement
Hi Regina,
Yes, it seems like in some instances it is going beyond what we often think of as public engagement programs. The idea of designers as partners with scientists, do critical design (or perhaps critical science?) together is an exciting prospect.
My understanding is that this is how the Material Beliefs project was structured. Tobie, is that correct?
Sorry too Li
Sorry too Li
Yes public engagement has
Yes public engagement has probably more problems than critical design, in terms of what it is, does, and for who.
To bring the two together is an exercise in confusion, but in amongst that some interesting things happen.
These interesting things happen partly because there is the support to so "public enagement" over a sustained period - Material Beliefs was two years.
So I'm trying to work out what was interesting, and how to discuss it witin this community.
Post-
Prefixes ("post-", "post-post-", etc.) and amendments ('critical') to design can end in the absurd, but the act of naming can also important signal shifts in the discourse. I appreciate that you raised the point, Tau! For example, the current ‘post-critical’ discussion in architecture is a largely American movement against a previous generation of ‘critical architecture’ (an oedipal complex?). But taking and naming this position asks us to look closer (and notice that the post-critical architects merely continue the previous formal and aesthetic preoccupations though substituting a new set of f.ex. pragmatist, vitalist, materialist, etc., theories and terms for the previous structuralist and linguistic theories).
It becomes easy to dismiss the whole discussion when dismissing terms – “the latest theory is that theory doesn't matter" (New York Times). But we might recognize all of these terms as part of a growing discourse within design, done by designers. For me, the power of 'critical practice' as a kind of 'criticality from within' is an important shift towards designers articulating and theorizing themselves - typically, it has been professionals from outside practice (historians, philosophers, sociologists, etc.) who did critique of design and designers. Instead, in the work of 'thinking (design) practitioners' and 'practicing (design) theorists', that theory and practice are continually put at stake and in a variety of ways, as we continually query our practice, our discipline and the larger socio-political and institutional contexts in which we operate.
To borrow from the architectural theorist Michael Hays, who characterizes "‘critical theory’ as ‘the constant imagination, search for, and construction of alternatives’"...
I must sign off from the now, but thank you all for a great day of stimulating discussion!
Post-critical and ethics
When CD or SD is deployed as tactics of public engagements, I'm wondering if that implies a change in the critical practice towards a more explicit political (and activist) stance forcing the designers to not only provide the means for debate (asking questions) but also affirm s/he's own position or stake in the situation or controversy that is addressed? And if so, does this in turn lead to new ethical questions about what conflicts, groups and causes can be addressed?
-Tau
'culturally imaginaries* - (?)
The term 'culturally imaginaries' is new to me. And I have had to some quick & dirty 'by-the-keyboard research´(i.e googling). Before I can even speculate upon how it circulates.
Graham Dawson defines it as "those vast networks of interlinking discursive themes, images, motifs and narrative forms that are publicly available within a culture at any one time, and articulate its psychic and social dimensions." (Dawson 1994: 48).
But in regarding to the defintion of labeling "cultural imaginaries furnish public forms which both organize knowledge of the social world and give shape to fantasies….(Dawson 1994: 48).
Is this what you mean Carl?
-LIE! ;-)
bye Ramia
bye Ramia
Counterpoint
just in response to Ramia's point about shifts in discourse, I see 'critical theory' as a historical artefact and part of the modernist imagination (and all that goes along with that). As such I don't see myself in that tradition nor do many post-marxist cultural and social theorists.
Also, I'm not comfortable with the notion that reflection is coming from 'within' - seems to me there are more hybrids operating across, within, outside and among various disciplinary commitments.
Anyway, thanks Ramia...
hi Tau, the positions that
hi Tau,
the positions that you mention might all get played out. A colleague did a design around research into linking neuronal cells to silicon. These cells came from sacraficed rats. The designers was not an activist, his design was a toy that linked to the cells from the home, "how might the home link to the lab". We wanted to show the design in at a public event called "bioplay" and all hell broke lose. It was felt that notions of play trivialised the original research (though we meant ludic play), which jeapordised the ethics approval of the work and put the secientist in danger. It all got very messy.
bests,
Tobie
Accountabilities
Tau, just wanted to pick up on what your saying about the 'standpoint' of the designer. Yes, and as Suchman argues in 'Located Accountabilities', designers methodological self-consciousness (as a form of reflexivity) is important and perhaps something missing from CD.
Words and Discourse and Practice and Imaginaries
Bye Ramia. Thanks for that contribution! I agree that naming is very important, especially when we are not only engaged in practice but also in scholarship - naming allows us to be more discerning in our discussion and analysis and critique.
Regarding cultural imaginaries - yes, those definitions are good for capturing the idea of cultural imaginary.
As an example - a lot of the work I have done is in robotics. We have ideas about what robots are and should be. Many of these ideas come not from robotics science and engineering, but from literature, film, and design. It's notable that the MIT Sociable Robotics Lab now hires Holloywood prop designers to craft their robots.
So, one idea is that what CD/SD can do is to shift cultural imaginaries - to shift the images we use to imagine with.
CD and the public
There seems to be some agreement that public engagement is among the more interesting aspects of former CD for the future development. Maybe that has got to do with the UK context? At least in Germany, CD is not even known among all designers, not to mention a public beyond the disciplinary boundaries. There are, however, similar practices under different labels and with different intentions, but not such an intimate connection between critical design practice and public engagement. Could it be that there are better ways to engage the public, or other interesting aspects to investigate about critical design?
Tobie, so in that (in
Tobie, so in that (in vitro?) context, my hypothesis from earlier about 'safety' (in an ethics context) through the distance afforded by speculation doesn't work... Interesting!
I found from analysing the production design of 'feasible(-ish)' science fiction films in a space psychology context (which could be compared to design fiction/speculative artefacts) that many particularly difficult, mundane or sensitive issues were played out with great delight and detail that wouldn't necessarily be easy to discuss in a real operational setting because of medi/research ethical concerns. I.e. manifesting something in a film or other format that the viewer can disassociate him/herself from could work, but that's of course a completely different level as life tissue, whether human or animal...
Signing Off
Hi All,
Sorry to do this, but I have to sign-off. I have to teach. And actually it's a class in which we are exploring speculative design approaches to urban agriculture.
Please continue on with the conversation - it's certainly not over yet. But for me, I have to go educate!
Carl
Bye Carl!
Bye Carl
end of session
Thank you, Carl!
As for all the others: this last session ends now, but here is one more thread were you can make a concluding statement of today's debate:
https://www.designresearchnetwork.org/drn/content/feature-discussion%3A-...
I owe you all a big thank you for your effort and hope you too carry something away from today's debate.
Best,
Katharina.
Bye Carl
Bye Carl