Speculation, Design, Public and Participatory Technoscience: Possibilities and Critical Perspectives

Over the past decade there has been an increasing engagement between design and STS. One emerging and novel area of exchange is concerned with exploring the ways in which practices of ’speculative design’ and STS concerns of publics, participation, politics as well as expectations come together to inform one another, to critique one another, and to collaborate in developing new modes of co-production of contemporary technoscience. Although such associations are promising, they are nascent and in need of articulation and critical examination. Our proposed track is intended to provide the beginnings of such articulation and critical examination, by soliciting participation from STS scholars, design researchers and from practicing designers.

By speculative design we refer to a set of design practices and outcomes that are moving away from common notions of design as “problem-solving” or “styling”, towards framing design as a means for surfacing and materializing issues and contributing to the formation of publics and futures. In this move, design is increasingly cast as a possible mode of intervention into technoscience, thereby establishing renewed associations with STS. With speculative design the performativity of the object comes to the fore as a concern for both designers and theorists, as its objects and outcomes are often brought into being to, and interpreted as, materially and discursively enacting values, identities, agendas and beliefs. A challenge for STS then is to describe and characterize the performativity of the objects of speculative design in new ways that avoid recourse to the familiar positions and debates concerning ‘the political of artefacts’.’

I’ve long been impressed by their work – it’s provocative and compelling and engages politics and the political in an astute manner. Moreover, their work raises interesting questions for design, and public design specifically. Much of their work could be taken as design – to be sure they design objects and systems, and they regularly make use of existing design objects and systems for social critique and action. But they contextualize their work as art, and it’s within art world (or at least certain circles of the art world) that their work is recognized, discussed, and exhibited.

Its curious that we don’t see more work like this in design. Why is that? Where is that line drawn between such forms of collective / social practice / critical arts and design? Who draws that line and why? Does it serve a purpose, if so, what purpose? Can and should we erase that line of demarcation, or at lest smudge it?

As a starting point, see their project on Prisoners Inventions. Not only does it reveal a world of products (as both inventions and hacks) that escapes design and design studies, but their engagement with the prison population and with the politics of prisons and working with the incarcerated is insightful and notable.

Each of these was a significant undertaking and experience, and in the near future, I’ll post about each of them individually.

What stands out about each of these, is how they figure into the practice of public design and public design research. These are not research endeavors in the common sense – at least not in the common sense to design research. Rather, these activities all fall into methods and modes of research more akin “deep hanging-out” or “studying-up” to learn about the culture and practices of a given field.

If public design is about serious engagements with and commitments to issues and publics, then this is precisely the kind of research we need to be engaging in. Not only does it inform us about the cultures and practices of publics, it also serves to build trust and respect. At this early stage, its not entirely clear what precisely we are learning from these activities. But it is clear that these experiments into the modes and methods of public design research are a necessary first step in establishing engagements and commitments.

The Design Revolution Road Show stands out because of its format. As they describe it, it’s “a traveling exhibition and lecture series bringing “product design that empowers” to 25 high schools and university design programs across the nation in the Spring of 2010.”

More than an traveling exhibition of social design (which itself is a great idea) the road show also includes an educational presentation component, through which the staff will share and discuss their design toolkit.

This idea of bringing an educational/workshop component to social design, is, I believe, suggestive of a transformation underway in design, from objects to events.

Now, before anyone thinks I am heralding some “death of the object” – I’m not. In fact, I am deeply committed to objects and believe they are central to design.

At the same time, “the event” is emerging as an important design form, particularly in social design and practices of participatory design. The idea of the event is not new to design, and there are important precedents in art and urban planning. But we seem to be beginning to see a renewed interest in the design event, particularly in regards to socially-conscious projects.

This presents a spate of opportunities, and too challenges. In regards to opportunities, the event is, almost by definition, a situation of engagement, in which the designer takes an active role with publics. This transforms the role of the designer ever more towards an active social agent. In regards to challenges , we are prompted to ask: What precisely is this design form?; What are its qualities?; and from the perspective of theory and criticism: How do we describe, analyze and judge the event as design form and practice?

What will the farm of the future look like?

Georgia Tech’s growbotgarden.com presents an evening of curated clips that envision the farms of the future. Dystopian sci-fi fantasies, marvels of engineering, and organic small scale solutions all share space in this exploration.

Join your fellow food-loving Atlantans for a provocative evening at ParkGrounds Coffee. Learn more about the growBot project. Be the future?

RSVP HERE FOR FREE SNACKS: http://growbotfuturefarm.eventbrite.com/

This is not new, but I want to call attention to the “What If” exhibition at the Science Gallery in Dublin.

The exhibition features the work of Dunne and Raby, Tobie Kerridge and the Material Beliefs project, and many other students from the RCA and Goldsmiths. Some of the work I had not seen before, and it is always exciting to discover new examples of critical and speculative design.

In addition to providing new examples of work, the museum site itself is worth noting and considering.

Can we, and should we, consider the science museum as a (if not “the”) principal site for speculative and critical design? Certainly the museum as institution aligns with many of the central themes of critical and speculative design. It provides a space and context for exploration. Dunne and Raby’s installation Is This Your Future? at the Science Museum of London was an early example of critical design in the context of the science museum. In addition to providing an interesting institutional site for speculative and critical design, the museum can also provide the organizational and resource scaffolding for such endeavors, primarily through their educational and outreach programs. The Material Beliefs project provides an initial example for how critical and speculative design might be integrated with existing museum programs.

The question is, Why are we not seeing even more of this?

And how might critical and speculative design expand from the science museum to the natural history or history museum?

In our Project Studio this semester we are developing the growBots project: exploring the possible uses of sensing and robotics in the context of local small-scale agriculture. This is an extension of our work last semester on Speculative Robotics, with a particular focus on agriculture and the addition of participatory and public design methods.

Given the excitement of our group on this topic, its likely this will be a major focus of the Public Design Workshop for the next 12 to 18 months.

You can follow growBots as it progresses at http://www.growbotgarden.com/. At this point we are still in the early stages of research. As the project progresses you can expect the blog content will shift from literature and project reviews to discussions of our own program development.

In addition to growBots we have a spate of other projects, including: continuing research and writing on participatory urban sensing (we hope to have a publication completed for submission by May); organizing a track at the European Association of Science and Technology 2010 conference on Speculation, Design, Public and Participatory Technoscience, produced in collaboration with Alex Wilkie and Tobie Kerridge from Goldsmiths and the Material Beliefs project; a panel at CHI 2010 on “HCI, Communities and Politics”; and 3 of workshop members will be graduating this Spring.

Its going to be busy…

Below are links to the individual projects. You can also read one-paragraph overviews of each on the Speculative Robotics project page.

BuddhaBot, Amy Cheng, Lead Designer
…robots, lotuslocations, solitude, and the city…
View the BuddhaBot video
View the BuddhaBot website

Domestibeasts, Cinque Hicks and Delisha Peterson, Lead Designers
…nomadic robotic structures for living…
View the Domestibeasts video
View the Domestibeasts website

Envirodrone, Thomas Barnwell, Lead Designer
…re-purposing military robotics for environmental monitoring…
View the Envirodrone video
View the Envirodrone website

growBot Symposium, Laura Fries, Lead Designer
…robots, organic farming, and participatory design…
View the growBot Symposium video
View the growBot Symposium website

Huggable Garden Hye Yeon Nam, Lead Designer
…robotic interfaces to objects of nature…
View the Huggable Garden video
View the Huggable Garden website

Mall-E, Tanyoung Kim, Lead Designer
…robot scribes and cave painters…
View the Mall-E video
View the Mall-E website

POWER Booth, Ethiopia Hewitt, Lead Designer
…sensing and vibration as power source…
View the POWER booth video.

Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot, Hwajung Hong, Lead Designer
…robots and urban remediation…
View the Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot video
View the Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot website